What would the site have looked like before the Gardens were established?
The site for the Gardens was first selected in 1828 by Charles Fraser, the Colonial Botanist, and Allan Cunningham, the King’s Botanist, as a food garden and botanic reserve for the fledgling settlement. At this time it was a wooded site with a small muddy mangrove creek running through it and large native trees such as Blue Gums (Eucalyptus tereticornis) and Crow’s Ash (Flindersia australis) and Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii).
