Queens Gardens, Townsville, Botanical garden in Townsville, Australia.

Queens Gardens is a botanical garden in Townsville with formal beds, open lawns, and tropical trees positioned near the granite cliffs of Castle Hill. The space includes walking paths, gazebos, and planted areas arranged across the terrain.

Queens Gardens began as the 100-acre Botanical Gardens Reserve, proclaimed on 14 June 1870, where exotic species such as cocoa, African oil palms and mangoes were trialled. It was reduced to 10 acres through excisions for a grammar school, gaol, sports grounds and a bowling club, and in 1959 Alan Wilson redesigned the remnant.

The gardens display tropical plants that settlers once collected and studied, showing how 19th-century Europeans approached the local landscape. The formal layout reflects gardening ideas that were popular back then.

You can enter through several access points and find picnic areas, playgrounds, and shaded gazebos throughout the grounds. The walking paths are easy to navigate, allowing visitors to explore at their own pace.

Some of the black bean trees (Castanospermum australe) and hoop pines (Araucaria cunninghamii) planted when the reserve was gazetted in 1870 still grow here, and may be the oldest cultivated specimens of their kind in Australia.