Bendigo Botanic Gardens, Garden for the Future

Built on the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung people.

The Bendigo Botanic Gardens’ Garden for the Future is an inspiring and sustainable landscape that provides diverse opportunities for learning about plants, horticulture, landscapes, botany, ecology, conservation and heritage. It is a place for the whole community to enjoy.

The brief for the Garden for the Future was extensive. The critical question for the Garden for the Future is how do you respond to the desire for a contemporary interpretation of a garden that can help us prepare for and embrace the future?

How do you capture the imagination of generations to come? How do you educate visitors and inspire the local community?

The Garden for the Future will aspire to be an internationally significant and important setting, one that can make an outstanding contribution to Bendigo, the state of Victoria and Australia. Inspiring future generations – an opportunity to connect important messages of sustainability, nature, flora and the environment with the children who will have a lifelong relationship to this place. We believe there can be a fabulous narrative around the site-specific geological theme “seams of life.”

The locally-specific pattern can elevate the garden to an artform and be used as a structure for the garden and become an iconic contribution to the city of Bendigo.
The main component of the gardens will host a vast display of planting from around the world, that is suited to this climate. The selected species will be artfully arranged, to showcase new ways of utilising possibly familiar plants. The centre of the Garden for the Future will contain the ‘Fun and Fantasy’ display of planting. An area that will showcase the culmination plants in a truly unique fashion.