Not all parks get built in a year. The Australian Botanic Gardens Shepparton is still in its infancy after twenty. It’s slow growth, but growth well-fuelled by community power, the project’s nature as a botanic garden, strategic moves over many years, and some right-place-right-time luck.
In Yorta Yorta country and on the Goulburn River, Shepparton has a population of 60,000 and is a regional capital and irrigated food bowl. The story of its botanic gardens begins back when Jeff Kennett was premier of Victoria (1992–1999). Greater Shepparton City Council was selling a large landscaped block as part of the state’s asset divestment drive. Opposing the sale, locals proposed a botanic garden. The eventual sale of the land strengthened this botanic gardens advocacy group and one member, Jenny Houlihan, ran for council, was elected in 2005, became mayor two weeks later and for six years argued for the creation of a botanic garden. When she finally got the numbers on the council, the CEO took her out to Shepparton Tip.
Shepparton Tip had been a towering and obscene pile of
