Australian National Botanic Gardens

The Australian National Botanic Gardens is a Commonwealth reserve on the lower eastern slopes of Black Mountain in Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. It is managed by the Director of National Parks under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The management plan approved in 2022 describes an 85-hectare site, with the living collection displayed across 35 hectares.

The gardens are devoted to Australian plants rather than a mixed collection of exotic and native species. The 2022 plan states that the collection displays about one-third of Australia’s flowering plant species, grouped by taxonomy, ecology and geography, horticulture, conservation and ethnobotany. Parks Australia’s later public account puts the living collection at more than 4,300 species and describes that figure as one third of Australian species. The plan’s foreword, by the Director of National Parks, calls the gardens the world’s most comprehensive display of living Australian native plants. On the Commonwealth Heritage List, where part of the place was entered on 15 July 2004, the gardens are recorded as the first public gardens composed essentially of Australian native plants.

A scientific garden for the federal capital was recommended by the Advisory Council of the Federal Capital Territory in July 1933. In September 1935 Bertram T. Dickson, chief of plant industry in the organisation that became the CSIRO, reported in favour of the Black Mountain site. Lindsay Pryor, superintendent of parks and gardens, began planting eucalypts there after 1945. On 12 September 1949 Prime Minister Ben Chifley and Sir Edward Salisbury, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ceremonially planted an oak and a eucalypt. The gardens opened to the public in September 1967 and were officially opened on 20 October 1970 by Prime Minister John Gorton, who described them as a garden of Australian trees within Walter Burley Griffin’s garden city and as a tribute to Joseph Banks. They were renamed the National Botanic Gardens in December 1978 and the Australian National Botanic Gardens in May 1984, and were declared a reserve on 17 September 1991.

Pressed specimens are held by the Australian National Herbarium, jointly managed with CSIRO and described in the management plan as among the world’s largest collections of Australian plant specimens, with more than 8,000 type specimens. The joint research arrangement, the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research from 1993, was renamed the Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research in 2010. When the 2022 plan was prepared, the gardens held nearly 320 legislatively listed threatened species in cultivation, described there as nearly a quarter of Australia’s threatened flora. The same plan that sets the scientific program also treats the site as a place for visitors to walk, learn and use the gardens for quiet recreation.

History

Planning and the Dickson report

In July 1933 the Advisory Council of the Federal Capital Territory (now the Australian Capital Territory) recommended to the Minister for the Interior that Canberra begin a botanic garden of native and exotic trees, shrubs and plants of economic value, “as distinct from those grown for ornamental purposes only.” Dr Bertram T. Dickson, head of the Division of Plant Industry in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, later the CSIRO), was asked, with Colin Barnard, to test the idea. In September 1935 he presented his report to the Advisory Council.

Dickson recommended the present site on the lower slopes of Black Mountain and a garden with a scientific basis rather than one kept for ornament alone. He also sketched a large establishment, including a staff he put at 59 and an annual cost of £12,000. The Depression and the Second World War deferred the work for about ten years.

Establishment, 1945–1967

Lindsay Pryor, Superintendent of Parks and Gardens from 1944, recommended in September 1945 that work start on Dickson’s site, still under grazing leases, and sought £1,000 for six months. He planted a few eucalypts in 1948. On 12 September 1949, during an international forestry meeting, Prime Minister Ben Chifley and Sir Edward Salisbury, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, planted an oak and a eucalypt. The eucalypt remains near the entrance, and the ceremony is treated as the formal start.

Lessees were given notice in September 1950 and the boundaries were surveyed. Erwin Gauba, temporary botanist from 1950, began the herbarium. Trees were planted in October 1951 at a frost-free annexe at Jervis Bay; an alpine annexe at Mount Gingera, approved in January 1952, was no longer maintained after the late 1960s. A policy of preferring native plants was adopted. In 1958 Pryor became professor of botany at the Australian National University, and David Shoobridge succeeded him. Betty Phillips, botanist from June 1960, linked living plants to herbarium specimens, and field trips extended the collection beyond the Canberra region. Herbarium and office buildings were finished in 1966. Under curator John Wrigley the gardens opened to the public in September 1967, and work began in 1968 on the rainforest gully.

Opening and institutional development

The grounds, then the Canberra Botanic Gardens, had been open informally for about three years when Prime Minister John Gorton declared them open on 20 October 1970. He linked the day to the Cook bicentenary and to Joseph Banks, called the plantings a garden of Australian trees inside Griffin’s garden city, and welcomed the International Congress of Parks Administrators, whose new president was Shoobridge. Dickson, then aged 84, attended.

In December 1978 the gardens were renamed the National Botanic Gardens, and in May 1984 they became the Australian National Botanic Gardens. On 10 September 1991 Governor-General Bill Hayden proclaimed the Canberra site and the Jervis Bay annexe a reserve under the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1975 and assigned it that name. The instrument, made after advice that had considered a report by the Director of National Parks and Wildlife, was published in Commonwealth of Australia Gazette No. S 257 on 17 September 1991. It continued under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Site and heritage

Location and environment

The Australian National Botanic Gardens occupy the lower slopes on the north-eastern side of Black Mountain at Clunies Ross Street, Acton, in Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. The 2022 statutory management plan describes an 85-hectare site, with the living collection displayed on 35 hectares. A facts sheet issued by the gardens in the same year instead gives a total area of 90 hectares and a developed area of 40 hectares; neither document explains the difference. The Commonwealth Heritage List entry is narrower again: about 49 hectares, Block 1332 in the District of Canberra Central, off Clunies Ross Street. The grounds border Black Mountain Nature Reserve, a 434-hectare part of Canberra Nature Park, the CSIRO Black Mountain campus and territory land, and they lie immediately west of the Australian National University. Herbarium work tied to the gardens is divided between the site and the adjoining CSIRO campus.

The ground rises from about 571 to 677 metres across five broad ridges that fan east and south-east and are separated by four incised gullies; the eastern and northern slopes are sheltered from the prevailing westerly winds. The setting is dry sclerophyll woodland dominated by Eucalyptus rossii, E. mannifera subsp. maculosa and E. macrorhyncha, on red and yellow earths, red podsolic soils, lithosols and siliceous sands. Remnant open forest in the southern bushland precinct is managed for conservation, habitat and education, and a walk there looks toward Lake Burley Griffin. At Canberra Airport Comparison (578 metres; 1939–2010), mean annual rainfall was 615.4 millimetres, spread through the year, the mean January maximum was 28.0 °C, and air temperature fell to 0 °C or below on 59.1 days a year, with a lowest minimum of −10.0 °C. The gardens’ own mean since 1968 is 664 millimetres. Icy winter paths and the water needed to irrigate the collection are treated as standing constraints, and a frost-free annexe at Jervis Bay was added for plants the Canberra site could not grow.

Landscape design

The slopes had been leased for grazing before the gardens were laid out. In the 1950s Lindsay Pryor, then Superintendent of Parks and Gardens in the territory, had the land contour-ploughed to conserve water, and those contours later formed the paths through the lower gardens. A network of paths still winds among the beds. Early sections were arranged by taxonomic group; ecological plantings followed, made by modifying microclimate and landform to create different habitats.

The Rainforest Gully, begun in 1968 in a former dry gully, is planted as an east-coast transect, Tasmanian species lowest and Queensland species highest, and misting installed in 1970 raises its humidity. The heritage record also identifies the rockery’s rocks, pools and running water. The 2022 plan ties this bush-like, rather than formally European, landscape to Walter Burley Griffin’s plan for Canberra, including views to Parliament House and the lake. It notes ageing irrigation works and the difficulty of supplying water to the collection as temperature and rainfall change, and calls for review of the Water Management Strategy.

Commonwealth Heritage List

“Australian National Botanic Gardens (part)” was entered on the Commonwealth Heritage List on 15 July 2004 as a historic place, Place ID 105345. The statement of significance uses four criteria: rarity, for rare and endangered native plants in cultivation and as the first public garden composed essentially of Australian native plants; research, for a herbarium linked to the living collection at a scale described as rare in Australia; aesthetic characteristics, for the balance of spaces, native vegetation, water, rock and colour, and for views that include Parliament House and the lake; and technical achievement, for that linked collection and for the design of the Rainforest Gully and the rockery.

The listed attributes are the native garden as a whole, those rare and endangered plants, the combined collections, the Rainforest Gully, the rockery, and the views and contrasts named above. The entry covers about 49 hectares, not the whole area in the management plan. That plan, approved under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, restates the values and applies them to works on the reserve.

Living collections

Composition and documentation

Published counts of the living collection at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, on the lower slopes of Black Mountain in Canberra, do not match. Parks Australia’s public account puts the living collection at more than 4,300 species and describes that figure as one third of Australian species.

Beds are arranged by taxonomy, ecology and geography, horticulture, conservation and ethnobotany, and interpret eucalypts, banksias, wattles and contrasting landscapes.

Thematic displays

The Rainforest Gully was built in a dry gully that in the early 1960s held only scattered eucalypts, shrubs and grasses. Barry Snelson, an apprentice from 1963, later described planting fast-growing wattles against wind and frost, then ordering the trees from Tasmanian rainforest at the bottom to mountain rainforest of northern Queensland at the top, a walk he said covered “the entire east coast rainforests in ten minutes.” The 2022 plan calls it a geographic transect of the east coast. Boardwalks run through the gully, which is misted.

The Rock Garden grows small plants from alpine country to desert in prepared soils among rocks, pools and running water. The Banksia Garden, opened in the gardens’ 50th year and reported on 22 October 2020, contains more than 70 kinds of banksia, including Banksia dentata from Kakadu National Park; the 2022 plan says it incorporates more than 80 per cent of the group.

Horticultural practice

Mist jets installed in the gully in 1970, the year the gardens opened, were meant to raise humidity and attract visitors; the $8,500 system was criticised then as a gimmick, and the jets still run from the top of the gully to the Tasmanian section. Western Australian banksias, prone to root rot, are grown on sandstone and ash or grafted onto eastern rootstocks, with a dry-stone wall to reflect winter sun; Kakadu plants sit in wheeled pipes moved under cover in hard frost, and burnt cones are used to show the role of fire. From 1951, frost-tender plants were also grown at a frost-free annex, later the Booderee Botanic Gardens, transferred in 1995 to the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community Council.

In 2011 a $2.9 million pipeline from Lake Burley Griffin began supplying filtered lake water after drought losses; use was about 150 megalitres a year, capped at 170 million litres from the lake.

Herbarium and plant systematics

The Australian National Herbarium

The Australian National Herbarium (Index Herbariorum code CANB) is the principal herbarium associated with the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra. Its CSIRO nucleus began in 1929, when J. Calvert was appointed to manage vouchers of weeds and poisonous plants and used the name Herbarium Australiense; Index Herbariorum records the foundation as 1930. A gardens herbarium, coded CBG, had been approved in 1950. From the 1993 joint venture the two collections were run as one herbarium under CANB, although specimens that came from the gardens herbarium are still cited as CBG.

Index Herbariorum’s update of 24 June 2021 listed 1,204,426 specimens. A June 2013 census of the Canberra holdings counted 1,124,812 specimens, including 9,357 types, the specimens that fix the application of a scientific name; flowering plants predominated, with mosses, lichens, liverworts and fungi the largest other groups. CSIRO describes the collection as more than one million specimens and one of the largest in the country, with particular depth in Eucalyptus and other Myrtaceae, orchids, bryophytes, lichens and the flora of Papua New Guinea. The sheets include material collected by Joseph Banks on James Cook’s 1770 voyage.

A tropical-rainforest collection built at Atherton, more than 100,000 gatherings and formerly coded QRS, is on long-term loan to the Australian Tropical Herbarium in Cairns (CNS). Vouchers for the gardens’ living collection are flagged, so names on cultivated plants can be checked against a preserved reference and samples used in studies such as DNA work stay traceable. Duplicate sheets of south-eastern Australian plants are available in a Public Reference Herbarium at the gardens, and the herbarium lends and exchanges duplicates with other institutions.

Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research

The Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research is a joint venture between CSIRO and the Director of National Parks, the corporation that manages the gardens. It began in 1993 as the Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research and took its present name in 2010. CSIRO describes the herbarium as that joint venture and places the systematic work in Australia, New Zealand and the south and west Pacific.

Names, census and digital access

Accepted names for the Australian flora are the role of the Australian Plant Census, endorsed by the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH), rather than of a separate nomenclatural index. The census lists accepted names for the native and naturalised Australian vascular flora, with synonyms, misapplications and state distributions, and excludes taxa known only in cultivation. It is maintained through the centre with the herbarium, the gardens, ABRS, CHAH and state and territory herbaria, and its entries point back to APNI.

CHAH, the peak body of the heads of the major herbaria in Australia and New Zealand, also sponsors the Australasian Virtual Herbarium, a virtual herbarium of their specimen records. Those herbaria house more than eight million specimens of plants, algae and fungi; the project has reported that almost 80 per cent had been databased. CHAH collections contribute more than four million specimen records to the Atlas of Living Australia, which treats the vouchered records as the core of its plant data and the census as the agreed vascular checklist supplied to the atlas. In 2022 the herbarium began photographing about one million sheets on a conveyor-mounted camera for release through the atlas. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility publishes the centre’s AVH occurrence set (DOI 10.15468/xycuk7), on the order of 1.11 million records. The herbarium is also a partner, with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Harvard University Herbaria, in the International Plant Names Index.

Conservation

Threatened plants in cultivation

The Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra holds plants that are declining in the wild. Its management plan, registered in 2022 under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, states that the living collection then included nearly 320 legislatively listed threatened species—nearly a quarter, it said, of Australia’s threatened taxa listed under that Act and held ex situ.

A garden population is not a substitute for habitat. The Australian PlantBank, part of the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, states that not every rainforest species survives those steps and that other measures are required.

Tuggeranong lignum (Muehlenbeckia tuggeranong), an endangered shrub of flood terraces on the eastern bank of the Murrumbidgee River, shows the limit of that approach. National conservation advice in 2015 recorded a very small wild population and noted that 93 clonally propagated plants put along the river in 2010 were heavily reduced by floods in 2011–12, with 19 found alive in May 2012. A 2025 study of all known individuals reported about seven plants left in habitat and twelve in the Gardens. Seedlings there came from reproduction inside the collection, not hybridisation with a related species also grown on site, and diversity was higher ex situ than in the wild, but still low enough for the authors to treat extinction risk as high.

The 2022 plan says it specialises in alpine and grassland species from south-eastern Australia and in plants from Commonwealth terrestrial reserves, with material from the early 1960s kept for research and long-term storage.

Duplicates are held in a network, not only in Canberra.

Recovery and partnership programs

The management plan gives priority to EPBC-listed threatened species and communities, to poorly known plants, and to research meant to improve translocation as well as cultivation. It describes support to other Commonwealth reserves, including spore germination for an endemic critically endangered fern from Christmas Island and propagation of a culturally significant quandong from Uluru, as an exchange among park managers, Traditional Owners and Gardens staff.

The project account does not separate Canberra’s collections from those of the other banks.

A separate program concerns the endangered small purple-pea (Swainsona recta), now limited to small, fragmented populations in south-eastern Australia. The agency did not report that self-sustaining wild populations had been achieved.

Garden-grown Tuggeranong lignum has produced seedlings traced to the living collection, yet earlier river plantings were heavily reduced by flooding and genetic diversity remains low. Species whose seeds cannot be dried and frozen, or that cannot be held by ordinary horticulture, need other germplasm methods. The management plan treats ex situ work as one stream that has to stay consistent with protection of wild plants and their habitat.

Governance and development

Legal status and administration

The Australian National Botanic Gardens, in Canberra, is a Commonwealth reserve. It was declared on 17 September 1991 under the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1975, to increase knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of Australia’s plant heritage through living and herbarium collections for study, interpretation, conservation and display. The declaration continued when the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 replaced that Act on 16 July 2000.

The Director of National Parks, a corporation sole under section 514A and a corporate Commonwealth entity under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, administers, manages and controls the gardens. The 2022 management plan defines Parks Australia as the assisting agency, then a division of the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment using departmental staff assigned to the Director. Taking native species, damaging heritage, building and commercial activity are prohibited in the reserve except under a management plan. The Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research is jointly managed by the Director and the CSIRO, and the Australian National Herbarium operates through that centre.

Plans of management

Sections 366 and 368 require the Director to prepare a management plan after public and state or territory comment and to give it to the minister. An approved plan is a legislative instrument, registered and tabled and open to disallowance, and it ceases 10 years after it takes effect unless revoked, replaced, or the instrument says otherwise. The 2022 instrument is the fourth plan: the first ran from 1993 to 2001, the second from 9 January 2002 to 8 January 2009, and the third from 29 May 2012 to 29 May 2022. After expiry, section 357 requires management under the International Union for Conservation of Nature principles of the category in the expired plan. The plan’s appendix says lack of funding, staff and capacity left some actions in the second plan undone or only partly done.

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (Australian National Botanic Gardens Management Plan) Instrument 2022 (F2022L00636) was approved by the then Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, on 9 April 2022 and commenced on 20 May 2022. It repealed the plan approved on 21 May 2012 and ceases 10 years after commencement unless revoked earlier. It assigns the gardens to IUCN protected area category IV, a habitat/species management area, and requires the Australian IUCN reserve management principles in Schedule 8 of the EPBC Regulations. Clause 5.07 of Schedule 8 says a reserve declared as a botanic garden should be managed through living and herbarium collections.

The statutory plan is separate from the ANBG Master Plan 2015–2035, which the instrument treats as the 20-year framework for capital works on visitors, revenue and the collections. It says the first stage had started and that government and private funding would be needed as repair costs rose. At the 25 June 2015 launch the ABC reported that Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Taylor Cullity Lethlean, consultants for the National Arboretum Canberra, had drawn up the master plan.

Infrastructure, funding and the conservatory

On 25 September 2009 The Canberra Times reported an internal finding of a funding and public-image crisis: visitors had fallen by almost 90,000 in a year, amid drought, federal funding cuts, higher utility bills and a staff reduction of more than 30 per cent over 20 years. Director Anne Duncan resigned, and CSIRO botanist Judy West was to head a research division including the gardens. Staff said some contracts were renewed monthly for lack of funds and that a $4 million nursery was hardly used.

In June 2015 the ABC reported a further fall of about 20 per cent over eight years, about 10,000 visitors a year. Parliamentary Secretary Bob Baldwin said $5 million had been provided to start and that the government wanted to spend $25 million over 20 years; director Judy West said only the $5 million was committed.

In February 2016 the Ian Potter Foundation committed $1.5 million, then the gardens’ largest private donation, toward a conservatory costed at about $3 million, matching federal funds. General manager Peter Byron said 2015 attendance of almost 450,000 was the highest in five years. The foundation added $400,000 in December 2020 for COVID-related building costs, and by March 2024 the reported total was $1.9 million.

A man stands before the steel frame of the Ian Potter National Conservatory under construction.

Work on the Ian Potter National Conservatory, a 17-metre CHROFI design described in reporting as a floating cube, began in mid-2021. In November 2023 Byron said completion was expected the following May, after a COVID-19 lockdown and heavy rain, with large palms to be craned in through the roof. In March 2024 The Canberra Times reported another delay to what it called a $12 million government project after builder Project Coordination entered voluntary administration, owing an estimated more than $20 million to about 200 creditors. A Parks Australia spokesperson said the build was more than half finished but would not name a new date or a replacement builder; the late-2022 target had already moved to June 2024.

In April 2023 Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said a $262.3 million national-parks investment would include an undisclosed sum for the gardens.

Visitors and education

Public access and facilities

The Australian National Botanic Gardens are on the lower slopes of Black Mountain in Acton, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. Visit Canberra lists the gardens, on Clunies Ross Street, among the city’s attractions.

The Visitor Centre was opened in November 1985 by the Prince and Princess of Wales, later Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales.

The Friends run free guided walks from the gardens. Aboriginal plant knowledge on those routes is treated separately.

In June 2015 the ABC reported a drop in visitors of about 20 per cent over eight years, which director Judy West likened to other Canberra national institutions. A 20-year master plan released then sought younger visitors. Director of National Parks figures, from an entrance vehicle counter, were 546,065 in 2023–24 and 552,402 in 2024–25.

Schools and interpretation

The 2022 management plan puts the living collection and related research at the centre of education from primary to tertiary level, links programs to curriculum standards, and calls for more online teaching, including work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on traditional plant use. It allows fees for some sessions. The Director of National Parks recorded 22,900 student visitors in 2023–24, up 16 per cent. The Friends later supported online education material for schools.

Friends, volunteers and events

The Friends of the Australian National Botanic Gardens were launched in October 1990 by Lindsay Pryor during Biota 90, a weekend held with the CSIRO. In 1992 the first volunteer guides began a training course. The Friends still help in the gardens and describe their work as supporting research, conservation and visitors. The 2022 management plan provides for an agreement with the Director of National Parks and treats the volunteer cohort as part of how the reserve is run.

The Friends report spending around $2.5 million since 1990 on research, conservation, collections, school resources and visitor facilities, including online education material in 2023–24. Gifts for information, education or research in the Gardens are tax-deductible. Public programs include Thursday lunchtime talks, plant sales by the Growing Friends and a student photography competition. In 2015 the ABC quoted then president Lesley Jackman, who backed more for children in the master plan but said new facilities should not displace scientific work.

Cultural context

Ngunnawal Country

The gardens occupy the lower slopes of Black Mountain in Canberra. The Australian Capital Territory Government’s interim Indigenous protocol recognises the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of the ACT and surrounding region, while stating that other people and families also have connections there and that people identifying as Ngambri (Kamberri) have determined that they are traditional custodians. The interim text followed a 27 April 2023 settlement of Supreme Court proceedings brought by Paul Girrawah House and Leah House. The government said the 2002 protocol, adopted after local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consultation, had named Ngunnawal people alone, apologised for hurt caused by its application, and started a community-led review.

An Australian National University heritage trail, prepared with the ACT’s four Representative Aboriginal Organisations under an ACT Heritage grant, carries separate welcomes from Ngunnawal, Ngunawal, Ngambri and Ngarigu representatives. In Ngunawal accounts there, Black Mountain is a sacred meeting place used predominantly for men’s business. Ngunawal, Ngunnawal and Ngambri contributors describe Mount Ainslie as predominantly a place of women’s business, and the two mountains are often referred to as women’s breasts. Ngunawal man Tyronne Bell is cited as saying the mountain was an initiation site, the landform standing for a boy’s growth into a man, and that a major cultural site was lost when the gardens were built in the 1960s.

Aboriginal plant knowledge

The gardens present Aboriginal plant use as interpretation, not as a complete record of custodial knowledge. A signed Aboriginal Plant Use Trail is one of the walks on the site.

Greening Australia describes the 2014 guide Ngunnawal Plant Use, prepared with Ngunnawal traditional custodians and the ACT Government, as covering 69 species and both historical and continuing uses.

A revamped trail opened in January 2016 by Ngunnawal elder Aunty Agnes Shea extended a route begun in the 1970s. She said the signs were meant “to keep the knowledge and memory alive,” and recalled family use of old man weed on wounds, a practice she said was shared across communities. The 2022 management plan still treats the subject as unfinished: ethnobotany is one collection theme, more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander plant knowledge is needed in education, and programs on traditional use are to be developed with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. A signed walk is only a selection of published uses. The ANU trail notes that men’s and women’s business is restricted and not for general entry.

Role among Australian botanic gardens

On the Commonwealth Heritage List the gardens are the first public garden composed essentially of Australian native plants, with some related species, and a research and teaching site whose herbarium is linked to the living collection on a scale described as rare in Australia. The 2022 management plan says the living collection displays about one-third of Australian flowering plant species, grouped by taxonomy, ecology, geography, horticulture, conservation and ethnobotany.

Other large scientific gardens have different briefs. The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, established in 1816, holds more than 27,000 plants from around the world. Its Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan, opened in 1988, displays about 4,000 Australian species and houses the National Herbarium of New South Wales and the Australian PlantBank. Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria runs Melbourne Gardens, established in 1846 with about 8,000 species and the National Herbarium of Victoria, and Cranbourne Gardens, whose Australian Garden presents Australian flora beside remnant bushland. The heritage record distinguishes the Canberra garden, within that set, as a national public collection devoted essentially to Australian plants and tied to taxonomic research.