Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria are botanic gardens across two sites - Melbourne and Cranbourne. Melbourne Gardens was founded in 1846 when land was reserved on the south side of the Yarra River for a new botanic garden. It extends across 38 hectares (94 acres) that slope to the river with trees, garden beds, lakes and lawns. It displays almost 50,000 individual plants representing 8,500 different species. These are displayed in 30 living plant collections.