Wurundjeri Biik Baan

Story by Karen Sutherland

This indigenous garden, with a focus on the significance of water, was created for the 2025 Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show.

Water was the theme of indigenous garden Wurundjeri Biik Baan, or Wurundjeri Land Water, created by the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation with Andrew Laidlaw, the landscape architect at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, and their landscape design and nursery industry partners. The garden was created for the 2025 Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, with the focus on the significance of water to Melbourne’s First Peoples. In Woi-wurrung language, baan means water and biik means land or country.

Design of the garden

Water courses were created, and a swarm of eels lay across the watered landscape, their presence indicating the change of seasons. Other details included freshwater mussels emerging from drying clay pans, shell middens and strewn seaweeds. A collection of local native plants created an immersive experience, with traditional birds made from umbrellas.

The garden plan:

The plan for indigenous garden Wurundjeri Biik Baan.

Native plants included:

nardoo (Marsilea drummondii)
woodland swamp daisy (Brachyscome basaltica var. gracilis)
lemon beauty heads (Calocephalus citreus)
pig face (Carpobrotus rossii)
native iris (Patersonia occidentalis)
rounded noon-flower (Disphyma crassifolium subsp. clavellatum)
coastal saltbush (Atriplex cinerea) and
silver banksia (Banksia marginata)

The partners involved in creating the garden were:

Read about other gardens that were created for the 2025 Melbourne International Flower and Garden show in our Early Winter issue (OG 157). Head here to get a copy delivered to your door.