Ballarat Council plans drastic changes to Buninyong Botanic Gardens - the  permanent removal of 100 trees.   Save Our Gong & Gardens and Friends of Buninyong Botanic Gardens oppose this. Tenders are out & Council will move on this early next year. We need your help!

This is one of the earliest Botanic Gardens in Victoria, known & loved for its quiet beauty, old trees & its ‘wilder’ half, a shallow lake - The Gong.  Between the two sections of the Gardens is an embankment, formed to create a lake from what was springs & wetlands. The whole area is State Heritage Registered.

Despite there never having been an incident, our Council has decided that the embankment could fail, causing flooding.  Next year it will move to permanently remove all trees from both sides of the embankment, widen & raise the road on top. On the lake side a dense bank of willows provides shelter & habitat for the many waterfowl and fish.  The Council’s plan is to replace this with a wall of rock, and only grass, rocks and knee-high shrubs on the other side.  

This will destroy the beauty & habitat of this area, & impact on the use of the Gardens as a popular venue for weddings, family and community gatherings, Shakespeare in the park etc.  Without the trees the Gardens will have the constant sight and sound of vehicles travelling over the Cornish Street embankment.  Its peace will be lost.

In 2014 the willows were identified as heritage plantings and marked “to be retained”.  A recent Council's report warned them, “Reconstruction of a new dam wall will have detrimental impacts on the cultural heritage significance of Buninyong Botanic Gardens”.

The Council is applying recommendations intended for much larger dams, that trees should not be planted on “dam walls”. For five years it has ignored the community, and refused to look at any alternative, other than to completely drain the Gong.  We know there are cheaper, better solutions.

The Friends of the Gardens opposed the Council plan from the start, to no avail.  They have commissioned a report, written by engineering, landscape and waterways experts, to present to Heritage Victoria, which must approve Council's final plan.  It includes several alternative proposals to alleviate any possible risk.

Instead of creating a bare wasteland, the biodiversity of the lake could be enhanced, linking it with Woowookarung Regional Park and a corridor of other parks.  The weedy eastern side of the Gong where blackberries and willows are taking over, needs action.  The local community, Primary School and Wadawurrung peoples could help develop wetlands, & indigenous  plantings.  Projects like this would unite us in creating a much-improved environment for residents, visitors, walking and fishing. 

Council's own plan - 

 

 

 

The Gong as it is today.

 

Wall of Strawberry Trees etc on the west of the bank - all to go.