The tip of the spike of land known as Meanjin was a farm from the 1820s, when convicts began to plant crops to feed the penal settlement.

In 1855, the land now known as Gardens Point was declared a botanic reserve. Walter Hill was appointed the Curator of the Gardens and requested by the Government to procure rare and valuable plants. He began a program of importing, planting and trialling botanical species in the Brisbane soil and climate.

Walter Hill introduced some significant species through the Gardens in the 1850s and 1860s, including the country’s first mahogany and jacaranda trees. Imported and exotic plants sit alongside native vegetation in the Gardens today. Lush mangroves line the circumference, and the large blue gums that grow tall along the river’s edge have been there for millennia.

The City Botanic Gardens have long been a subject for artists, including Gwendolyn Grant whose painting Evening, Brisbane Botanical Gardens (c1930s) depicts a silhouetted figure passing behind the Albert Street entrance gates at night. In recent years artists have engaged with the Gardens in new ways through activations such as Botanica: Contemporary Art Outside festival and the Riverstage, which hosts performers from around the world.