Image source: Australian National Botanic Gardens

Image source: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland (artist unknown)

William Robert Guilfoyle was born in Chelsea, England on 8 December 1840. His father moved his family to Sydney in 1853 and set up a nursery, first in Redfern and then in Double Bay. William became interested in botany and joined the South Sea islands voyage of HMS Challenger in 1868. He was appointed curator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens on 21 July 1873 on the dismissal of Ferdinand von Mueller. He completely re-modelled the gardens into sweeping lawns, lakes, vistas and curving pathways , making it far more popular than the previous systematic botanical collection.

He was married to Alice and had one child, William James. He wrote several books on botany, and designed several regional botanic gardens as well as private gardens. He retired to Jolimont, Melbourne in 1909 and died on 25 June 1912. He is buried in the Chelsea Cemetery, Melbourne.

Text source: Australian Dictionary of Biography

Suggested additional reading: "Clearings:Six Colonial Gardeners and Their Landscapes", by Paul Fox (Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2004).