Box Garden
This section of the Eucalypt Walk was designed to display a wide range of tenacious and ornamental, low growing wildflowers and rockery plants. This approach has been refined and the Box Garden now supports two concepts; the top layer of dominant box eucalypts, the signature trees for this garden, and an understory dedicated to the highly significant flora of the Grampians region, an extensive plant display collected by the horticulture team over several field trips.
- Many of these wild collected species are listed as threatened, enhancing the conservation value of this collection.
- One of the most bio-diverse regions of Victoria, the Grampians National Park (Gariwerd) is home to one third of the state’s flora and is often called the ‘Garden of Victoria’.
- Box eucalypts all share the typical hard bark composed of short, tightly-held fibres.
Notes from the Curator
Mathieu Lascostes
Home to over 1000 different species, the Grampians National Park provides sanctuary to 98 threatened plants, many of which are found nowhere else in Victoria. This Grampians collection is developed in close partnership with the WAMA project (Wildlife Art Museum of Australia) in Halls Gap, a great opportunity for both institutions to develop a coordinated multi-site conservation collection of the species at risk of extinction. Field trips are regularly organised by the Cranbourne horticulture team to collect plant material which is then propagated in our nursery. The field collection data and a sample specimen are then sent to the National Herbarium in Melbourne to be appropriately examined and catalogued.