Botantic gardens are art galleries of plants. Here’s what you can learn

It’s a question that has been put to Professor Tim Entwisle several times before and so he was at the ready when one of the people taking a tour of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens recently asked him why – given all the environmental crises we face – these 38 hectares of inner city space weren’t being “taken back to nature”.

Entwisle’s career has spanned more than 40 years with stints as executive director of the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust in Sydney and director of conservation, living collections and estates at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, so he has a few thoughts on the matter.

“Couldn’t we convert them to the sort of vegetation that once grew beside the Yarra River?” this visitor asked baldly.

“Interesting question,” Entwisle replied. “I would first remove the MCG or the NGV and put nature back there. Why is it that this is the space that has to be converted back to nature?”

For as long as there have been cities, people have looked at their areas of open green as opportunities for something else. Neither public parks nor gardens, or botanic gardens, have been immune. They are all sometimes seen as being ripe for change.

But these spaces are not just blank canvases and, as Entwisle prepares to leave his post as director and chief executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, he is especially vocal about why botanic gardens should be kept as botanic gardens.

Over the more than 10 years he has been in the job he has made no bones about the fact that these landscapes are as carefully curated as an art gallery. They are not bush or forest or anything wild and weedy. They are fenced off and unashamedly nurtured and manicured. They are carefully curated collections. That is their very point.

While both climate change and the pandemic have fostered a growing desire for spaces that are less about control and more about natural rhythms, Entwisle, who leaves the gardens next month, has been steadfast in his belief that botanic gardens can help drive societal change.

Both the Melbourne and Cranbourne ones contain a staggering diversity of plants and are places of education, research and conservation as well as of relaxation, healing and solace. As any gardener will tell you they are also straight-up great sources of ideas.