Royal Botanic Gardens asked Taylor Cullity Lethlean + Paul Thompson to design a new botanic garden features 40 hectares in Cranbourne, Victoria, Australia. In a former sand quarry, this new botanic garden has been completed, one that allows visitors to follow a metaphorical journey of water through the Australian landscape, from the desert to the coastal fringe. Via the artistry of landscape architecture, this integrated landscape brings together horticulture, architecture, ecology, and art to create the largest botanic garden devoted to Australian flora. It seeks, through the design of themed experiences, to inspire visitors to see our plants in new ways. The completion of the Australian Garden comes at a time when Botanic Gardens world-wide are questioning existing research and recreational paradigms and refocussing new on messages of landscape conservation and a renewed interest in meaningful visitor engagement. The Australian Garden engages visitors by expressing the love – hate relationship Australian’s have with their landscape. It is embraced or shunned by its people, loved for its sublime beauty or loathed as the cause of hardship. Artists and writers have often been inspired to design or write in response to subtle rhythms, flowing forms and tenacious flora of our landscape, whilst others have attempted to order the landscape, and conceive of it as humanly designed form.
As is the largest botanic garden devoted to the display of Australian flora, the Australian Garden is now host to a vast collection of plants for scientific, educative, and conservation purposes. It plays a vital role in helping scientists and the public understand the history, present day uses and what the future may hold for plants in natural and urban environments. It embraces the importance of biodiversity and our increased understanding of the need to protect species and ecosystems to safeguard the world’s biological heritage.
Read more : www.archdaily.com
Photographs: John Gollings, Ben Wrigley, Peter Hyatt
