The Colac Botanic Gardens is a regional

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

, located at the corner of Fyans and Gellibrand streets, on the shores of

Lake Colac Lake Colac, a freshwater lake of the Western District Lakes, is located north of the Colac town centre in Victoria, Australia. A yacht club and rowing club are located adjacent to the lake's shore. During the summer months, water skiers have ac ...

Colac, Victoria Colac is a small city in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, approximately 150 kilometres south-west of Melbourne on the southern shore of Lake Colac. History For thousands of years clans of the Gulidjan people occupied the region o ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. Land was allocated in 1865, with the garden being established in 1868 by Daniel Bunce, and later remodelled in 1910 by

Melbourne Botanical Gardens Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria are botanic gardens across two sites–Melbourne and Cranbourne. Melbourne Gardens was founded in 1846 when land was reserved on the south side of the Yarra River for a new botanic garden. It extends across ...

director

William Guilfoyle William Robert Guilfoyle (8 December 1840 – 25 June 1912) was an English Landscape architecture, landscape gardener and botany, botanist in Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, acknowledged as the architect of the Royal Botanic Gardens, ...

. The Colac Botanic Gardens covers fifteen

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

s, and contains over a thousand specimens (more than any other provincial garden in Victoria). The garden hosts variations of trees such as bunya bunya pine (''

Araucaria bidwillii ''Araucaria bidwillii'', commonly known as the bunya pine and sometimes referred to as the false monkey puzzle tree, is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the plant family Araucariaceae. It is found naturally in south-east Queensland Austral ...

''), Black Matipo (''

Pittosporum tenuifolium ''Pittosporum tenuifolium'' is a small evergreen tree endemic to New Zealand – up to – commonly known as and black matipo, and by other Māori names and . Its small, very dark, reddish-purple flowers generally go unnoticed, and are scented ...

''), Firewheel Tree (''

Stenocarpus sinuatus ''Stenocarpus sinuatus'', known as the firewheel tree, is an Australian rainforest tree in the family Proteaceae. The range of natural distribution is in various rainforest types from the Nambucca River (30° S) in New South Wales to the Ather ...

''), Bird Plant (''Crotalaria agatiflora'') and Tecate Cypress (''

Cupressus forbesii ''Cupressus forbesii'', now reclassified by some as ''Hesperocyparis forbesii'', and with the common names Tecate cypress or Forbes' cypress, is a species of cypress native to southwestern North America. Distribution ''Cupressus forbesii'' i ...

''). Several trees in the garden have been placed on the Victorian Significant Tree Register. The gardens are listed on the

Victorian Heritage Register The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. H ...

References

Botanical gardens in Victoria (Australia) Colac, Victoria 1868 establishments in Australia {{Australia-garden-stub