Charles Austin Gardner

1896  Today is the birthday of the botanist and prolific plant collector Charles Austin Gardner. Gardner was born in England, but his family immigrated to Australia in the early 1900s.

Gardner had a tremendous love for plants and landscape painting. During his 20s, he received painting instruction and encouragement from the Landscapeape painter JW Linton and the wildflower painter Emily Pelloe. He created an impressive herbarium with nearly 10,000 specimens from all over Western Australia. Gardner helped start the Western Australian Naturalist Club. And although he had become a repository for information about Western Australian Flora, he sadly never published a book on the Flora of Western Australia.

Gardner received several honors and medals for his work, but much of his information about Australian plant geography, distribution, and biology was lost to us when he died.
Today in Tammin, in Western Australia, there is a Charles Gardner Memorial that is surrounded by over 50 species of native wildflowers. There's also the Charles Gardner National Park that was named in his honor.