Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne

We finally got ourselves to the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne. This is solely an Australian garden. 

The gardens themselves are easily walkable but taking the hop-on hop-off bus is worthwhile for getting your bearings and to listen to the commentary about the gardens. Visiting in winter meant we missed out on seeing the flowering plants but we certainly enjoyed the quietness of the low season. 

Here's the desert inspired garden looking towards the visitor centre, surely something different!

Here's my sketch in progress of the desert garden from the visitor centre. The sketch was touched up at home to get the earth tones right though on site the sands seemed to change colour depending on the sun.

I was trying out my newish Sailor fude pen (40 degree nib). I always thought that black ink was too stark (as opposed to my usual brown) but it seemed fine after adding the colour. The fude pen, pronounced "fooday" (a Japanese word) does make it easy to get a variety of line thicknesses but holding it more or less upright to give a fine line takes some getting used to. Because it delivered a generous amount of ink it was easy to smudge the drawing in parts.

Here's the view...

and my touched up sketches.

Surrounding the gardens is quite a large area of virgin forest protected by a fence which keeps out predators. Stringybark Picnic Area in this native bush part was eerily quiet with paths leading to picnic tables almost hidden among tall gums. 

Here's an interesting snippet.

The highlight of our visit was spying a Southern Brown Bandicoot. Most rare of the Australian bandicoots, a colony is thriving in this protected area. 

The ranger said we were very lucky to see one!

For more info on the gardens click here.

#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourAlbum, 5x8”