The Friends of Geelong Botanic Gardens are pleased to make available for sale, facsimile copies of the “Manual of Practical Gardening” published in 1837 by Daniel Bunce who later became the first curator of the Geelong Botanic Gardens.
Copies are available from the FGBG Office (telephone 52226053), and the Friends Teahouse at a GST inclusive cost of $27.95 (plus $3.50 for postal orders).
Taken from the introductory preface by Friends President Jayne Salmon
Daniel Bunce arrived in Hobart Town in 1833. In 1835 he leased ground already laid out for a nursery, renamed it the Denmark Hill Nursery and established a plant and seed business. Daniel had one of the earliest garden nurseries and possibly produced the first nursery catalogue in Australia. The catalogue included Australian indigenous plants.
In June 1837 he published the first issue of “A Manual of Practical Gardening adapted to the climate of Van Diemen’s Land” with garden advice for the month of July. “The Manual” was published in parts, one for each month of the year. When completed it was bound together and offered for sale.
“A Manual of Practical Gardening” became the first gardening book published in Tasmania and the third in Australia. It was the first Australian gardening book to deal with the flower garden as well as the fruit and vegetable garden.
The Denmark Hill Nursery went into receivership in 1839 and Daniel Bunce moved to Port Phillip where he led an adventurous life as an explorer with the aborigines and later with Ludwig Leichhardt. Daniel Bunce was appointed Curator of the Geelong Botanic Gardens in August 1857. The site was a treeless reserve of 200 acres on the eastern fringe of the town. The first Curator, a remarkable pioneering horticulturist, established strong foundations for a regional Botanic Garden recognized internationally today.
You can read more about Daniel Bunce in the July/September issue of the Friends newsletter Jubaea, which you can download at the newsletter page.