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Home  Inner BrisbaneBrisbane City Botanic Gardens |
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| How old are the Gardens? |  |
Established in 1855 by the first curator, Walter Hill, they are nearly 150 years old.
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| Where are the Australian plants? | |
The Gardens are landscaped with a blend of Australian native plants and exotic plants from around the world. See the avenue of Bunya Bunya trees, native conifers with a distinctive domed canopy or the Macadamia Tree, the first grown in cultivation in the world.
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| What would the site have looked like before the Gardens were established? | |
The site for the Gardens was first selected in 1828 by Charles Fraser, the Colonial Botanist, and Allan Cunningham, the King's Botanist, as a food garden and botanic reserve for the fledgling settlement. At this time it was a wooded site with a small muddy mangrove creek running through it and large native trees such as Blue Gums (Eucalyptus tereticornis) and Crow's Ash (Flindersia australis) and Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii).
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| What animals and birds live here? | |
The Gardens are home to a variety of native animals including possums (seen best a night), lizards including Eastern Waterdragons, native ducks and birds.
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| What are the boxes in the trees for? | |
These are nesting boxes for native birds such as the rosellas and lorikeets. Since clearing by European settlement has removed many older trees that would have natural hollows for nesting, artificial hollows or nest boxes are needed to maintain or restore wildlife.
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| Why are the Cuban Royal Palms in a circle? | |
Early photographs of these palms show that there was a fountain in the centre of the circle. You will also notice that three trees are smaller than the others. This is because three mature trees were removed from the circle and placed in front of City Hall in 1978 to replace three that had died during major work done at King George Square.
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| What is the oldest building? | |
The oldest building is the former Curator's residence, now the City Gardens Café. This was built in 1908 in Art Nouveau or Federation style to replace the Curator's cottage washed down river in the floods of the 1890s. It was converted to a restaurant in 1987.
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| Do any animals eat the large fruit of the Sausage Tree and the Elephant Apple Tree? | |
These are exotic trees not native to Australia and none of our native animals are able to consume these large hard fruit.
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| Do Strangler Figs kill the tree they grow on? | |
The Strangler Fig grows from a seed that is deposited in the dropping of a bird or animal in a niche in the host tree. It shoots upwards to form a canopy of leaves and roots grow downwards to reach the nutrients and water of the soil. The Strangler Fig is not parasitic and because it does not invade the tissues of the host tree, it does not directly harm it. It certainly does not "strangle" its host. Over a number of years however it will be competing with the host tree for water and light. In some cases the Fig wins this competition, resulting in the death of the host tree.
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