Our Palm Garden features more than 800 rare, endangered and uncommon palms from around the world.
A large portion of these palms come from Madagascar, Hawaii and the Oceanic region. Smaller selections are also included from Australia, South and North America, and China.
Many of these palms are endangered in their natural habitats because of land clearing, soil erosion, development, or the effects of other introduced plants and animals.
Lots of the palms in our collection are dioecious, which means that individual plants produce only male or female flowers. We’ve planted male and female plants of the same species close together to increase the chance they’ll be able to produce seeds. We hope that by doing this, we can share seeds with other botanical institutions to help spread and preserve these rare plants.
The Palm Garden is our newest collection, and was established between 2013 and 2015, before opening in October 2015.
This collection was created with the generous support of local philanthropist and palm collector, Mr Colin Wilson. Mr Wilson is a member of the Palm and Cycad Society of Australia. He has a vision for ensuring private collections of rare and endangered palms are moved to botanic gardens to ensure their long term survival. Additional project funding to set up the palm collection was provided by the Friends of Wollongong Botanic Garden.
Location
The Palm Garden is in the north-east corner of Wollongong Botanic Garden, near the Madoline Street entry.
Map reference R-12 on our Garden Map PDF, 76 KB