TRAVEL WITH FRIENDS

For more information or to book please contact us at foundation.friends@botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au

July 2024

Expressions of Interest

4–16 November 2023

Grade: Introductory*

Accommodation: 12 nights (with three-night optional extension available for additional cost)

In a few hours you can be immersed in a hybrid tropical island paradise with indigenous Kanak culture and French cuisine and society. New Caledonia’s isolation and complex geology have led to a unique mix of endemic plants that will be fully explained and explored. The itinerary includes a trip to the Tjibaou Cultural Centre (designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano), with a three-day optional extension available to the Isle of Pines.

Member price: from $9,840pp twin share, land content only

Escort: Named one of Traveller’s ‘Heroes of Travel’, Dr Peter Weston is a former Senior Principal Research Scientist at the National Herbarium of NSW.

31 July to 13 August 2024

Grade: Introductory*

Accommodation: 13 nights

Join Relle Mott for an adventure in the sweeping landscapes of Aomori and Hokkaido in time for the Aomori Nebuta Festival. These prefectures are wilder, less populated and mostly off the beaten track for foreign tourists. The highlight of our tour will be visiting the Dan Pearson designed Tokachi Millennium Forest on the ‘garden route’ of central Hokkaido, famous for its meadow boardwalk, breathtaking views and harvest table display that captures the flowers and fruits of the forest daily.

Member price: $10,350pp twin share, land content only

Escort: Relle Mott, a former member of the Gardens' education team, has over the past nine years led tours to Japan, Uzbekistan and China.

Timed to coincide with the Singapore Garden Festival, this trip explores more than Gardens by the Bay and orchids. Known as the Garden City, policy like LUSH (Landscaping for Urban Spaces and High-Rises) means all new development removing greenery must replace it, leading to incredible roof top gardens and vertical walls. Food security concerns have also led to creative solutions like market gardens on rooftops and the world’s tallest kitchen garden. Join us as we explore biophilic design at its best and groundbreaking horticulture.

2024

Experience the fantastic megafauna of Southern Africa, the beautiful desert landscapes and arid-adapted flora of the Namib desert, mass flowerings of Namaqualand daisies and the mind-boggling botanical diversity of the Cape Floristic region. From Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, travel south to Cape Town via the Swakop River Valley (home of the miraculous Welwitschia mirabilis), the giant sand dunes of Sossusvlei, Fish River Canyon, the flowering deserts of Namaqualand and the Cape Fold Belt and its fynbos shrublands.