William Robert Guilfoyle was an English landscape gardener and botanist in Victoria, Australia, acknowledged as the architect of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne and was responsible for the design of many parks and gardens in Melbourne and regional Victoria.
17 Facts About William Guilfoyle
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Later after arriving, Michael William Guilfoyle established William Guilfoyle's Exotic Nursery in Double Bay on land owned by Thomas Sutcliffe Mort.
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William Guilfoyle was privately educated at Lyndhurst College, Glebe where he received botanical instruction by William Woolls, William Sharp MacLeay and John MacGillivray, who all encouraged him to follow in his father's career.
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In 1868 William Guilfoyle was appointed to the scientific staff of HMS Challenger that travelled around the Pacific Ocean.
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William Guilfoyle recorded the voyage with a series of watercolour sketches and a detailed account in the Sydney Mail.
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William Guilfoyle settled in the Tweed River valley where he grew tobacco and sugar cane and first met the noted German botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller.
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Mueller's opinion changed when William Guilfoyle was appointed to take his place as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne on 21 July 1873.
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William Guilfoyle accused Guilfoyle of being a "nurseryman [with] no claims to scientific knowledge whatever" and of getting the job due to being related to the wife of the responsible Minister.
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William Guilfoyle set about creating the Gardens' world-famous "picturesque" landscape style.
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The swamp and lagoon were separated from the Yarra River under the direction of Carlo Catani, a civil engineer with the Public Works Department, allowing William Guilfoyle to create the chain of ornamental lakes further adding to the beauty of the gardens.
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William Guilfoyle established an extensive medicinal garden in the 1880s at the Gardens and opened a Museum of Economic Botany and Plant Products in 1892.
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In 1902 William Guilfoyle transformed the ornamental pond in the Treasury Gardens into a Japanese Garden, however the garden was demolished after the Second World War.
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Shortly after completing the major landscaping of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne in 1879, William Guilfoyle designed several Botanic gardens in regional Victorian towns:.
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The Parliament House Gardens, designed by William Guilfoyle, have restricted access and are used by parliamentarians and guests, and for official garden parties.
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William Guilfoyle wrote extensively for the Bankers' Magazine of Australasia, the Victorian Naturalist, and two guide books to the Melbourne Botanic Gardens.
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William Guilfoyle wrote on Australian plants, including Australian Plants Suitable for Gardens, Parks, Timber Reserves etc.
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William Guilfoyle retired from landscape design in 1909, living at Chatsworth in Jolimont Road, Jolimont and died on 25 June 1912.