Willoughby, Sharon2020-10-222020-10-22b71499842http://hdl.handle.net/1885/212859The Australian Garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne, an annex of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne was first conceived in the 1930s. Land to create the gardens was purchased in the 1970s and the site opened to the public in the 1980s. The final and second stage of the Australian Garden was completed in 2012. Traditionally garden histories have concentrated on garden designers, head gardeners or directors as the sole actors in the exploration of the history of gardens or gardening. In contrast this thesis argues that a much richer and deeper history can be told by exploring the garden through the lens of environmental history, where the landscape and soils are agents, along with human actors. This is not a 76-year story of a garden in isolation. It tells the millennial story of the whole garden landscape across deep time. A botanic garden, its staff, visitors, plants, animals, soil, climate and designers all are shaped by a matrix of relationships that are temporal, ecological and cultural. The American environmental historian William Cronon wrote, "This creates "a theoretical vocabulary in which plants animals, soil, climate and other nonhuman actors become the co-actors and co-determinants' of this history". This thesis reads the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne as a cultural document. The garden is a living palimpsest that reveals the contribution of gardening to the Australian landscape and to the development of a sense of place in a particular location. Like other cultural artifacts, a botanic garden reflects the concerns of its times and the human aspirations for its future. It can be read through a number of different lenses personal, political, environmental, scientific, aesthetic, economic and social, and this thesis brings these all together, spanning geological and human time. The Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne are explored through a variety of sources: the archive of key documents and plans, the recollections and writings of staff, volunteers, philanthropists and contractors and the body of academic and practitioner discourse on botanic gardens and gardening in Australia. This thesis is enriched by my own long practice of interpreting the landscape for the visiting community. In this way this work brings together the dialogue of research and practice. A botanic garden is both a palimpsest and a prism refracting and reflecting back to us many layers of meaning, illuminating the environmental sensibilities of the times in which it was created. Gardens are not mere mirrors of society. They can act as engines for future change in the landscape. The Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne has a particular role in exploring future Australian landscapes, urban and wild. Many different possible futures have been envisaged over the eight decades of its history, and these reflect changing Australian sensibilities about gardens and the environment.en-AU202010.25911/5f9fd2876cecb