Meet ‘the laughing curator’ whose gardens helped Brisbane breathe easier

Ross McKinnon has devoted a lifetime to his love of horticulture.And for him, that love affair all started in Brisbane in 1972 at the City Botanic Gardens.

“Those gardens are very different from what they are today,” he says.

“You could see the City Hall clock tower from the gardens. The only thing taller was the brand-new Suncorp (then SGIO) building, and the Captain Cook bridge was just being built.”

Located in the heart of Brisbane, City Botanic Gardens is Queensland’s oldest heritage garden, established in 1855.

Steeped in Brisbane history, the riverside park spans 18ha and 1.2km of river frontage. It’s home to heritage structures, plus exotic and native plants and trees.

Working at City Botanic Gardens was an eye-opening experience for Ross as a young gardener from Adelaide.

“Twenty to 100 homeless people slept rough every night,” he remembers.

“Overnight violence and worse were simply not reported after the bell rang and the gates closed.

“There were 12 suicides in the City Botanic Gardens in my first year.”

Two years later, in 1974, Ross was second-in-charge when he witnessed the devastation caused by floods.

“On Sunday of the 1974 Australia Day long weekend, I phoned those few staff who had phones to come in to work,” he recalls.

“We all stripped off to our shorts and moved what was, at the time, the world’s largest potted cacti and succulent collection.

“The gardens were coated in about 10cm of chemically charged mud. In some places, the flood rose to a depth of over 3m.”

The flood caused massive damage to the living collections and destroyed extensive plant records. Whole plant collections were destroyed, and the gardens were closed for 10 weeks.

The continual flooding of the gardens became the catalyst for controversial new botanic gardens to be built at the base of Mount Coot-tha.

The lord mayor at the time, Clem Jones, saw the huge tourist potential of the new botanic gardens, which are now the city’s second-largest tourist attraction.

However, public comment at the time was that the site was too far from the CBD and too hilly.

Ross says some people felt the soil was too stony and filled with the wrong clay.

Yet, spanning 56ha, the Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coot-tha has become Queensland’s premier subtropical botanic garden.

“There was amazing growth, even on the steepest slopes, which can be attributed to the heavy minerally sustaining soils,” he says.

Ross helped oversee the development of the Mt Coot-tha gardens since their inception. But when he first looked over the site, it was virtually just a cleared paddock.

“It was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. We have been filling in the pieces ever since,” he quips.

Ross says the construction of the new gardens at suburban Mt Coot-tha was a team effort.

“We all knew what we were creating, and it was important work that we would be proud to tell our great-grandchildren that we had been a part of something far bigger than ourselves,” he says.

In 1982, Ross became the curator-in-charge of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens – a role he held until 2014.

During his curatorship, he was most proud of the doubling in size of the gardens from about 25 to 52ha, with the addition of the 25-hectare Australian Native Plants Gardens.

“This is the largest collection of Australian native rainforest trees in the world, collected primarily from seeds from Far North Queensland,” he says.

Ross’s other passion was to make the gardens self-sustaining.

“We harvest all the water on the site, which goes into our lakes and then gets pumped onto our gardens,” he says, proudly.

“We have now been off mains water since 2005.”

His vision was always to create an educational institution.

Ross helped establish Lessons in the Gardens and the volunteer guides.

The Lessons facilitated the employment of eight education officers in a self-funded program for preschoolers to university botany students.

Ross says the program has been a success, with 120 volunteers helping international, interstate, Queensland and Brisbane residents better understand the Brisbane Botanic Gardens.

City Botanic Gardens and Botanic Gardens Mount Coot-tha are only a part of the capital’s major green spaces, which also include the Roma Street Parkland and New Farm Park.

Opened in 2001, Brisbane’s 16ha Roma Street Parkland transformed a former industrial railway yard into a premier inner-city garden.

Historically, the site served as an Indigenous meeting place, a 19th-century market and a World War II base before being revitalised as a modern public park featuring themed gardens and public art.

Roma Street Parkland has an open-air amphitheatre that regularly hosts outdoor cinema screenings, along with film festivals and other activities during the summer months.

New Farm Park, established in 1914 and officially opened in 1919, is a 15ha Heritage-Listed city treasure, located on a bend of the Brisbane River.

Originally a penal colony farm in 1827 and later a racecourse, it was converted into a public park to enhance urban beauty, featuring beloved rose gardens, blooming jacarandas in spring and a sprawling playground.

In retirement, Ross can look back on a proud contribution to the state’s horticulture. And he remains a champion of public open spaces for all to enjoy.

In 2025, he became vocal in opposition to the proposed Olympic stadium in Victoria Park.

“To contemplate losing another of Brisbane’s green iconic spaces is an outrage: an abomination that will reverberate around the world – the desecration of public open space,” he says.

“Victoria Park is a highly valued green reserve in suburbia for hospital patients and the public alike.

“The gardens are the lungs of the city – sometimes the closest urban kids come to the real world.”

The Brisbane Botanic Gardens Mt Coot-tha are open from 8am-6pm (September to March) and 8am-5pm (April to August). City Botanic Gardens and Roma Street Parkland are open 24 hours. New Farm Park is open 8.30am-11pm daily.

fast facts

• On Australia Day 1999, Ross was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Australia for Outstanding Services to Horticulture.
• In 2005, he was awarded the inaugural Vitae Lampada (The Burning Torch of Life) medal for his role as consultant to the Queensland Poison Information Centre and the help he gave the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health.
• In 2019, he was handed the Japanese government’s high honour: the Order of the Rising Sun for his lifetime work with and for the people of Japan.
• Ross is a patron, life or honorary member of 32 horticultural organisations.

PORTRAIT OF AN ACCOMPLISHED GREEN THUMB

The Laughing Curator portrait is by Janelle Hatherly, of the Royal Art Society of NSW.

Hatherly is a professional educator and writer who, since retiring from full-time employment in 2012, has committed her energies to a career as an artist.

The portrait of Ross McKinnon was displayed in the Brisbane Portrait Gallery following judging in the prestigious Brisbane Portrait Prize.

Painting permitted for publication by Janelle Hatherly