Page 380 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Australia

378  VIC T ORIA

Melbourne’s Best: Parks and Gardens

Visitors to Melbourne should not miss the city’s magnificent
public and private gardens. A large proportion of the city’s
parks and gardens were created in the 19th century and have
a gracious quality which has earned Victoria the nickname
of Australia’s “Garden State”. Central Melbourne is ringed by
public gardens, including the outstanding Royal Botanic
Gardens, visited by more than 1.6 million people each year.
Melbourne also has a network of public parks which offer
a mix of native flora and fauna with recreational activities.
The annual Open Gardens scheme allows visitors into some
of the best private gardens in Victoria and Australia.
Landscape Gardens which are indigenous to the
state of Victoria.
Melbourne abounds with The attractive Fitzroy
carefully planned and formal Gardens in the heart of the Statue of Queen Victoria in her
19th-century gardens, city were also first designed by eponymous gardens
designed by prominent Bateman in 1856. His original
landscape gardeners. plans were later revised by a gardens. They were created
A variety of trees from Scotsman, James as a setting for a new statue
all over the world lines the Sinclair, to make them of the queen, four years after
formal avenues of Carlton more sympathetic to her death, in 1905. Roses now
Gardens, designed in the area’s uneven surround the statue. A floral
1857 by Edward La landscape. The clock near St Kilda Road was
Trobe Bateman. avenues of elms that given to Melbourne by Swiss
The aim of the lead in to the centre of watchmakers in 1966. It is
design was for the gardens from the embedded with some 7,000
every path and surrounding streets flowering plants.
flowerbed to create the shape Kings Domain (see p402),
focus attention of the Union established in 1854, was the
on the Exhibition Statue of Simpson and his Jack flag and dream of a German botanist,
Building, donkey in Kings Domain are one of the Baron von Mueller, who
constructed in most distinctive designed this impressive
1880 (see p399). The main features of the gardens (see garden. The garden is
entrance path leads from pp396–7). Fitzroy Gardens’ dominated by elegant statues,
Victoria Street to the Hoch- Conservatory is renowned for including one of Simpson, a
gurtel Fountain, in front of its five popular annual plant stretcher bearer during World
the Exhibition Building, shows. The Queen Victoria War I, with his faithful donkey.
decorated on its upper tier Gardens are considered one The Shrine of Remembrance
with stone birds and flowers of the city’s most attractive and Government House are
located here.
Botanic Gardens
Begun in 1846, the Royal
Botanic Gardens now cover
36 ha (90 acres). Botanist Baron
von Mueller became the director
of the gardens in 1857 and
began to plant both indigenous
and exotic shrubs on the site,
intending the gardens to be a
scientific aid to fellow biologists.
Von Mueller’s successor, William
Guilfoyle, made his own mark
on the design, by adding wide
paths across the gardens and
Conservatory of flowers in Fitzroy Gardens an ornamental lake.