Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne

I live in Cranbourne and yet mum and I only discovered the Royal Botanic Garden in Cranbourne by a kind of accident . . . . . . well we learnt about it because with my rates notice was a free family pass for two adults and children to the garden. Today was a really lovely day in Cranbourne so mum and I decided to go. The garden officially opened in May of this year so the plants are mostly still babies but it is very easy it imagine the garden once these little babies grow into adulthood. The garden is not complete and won't be until about 2010.

Stage two development of the 10 hectares of land will begin in 2007 and excepted to last 3 years. Upon completion in will be the biggest Australian Native Garden in Australia.

For me the most impressive garden is the Red Sand Garden. This image doesn't really do it justice but I only had my mobile phone to capture the image with. I have a Nokia N90 with a 2 mega pixel camera and 20 x zoom. It does a whole heap of other stuff but that will be for another day.


I love 'Black Boys'.

No I do not mean human species rather the plant species. How ever they have had a name change though I am unclear why, to Grass Trees. This is the better of the two images I took with my Nokia mobile phone.

Botanical Name: Xanthorrhoea macronema
Family Name: Xanthorrhoeaceae
Found: Along the East Coast, from Sydney to Brisbane.
Likes: Dry forests, often in shaded areas.
Growth Habit: Small grassy clump with a large underground woody trunk.
Stems and Leaves: Long thin glossy leaves reach up to 1Metre long and 2-4mm wide, and diamond shaped in cross section.
Flowers and Fruit: A small white cylindrical flower head up to 12cm long, made up of hundreds of tiny white flowers, appearing on a leafless stem up to 2Metres long.
Growth Pattern: This is an extremely slow growing plant. Trunk forming varieties grow only 1cm every year. It is illegal to pick the flowers or dig out plants. Doing so could result in a hefty fine and transplanting will only kill them.

Towards the end of a walk around the garden we came across an untitled piece of art by David Abecassis which is on loan to the Royal Botanic Garden Cranbourne from the Odos Gallery in Lorne. There was not a great deal of information on the plaque about the sculpture but I will describe what it looked like to me. It was in two pieces back to back. The outside was like the outside of a tree trunk with a finish unlike tarnished copper while the inside had a highly polished silver finish which may have been stainless steel. The finish was so high that it looked like a mirror. You can see how the sun reflected off of it like gold marble.

As we approached the ramp to leave we saw a small orchid display. This is another plant I adore. There are so many varieties of this plant in many shapes and colours.

I have three in my back garden just at the end of my new pergola of which none have flowered since I moved into my home back in 1998. Low and behold one has a spike and I am so looking forward to the flower.

This image is of an Iron Bark Orchid mum and I saw today at the garden.

Well it's way past my bed time and I have to be up at 0400 tomorrow for a tracking trial with Ally so off to bed I go.