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| The Cool Climate
Garden Situated at an altitude of over 1000
metres in the northern Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the Mount Tomah Botanic
Garden was established as the cool-climate garden of the Royal Botanic Gardens
Sydney. | | It was opened
to the public in 1987 and is already home to over 5000 species of plants from
the cooler parts of the world. Many of these have been collected by staff of the
Royal Botanic Gardens in the wild and have not previously been grown in Australia.
Areas visited include South America, Southeast Asia, China, Africa, Papua New
Guinea, New Zealand and the alpine regions of Australia, special emphasis being
placed on plants of the southern hemisphere. | 
| Protea neriifolia, first
collected in South Africa in 1597 | |
| Geographical Grouping The
Mount Tomah garden is one of the few botanic gardens where plants have been grouped
according to their geographical origin. This allows the visitor to see both the
similarities and differences between the plants of each region, and thus to learn
something of the evolution of the floras of the different continents. |
| Vestia foetida, a Chilean
shrub belonging to the potato family | | A
walk round this 28 hectare garden takes you past the rhododendrons of the Himalayas
and western China, the southern beeches of Australia, New Zealand and Chile, the
giant lobelias of Mount Kenya, the proteas of South Africa, and the conifers of
Europe and North America, to name but a few. As well
there is also an impressive collection of cool-climate garden plants. These have
been arranged in traditional fashion, as in the Formal Garden and Residence Garden.
All of this has been established on an impressive site with panoramic views over
the mountains to the north, making it an ideal place to learn about and enjoy
the beauty of plants from the principal montane regions of the world. |
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