Living Collection

Botanic Gardens of Sydney has an extensive Living Collection across three gardens and The Domain Sydney, blooming with history, scientific importance and wonder.

Grove of different species of Palm trees, with orange flowering cliveas growing in the undercanopy

Spanning our three Gardens, The Domain Sydney and The Australian Plantbank, our sites house an extraordinary Living Collection comprised of wild-sourced, thriving plant families and ecosystems that define the beauty of the Botanic Gardens and serve as an invaluable resource for conservation, research, and education.

Featuring over 60,000 plant species from Australia and across the globe, each Garden has unique and significant plant families which weave together to create a stunning and dynamic botanical tapestry and ecosystems for visitors and researchers alike.

Our 20-year Living Collections Strategy is fundamental to how Botanic Gardens of Sydney understands and curates its remarkable living collections. It will shape the maturity, diversity, and direction of the living collections for future generations.

Read the Living Collections Strategy

Living Collection at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is home to over 8,900 international plant species, including rare and endangered species. With one of the largest collections of Australian native plants, featuring over 6,000 species and cultivars, the Garden is a treasure trove of botanical diversity.

This collection includes palms, orchids, cycads, ferns, and succulents, with new species added regularly to keep the collection exciting and diverse for visitors and researchers alike.

See Sydney highlights

Living Collection at the Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan

The Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan hosts our largest living collection of over 20,000 Australian plants, including significant displays of Australian rainforest plants, heathland plants, dryland plants, and an extensive collection of eucalypts. The Garden is home to the award-winning Connections Garden, which showcases the relationship between plants and people in Australia's Indigenous culture and the stunning Australian PlantBank and National Herbarium of New South Wales, a world-class facility for plant conservation research and seed banking.

See Mount Annan highlights

Living Collection at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah

The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden Mount Tomah has an incredible collection of over 21,000 global species, focusing on cool-climate plants from the Southern Hemisphere. The Garden's collection includes over 900 species of plants from the Blue Mountains region, including many rare and endangered species. It's also the only public display of the Wollemi pine, a species considered extinct until its rediscovery in 1994.

See Mount Tomah highlights