The Garden
View from the Visitor Centre
About the Garden
The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah is Australia's premier cool-climate botanic garden.
The Garden is perfectly situated in the world heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains of New South Wales. With sweeping vistas over the mountains and more than 40,000 native, exotic and rare plants, the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden is a dream to visit at any time of year.
Since opening in 1987, the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden has seen more than 1 million visitors.
Autumn sequoias
The Garden covers 28 hectares on the summit of a basalt-capped peak. At 1000 metres above sea level, you'll find cool-climate plants from around the world. Some you may have never seen before, while others may grow in your own garden!
About the plants
Plants are grouped by geographical origin. This is unusual for a botanic garden and allows visitors to spot the similarities and differences between plants of each region. It's like a 'snapshot' of their evolution on different continents.
Crisp winter brilliance
Mild summer temperatures mean Mount Tomah is a perfect area to grow plants that thrive in cooler regions of the world. With an average January maximum temperature of just 24 degrees C, the Garden is a peaceful retreat from the summer heat.
Bright buds bursting. Blinding colours of summer. A golden carpet of fallen leaves. Elegant bare-branched trees. Each seasonal change at the Gardens brings a new panorama. What's blooming this month?
Formal Garden in late spring
Some rare and unusual plants
Berberidopsis corallina: This red-flowered vine from South America is a threatened species. Our plant, wild collected from southern Chile, finally flowered in 2012, after two wet years. See this intriguing vine at the base of the ramp from the roof of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Exhibition Centre.
Wollemi pine: The Wollemi Pine is one of the greatest botanical discoveries of our time. It was found in 1994, in a deep, narrow canyon of the rugged Wollemi National Park. The 'Dinosaur tree' was thought to be long extinct but was found growing just 150 kilometres from Sydney! It's rare, it's endangered, it's strange looking. Find out more about the Wollemi pine.
Proteas: They are hardly 'rare' but proteas are fascinating and beautiful plants. See our feature display below the Visitor Centre. The best time of the year to see the proteas in bloom is late autumn to winter. And if you like what you see, you can buy your own protea plant in the Garden Shop.
A cockatoo surveys the Garden
Meet the wildlife
The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden is home to over 100 species of birds, marsupials, lizards and insects. Mount Tomah provides a wonderful habitat and a rich source of floral nectar all year round.
The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage area contains at least 52 native mammal species, 265 bird species (33 per cent of the Australian total), 63 reptile species, 30 frogs and species of global significance, like platypus and echidna.
Fertile soil and a water supply
The top 100 metres of Blue Mountains Botanic Garden consists of a layer of basalt. This is a volcanic rock which weathers to form a rich acid clay loam that is more fertile than most Australian soils. Basalt has many fine vertical cracks, called columnar jointing, which form when the rock cools. These joints trap rainwater, forming a natural underground reservoir which provides a water supply for the Garden. The hexagonal basalt blocks that result from cracking are used in walls around the Garden.
