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Editor Pick

Royal Botanic Gardens

  • January 9, 2007
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Parisbeba from New York , New York
Royal Botanic Gardens

Located behind the Opera house the Botanic Gardens & Domain was a fantastic treat! With great views of the Opera House and a jogging path this park is a wonderful location to just explore and get lost in.

The gardens are jammed packed with rare and exotic plants and flowers. Some of the more rarer plants can be found behind metal fences to keep individuals from stealing them. The "Wollemi Pine" is one of the most protected and endangered of the trees found here in the garden. In 1994 one Wollemi Pine was discovered in the Blue Mountain range after being thought extinct. You can find a few of the Wollemi Pines planted in the garden. The first tree was grown from a seedling.

One of the highlights to the garden for me were the "flying foxes". Flying foxes are fruit bats and there were hundreds of them flying in the garden during daylight time making these horrible screaking sounds. The park ranger informed us that our visit coincided with their mating season. (More info on my Botanic Gardens travelogue.) We also encountered many indigenous birds just going about their business.

There is so much to see and do in the Gardens. You can have a picnic on one of the many lawns. Throughout the gardens you will find signs encouraging you "touch trees and step on the grass".

From journal Flying Down Sydney Way

Tour of Royal Botanic Garden

  • September 13, 2005
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Tallulah_B from Brooklyn, New York
Tour of Royal Botanic Garden

The garden offers a free walking tour through the FREE botanic garden. The tour covers a little bit of Sydney history (how the park came to be, how the people of Sydney used it through the years) with a lot of botany and some wildlife information. The garden is full of fruit bats, cockatoos, and owls. My tour guide was less eager to talk about the animals than about the plants, but she begrudgingly answered animal questions too. The Wollemi pine, one of the oldest plants on earth was the highlight of the tour. The story of how the garden came to have this ancient and historic tree was a wonderful part of the tour. The park is also just a great place to sit and eat lunch. You can buy a sandwich from a nearby shop and just sit in the garden to eat it with all the office workers on their lunch break doing the same. Much like Central Park in New York City, the Royal Botanic Garden is an oasis of nature in a bustling city. For a lovely harbourside walk, you can start at Circular Quay walk around the Opera House and continue around the garden out to Mrs. Macquarrie's Chair (a rock formation jutting into the harbour). This is a great free activity to do on a sunny morning in Sydney.

From journal A Taste of Sydney, Australia

The Domain and Botanical Gardens

  • September 23, 2004
  • Rated 5 of 5 by cruvers from Nannup, Australia
Magnificent gardens, huge lawns and an overpriced cafe for your standard park fix, but also a great succulents garden, fern garden, rainforest area. A colony of bats roosts in the gardens and can be seen hanging from trees in the lower gardens. The pond is also interesting with its ducks, fish, eels and assorted other water birds, constantly fed by tourists.

From journal Sydney, Australia's capital of everything except p

Royal Botanical Gardens

  • March 19, 2004
  • Rated 5 of 5 by kimbis from Lansing, Michigan
Royal Botanical Gardens

The signs as you enter the park encourage you to "Please walk on the grass". The sulfer crested cockatoos are about as common as crows, but I didn't get bored with them. Between the occasional unusual stone outcroppings (including "Mrs. Macquarries Chair"), well maintained gardens and spectacular views of the harbor (including the bridge and the opera house) it's pretty easy to lose hours there.

Don't try to rush it, it's counter to the whole point of the place. Just plan on a long, liesurely ramble around. Just passing through on my way to someplace else I managed to misplace an hour just by stopping to see one more flower, one more bird, one more scenic view, etc. There is a posted closing time of 6:00pm, although that is frequently extended for concerts and other special events.

From journal Australia 2004 - Sydney

Editor Pick

Royal Botanic Gardens

  • March 8, 2004
  • Rated 4 of 5 by billmoy from Chicago, Illinois
Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens is a lush oasis of greenery that lies in the fabric of the city of Sydney. It is at the edge of Sydney Harbour near or surrounding landmarks like the Sydney Opera House, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Parliament House. The Domain is a popular recreation area just south of the Gardens, and it could be rationalized that it is an extension of them. While the Royal Botanic Gardens is the result of an organization founded to cultivate plants from Australia and elsewhere, the Domain is more of a city park utilized by locals as their collective front lawn.

The Royal Botanic Gardens includes the National Herbarium of New South Wales, the Sydney Tropical Centre, the Rose Garden, and the Palm Grove Centre. The latter area features a visitor center, the Gardens Shop, dining areas and public toilets. Free guided walks of the Royal Botanic Gardens start at the visitor center every morning. A "trackless train" tour operates in good weather conditions, but this tour costs a few dollars. Otherwise, feel free to wander aimlessly and enjoy a bit of nature within the urban jungle. Look around you to see the skyscrapers peering over the treetops. A walk through here is quite refreshing after a shower, as you may get the feel of a rainforest in a tropical area. Besides the multiplicity of flora, you may spot a strange bird or two tiptoeing on the lawns.

The Royal Botanic Gardens is accessible during daylight hours throughout the year. Unless there is some ticketed event, a visit here is free to most of the areas. The Domain is open all the time, though I am not sure you would want to saunter through here in the middle of the night.

Try to walk all the way to Mrs. Macquaries Point, which juts out into the water and offers some splendid views of Sydney. Look for the old rock formation nicknamed Mrs. Macquaries Chair, a spot named after the wife of the former governor who enjoyed this view but had fewer landmarks to gaze at back in the old days.

From journal Bill in Australia - SYDNEY

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