Maranoa Gardens is located next to Beckett Park in Balwyn, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It is a fine collection of diverse plant species spread over 3.5 acres (1.4 ha). It was created in 1901 by a private individual, Mr. J. Watson. It featured Australian and New Zealand plants, which was unusual in that colonially influenced time in Australia, and may be seen as one of the many products of the nationalism that accompanied the Federation of Australia in 1901. Over the years the New Zealand plants have been removed. Camberwell Council purchased the gardens in 1922, doubled their size in the 1960s, and enlarged them again in the mid-1980s.

Maranoa Gardens is one of the few public gardens in Victoria dedicated to Australian plants, and it is considered to be one of the best. The central arboretum and lawn under trees area date from a time just after Mr Watson transferred ownership to Camberwell Council. Some of the older plants include an Angophora costata

Angophora costata

Angophora costata is a common woodland and forest tree of Eastern Australia and is known by a variety of names including smooth-barked apple, rose gum, rose apple or Sydney red gum. It grows primarily on sandstone soils, usually on headlands, plateaus or other elevated areas. A...

Smooth-barked Apple, planted in 1923 and a Stenocarpus sinuatus

Stenocarpus sinuatus

Stenocarpus sinuatus, known as the Firewheel Tree is an Australian rainforest tree in the Protea family. The range of natural distribution is in various rainforest types from the Nambucca River in New South Wales to the Atherton Tableland in tropical Queensland...

Queensland Firewheel Tree, planted in 1924.

Other areas of the gardens have been developed to simulate particular plant communities. In the dry sclerophyll

Sclerophyll

Sclerophyll is the term for a type of vegetation that has hard leaves and short internodes . The word comes from the Greek sclero and phyllon ....

 forest on the northern side are shrubs and smaller plants that grow well in dry, shady conditions. On the eastern side is a temperate woodland and heathland developed in 1986. The drainage in this area has been improved and low-growing plants such as Dampiera

Dampiera

Dampiera is a genus of plants in the Goodeniaceae family which are endemic to Australia occurring in all states. They are herbaceous plants or small shrubs which have blue or purple flowers with yellow centres. The genus is named for William Dampier, an English sea captain and scientific...

spp. and prostate wattles, Acacia

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

spp. are featured.

The light grey stony loam over compact mottled clay is poor and the topsoil sets hard when dry while it is soft when wet - and is thus suited to native plants.

A rockery developed in 1962 was rebuilt in 1987-1988 and displays plants that are normally very difficult to grow in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. Improvement of the drainage

Drainage

Drainage is the natural or artificial removal of surface and sub-surface water from an area. Many agricultural soils need drainage to improve production or to manage water supplies.-Early history:...

 and mulch

Mulch

In agriculture and gardening, is a protective cover placed over the soil to retain moisture, reduce erosion, provide nutrients, and suppress weed growth and seed germination. Mulching in gardens and landscaping mimics the leaf cover that is found on forest floors....

ing with crushed quartz has provided the conditions suitable for many species from Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 to thrive.

With some 5000 plants, most of which are named, Maranoa Gardens has been recognised through registration with the National Trust

National Trust of Australia

The Australian Council of National Trusts is the peak body for community-based, non-government organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's indigenous, natural and historic heritage....

as an important part of Australian gardening history. The gardens have inspired poetry, ecologists, boy scouts making botanical collections, adolescents pondering the meaning of life as well as, increasingly, the aged.