Brisbane Botanic Gardens (1855 - )

Summary

The Brisbane Botanic Gardens date from 1855 when the first employee, Walter Hill, was appointed as Curator (and later also Colonial Botanist) with a brief to establish a botanic garden. Land had been reserved on the Brisbane River in 1828, with responsibility for management ceded to a board of trustees when Queensland became a colony separate from New South Wales. The Gardens as developed by Hill focused on economic botany and the acclimatisation of useful plants. From 1888 to 1904 the Gardens were managed by the Queensland Department of Agriculture (and from 1904 to 1926 by the Department of Agriculture and Stock), and thereafter by the Brisbane City Council. A second garden was opened in 1975 on Mt Coot-tha seven kilometres from the centre of Brisbane; this garden is known as the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, while the riverside garden is known as the City Botanic Gardens. For extended periods the plant specimen collections of Queensland's Herbarium were housed at the Gardens.

Related entries

Published resources

Journal Articles

• Dowe, J. L., 'Walter Hill's palm collection at the Brisbane Botanic Garden, 1855-1881', Palms and cycads, 130 (2016), 11-24. Details
• Dowe, J.L. (2017)., 'Philip John MacMahon (1857-1911) and the palm collection in the old Brisbane Botanic Gardens', Palms and cycads, 135 (2017), 14-24. Details
• Dowe, John Leslie, 'Philip John MacMahon: Brisbane Botanic Gardens curator 1889 - 1905 and his vision of Brisbane as a "City of palms"', Queensland History Journal, 23 (8) (2018), 507-21. Details
• Herbert, D. A., 'C. T. White memorial Lecture: the Brisbane Botanic Gardens', Queensland naturalist, 14 (4) (1952), 69-77. Details

See also

• George, Alex S., Australian botanist's companion (Kardinya, W.A.: Four Gables Press, 2009), 671 pp. Details
• White, C. T., 'The Bailey Family and its Place in the Botanical History of Australia', The Journal of the Historical Society of Queensland, 3 (5) (1945), 362-368. Details