Over the Guilfoyle garden wall

Did you know the man behind Melbourne’s world-famous Royal Botanic Gardens also left his mark across our turf?

William Robert Guilfoyle, celebrated landscape gardener and designer, shaped not just the sweeping lawns and winding paths of Melbourne’s gardens, but the botanic gardens in Colac, Camperdown, Warrnambool and Hamilton.

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Guilfoyle was born in Chelsea, England, in 1840, and emigrated with his family to Australia as a child. 

By 1873 he was director of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, where he transformed the grounds into the picturesque, romantic landscape that remains today. 

Within six years his major landscaping works were complete, but he would spend the next three decades refining and enhancing his vision.

Guilfoyle’s eye for design soon extended beyond the city. In 1877, Warrnambool Council invited him to create a new layout for the city’s botanic gardens. 

A few years later, in 1880, he provided guidance for the Koroit Botanic Gardens, shaping its path network and choice of conifer tree plantings.

From 1881, Hamilton’s councillors commissioned Guilfoyle to prepare plans for the local  gardens, while in Camperdown he was called upon repeatedly throughout the 1880s to suggest improvements. 

His redesign of the Camperdown Botanic Gardens, submitted in 1910, continues to influence the site today.

Colac’s gardens also bear Guilfoyle’s signature. Originally designed in 1868 by Daniel Bunce, curator of Geelong Botanic Gardens, the site was later remodelled under Guilfoyle’s plans in 1910.

Header image credits: Australian National Herbarium and Colac Otway Shire Council