Adelaide Botanic Garden | |
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The garden's 1877 tropical palm house
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Location in City of Adelaide | |
Type | Botanical |
Location | Adelaide, South Australia |
Coordinates | 34°55′05″S 138°36′39″E / 34.9181°S 138.6107°ECoordinates: 34°55′05″S 138°36′39″E / 34.9181°S 138.6107°E |
Area | 125-acre (51 ha) |
Opened | 1857 |
Website | www |
Adelaide Botanic Garden is a 51-hectare (130-acre) public garden at the north-east corner of the Adelaide city centre, in the Adelaide Park Lands. It encompasses a fenced garden on North Terrace (between the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the National Wine Centre) and behind it the Botanic Park (adjacent to the Adelaide Zoo). Adelaide Botanic Garden, together with Wittunga and Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, comprise the Botanic Gardens of South Australia.
From the first official survey carried out for the map of Adelaide, Colonel William Light intended for the planned city to have a 'botanical garden'. To this end, he designated a naturally occurring Ait of land that had formed in the course of the River Torrens. However, it wasn't until 1854, after a public appeal to Governor Sir Henry Young that gardens were established at the current location. They were founded the following year and officially opened in 1857. The garden's design was influenced by the Royal Gardens at Kew, England and Versailles, France.
One of the garden's nineteenth-century directors was the botanist Dr Richard Moritz Schomburgk, brother to the German naturalist Robert Hermann Schomburgk. He was a major advocate for the establishment of forest reserves in the increasingly denuded South Australian countryside. Dr Schomburgk's successor, Dr M. W. Holtze I.S.O., did much to make the gardens more attractive to the general public.