1. Begonia Garden
These magnificent plants are grown worldwide in the tropics and subtropics for both flowers and foliage. Learn about their origins and about how to grow them. Sponsored by the Begonia Society of NSW.

2. Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters
Discover the Gardens' rich Aboriginal heritage. Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters is a garden display that tells the story of the Cadigal people, the traditional Aboriginal owners of the Sydney city area, and features plants that originally grew on the site of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

3.Government House Grounds
The formal grounds of garden displays, manicured lawns and larger scale shrub plantings complement the heritage context of Government House. Open 10 am to 4 pm every day except Good Friday and Christmas Day, and for special functions.

4. Herb Garden
Herbs from around the world used for a wide variety of purposes – culinary, medicinal and aromatic – are on display here. A sensory fountain and sundial modelled on the celestial sphere are also features.

5. HSBC Oriental Garden
Wild and cultivated plants from warm-temperate and sub-tropical areas of China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan and Bhutan - many never before cultivated in Australia - thrive in an Orientally inspired landscaped setting.

6. Rainforest Walk
Take a detour off the main path to walk through the rainforest. See Australian plants that play a critical role in sustaining the quality of our environment — half the world’s species of plants and animals and many indigenous peoples call rainforests home.

7. Mrs Macquaries Bushland Walk
Along this path by Woolloomooloo Bay, our horticulturists have re-created a patch of Sydney’s bushland using seed and cuttings from the few small patches of remnant bush along the Harbour’s southern foreshores. This is the way Mrs Macquarie may have seen it in 1816 on her way to her ‘Chair’ at the Point.

8. Old Mill Garden & Greenway Terrace
See an informal ‘jigsaw’ arrangement of ornamental grasses, groundcovers and lawn turfs in the Old Mill Garden, and a blend of old and new subtropical plants in the Greenway Terrace.

9. Palm Grove
Established in 1862, this cool summer haven is one of the world’s finest collections of palms. Several of the Royal Botanic Gardens’ oldest trees, grown from wild plants collected in the 1820s and 1850s, live here.

10. Pioneer Garden
A sunken garden built in 1938 during the sesquicentenary of European settlement in Australia. In memory of the pioneer men and women at the spot where the central dome of the old Garden Palace had been.

11. Rare and Threatened Plants Garden
This provocative display features plants from around the world that are rare or on the brink of extinction! Learn what you can do to save their environment - before its too late!

12. Australian Native Rockery
A magnificent rockery consisting mostly of spring-flowering Australian native plants. The varieties of native plants showcased here — waratahs, kangaroo paws, flannel flowers, gymea lilies, grevilleas and paper daisies — represent only a fraction of the vast range of Australian native plants.

13. Palace Rose Garden
The new Palace Rose Garden opened 28 November 2006. Click here for more information on the Palace Rose Garden!

14. Succulent Garden
Desert landscapes are a mosaic of colours, shapes and textures. This garden provides a rare opportunity to experience and closely examine the bizarre shapes of arid-adapted plants.

15. Sydney Fernery
Find out where ferns grow, what makes them different from other plants, and how ancient some of them are. Open 9 am to 4.30 pm daily.

16. Sydney Tropical Centre
See, smell and touch exotic plants from misty mountains and lowland forest. Discover plants from tropical ecosystems. On permanent display at the Sydney Tropical Centre are weird and colourful heliconias, bat flowers, orchids, jade plants and many other bizarre plants. They are mostly rare species collected from steamy high altitudes and from lowland tropical areas around the world.

It's not just the plants which are stunning, the Sydney Tropical Centre is architecturally stunning too. A glass Pyramid, one of the first of its kind in the world, sits beside a series of arc shaped glasshouses.  Each section has automatic heating and cooling systems to maintain the constant temperature and humidity in which its resident plants thrive.

As well as the exotic specimens the tropical collection at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens features Australian plants originating from monsoonal woodlands in the north of the continent and from the rainforests of the north east coast and ranges.

When the Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) flowered for the first time in Sydney in October 2004, the Sydney Tropical Centre was visited by 16,000 people in less than one week.

In December 2005 a fabulous new attraction opened at the Sydney Tropical Centre - a display of orchids and carnivorous plants titled 'Sex and Death'.  The curator of the exhibition says that it tells the story of an orchid’s life cycle from procreation to extinction. Visitors to the Sydney Tropical Centre will be treated to displays of breathtakingly beautiful, rarely seen orchids and carnivorous plants. These native and exotic blooms represent the four stages of the life cycle: seduction, co-operation, deception and death.

• The 'Seduction' display will feature orchid hybrids – the plants that most people think of as typical orchids – Cymbidium, Phalaenopsis and Cattleyas.
• 'Co-operation' will showcase orchid species that offer tangible rewards to their pollinators.  This group includes some of the most spectacular orchids still found in the wild Coryanthes.
• The orchid species which mimic food sources are the highlight of the 'Deception' display -  Phalaenopsis, Cymbidium, Vanda, and many of the Dendrobiums.
• The 'Death' exhibit introduces carnivorous plants, sinister looking plants adapted to boggy nutrient poor soils - Dionaea muscipula.

Sex and Death will take over the Arc glasshouses for 3 years from 1 December 2005. On any day you can take the walkways and elevated platforms inside the Sydney Tropical Centre to see and smell orchids at close quarters. The exhibition promises 100 orchids in bloom every day.

The Sydney Tropical Centre is open from 10 am to 4 pm daily except Christmas day and Good Friday (but please note that due to maintenance and other reasons, the Tropical Centre may occasionally be closed - so if you are planning a visit, please phone the Tropical Centre on 9231 8104).  Entry fee: Family $11, Adult $5.50, Children $3.30, Concession/Student/Senior all $4.40, Friends free.

17. Wollemi Pine
This ancient tree is one of the world's rarest plants with only three stands of adult trees growing in New South Wales' Blue Mountains. See the first specimen ever planted out! Click here for more information.