Fabulous Australian plants at Cranbourne

Today’s outing was to the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, an Australian native plant garden and reserve in the suburb of Cranbourne.  Tom and Leah and I took 2 trains and a taxi to get there, 1 ½ hours total from our apartment but all pretty straightforward.

Cranbourne is just an incredible garden.  It’s got wow!, diversity, good signage, beauty, peacefulness, great gift shop and café, and lots of trails through the natural area.  The plants cover pretty much all of Australia that will grow outdoors in the Melbourne climate.  It was planted starting in 2006 and the last of garden sections were planted in 2012.  A lot of the trees are still young, but it still a stunning garden.

As you come in you see the red sands of Uluru (formerly known as Ayer’s Rock) and on the edges run a wet and dry creek bed.  We started around on the wet side.  The stream goes from a wetland widening across a shallow area with stepping stones to play on, then passing into a stylized river mouth planted with Melaleuca trees and their companions.

One section of the garden has plantings representing the diversity of Australia’s different regions, generally just one or two plants representing each region.  There are gardens showing how to use native plants in different landscaping styles from cityscapes to suburban back yards.  Kids play areas are scattered throughout the garden.  Other sections show native cultivars and research gardens.  Another area focuses on diversity of Australia’s flora and its ancient ties to Gondwana.  Signage talks about different aspects of native plants from genetics to scent to human usage.  The architecture of the garden uses rocks, metal and wood to great effect.

scribbly path

Wollemi pine, "world's oldest plant" dating back to the days of the dinosaurs
http://www.wollemipine.com/index.php

Bottle tree in the Weird and Wonderful garden

Path through the bush

Wallaby waits at the edge of the path

Another 600 ha or so is all native bushland, Stringybark eucalyptus trees (Eucalyptus have now been divided into 3 species, so technically maybe they were not Eucalyptus), shrubs including Banksia, and groundlayer plants.  A hill gives a great view over the surrounding landscape and we followed the Possum gulch trail down into a stream valley, dry this time of year.  We saw 2 wallabys and scanned the trees for koalas but didn’t see the few that are in the reserve.  We did not see any snakes despite numerous warning signs.

Jake went to Victoria market while we were gone and made us a delicious supper of kangaroo tenderloin pieces, whole rainbow trout and sauteed vegetables.