Conservatory, Geelong Botanic Gardens

Eastern Hill, on Corio Bay, was set aside in 1851 as the site of Geelong's botanic garden; a committee of management was appointed in 1852 and Daniel Bunce arrived as first curator in 1857. An Australian Garden History article (July 2020) dates the garden's first conservatory to 1859, followed by a "pit glasshouse" in 1860 and an aviary in 1864. His successor John Raddenberry, in post from 1872 to 1896, added an enormous timber-lattice fernery with a pond, demolished between 1945 and 1960 because it was falling into disrepair. The Victorian heritage register entry, taken from the 2002 Register of the National Estate, also lists a sunken glasshouse of the 1860s, a glasshouse of the 1870s rebuilt in 1957 and a glasshouse of the 1890s, and notes the loss of one of the original glasshouses.

By 1960 the gardens had nearly doubled in size and the AL Walter Conservatory had been built. The Florence E. Clarke Geranium Conservatory, bequeathed in 1972, was added for pelargoniums. In 2019, according to the same article, the "reconstructed Walter Conservatory" reopened together with a new visitor facility. The City describes the Conservatory open today as a restored glasshouse.

The City of Greater Geelong speaks, in an excerpt of its page, of a restored glasshouse providing a controlled environment for plants from around the world; neither the frame material nor the type of glazing is specified, and no architect is named. In OpenStreetMap the building named "Botanic Garden Public Conservatory" is drawn as a greenhouse, on a plan of about 28 m by 17 m, close to 460 m², with a recorded height of 5.4 m. These measurements come from the map, not from the managers.

The heritage register places the Geranium Conservatory where the garden's central axis turns from the formal beds towards the nursery and glasshouse area, and describes the 1960s north-west extension as a group including Australian plants, a conservatory, a rose garden, new entrances, a conifer area and a fern garden. The Conservatory therefore belongs to the twentieth-century part of the garden, distinct from the original Victorian garden, whose entry is marked by urns and a fountain.

The City of Greater Geelong presents the Conservatory as a controlled environment for plants from every continent, and a tourism site describes a lush collection of tropical plants there. A City post names heliconias, banana plants and a "bat plant" among the plants to see.

The Geranium Conservatory, according to the heritage register, houses the State's pelargonium collection; in 2016 the Friends counted around 1,000 pelargoniums held for conservation and research, many of them displayed in the Florence E. Clarke Conservatory.

The Conservatory stands in the twentieth-century part of the garden, with its broad lawns, specimen trees, tea house and new visitor facility. An undated post by the City of Greater Geelong announces it open 9am to 4pm on weekends, without saying about other days; the garden, run by the City, is free and can be visited only during its opening hours. In 2010 the Friends laid out a bed known as the Silver Border near the Conservatory to mark their twenty-fifth year.

The garden also has the rose garden, the 21st Century Garden opened in September 2002, the Market Square fountain moved here in 1912 and the 1916 Eastern Park rotunda. The garden is listed as of State significance on the Victorian heritage register.