ORIGINS

As early as the 1890’s the Ballarat Botanical Gardens has featured a collection of tuberous begonias. Tubers were imported from the famous English nursery Blackmore and Langdon, now a fourth-generation family nursey, in 1901 entering our collection via the online nursery quarantine facility.

Blackmore and Landgon once thought that 75 of their cultivars had been lost forever until a recent reconnection with the Ballarat Botanical Gardens revealed that they had been perpetuated in our collection here in Ballarat! These cultivars now considered rare, with some possibly not available anywhere else in the world.

Several Begonias including the TB Toop, TC Beaumount, Carol Wilkins, Sam Phillips, Kookaburra, City of Ballarat, and Eureka, have been named after Ballarat as a result of our City’s longstanding connection with begonias.

Whilst Ballarat no longer imports Begonia tubers, around half our current collection also contains cultivars from other breeders in England, as well as Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand and the USA. Proudly, one third of our collection originates from Australian breeders.