Olive Pink Botanic Garden, Desert botanical garden in Alice Springs, Australia.
Olive Pink Botanic Garden covers 16 hectares of Crown Land east of the Todd River, on the southern edge of Alice Springs' central business district. Olive Pink and her Warlpiri assistant gardeners planted an eclectic collection of central Australian trees and shrubs, cacti, garden flowers and introduced trees around Home Hut. Networks of walking tracks, a visitor centre, plantings of mulga and red gums, and a created waterhole and sand dune habitat followed after 1975.
Anthropologist Olive Pink founded this garden in 1956 as the Australian Arid Regions Nature Reserve to protect desert plant species. Her work established one of the first conservation areas dedicated to preserving Central Australian flora.
The garden's name honours Olive Muriel Pink, an anthropologist, artist and campaigner for Aboriginal social justice who was its founder and first honorary curator. Anne Boyd's orchestral work Olive Pink's Garden (2017) drew inspiration from the site, and Boyd's 2022 opera Olive Pink was premiered in the garden itself.
The garden lies on Crown Land east of the Todd River, at the southern edge of Alice Springs' central business district, and is open to the public throughout the year. Walking tracks laid out after 1975 link the visitor centre, the waterhole and sand dune habitat, and plantings of mulga and red gums.
The garden was listed on the Register of the National Estate on 30 May 1995 and on the Northern Territory Heritage Register on 18 March 2009, citing its links to Olive Pink as anthropologist, campaigner for Aboriginal social justice, artist and gardener. Anne Boyd's opera Olive Pink was premiered in the garden in 2022.
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