The serene Japanese Garden whose theme is “tsuki-yama-chisen” (“mountain-pond-stream”) exudes a flowing, zen-like ambiance. Located next to the Japanese Garden is the Bonsai House, an ecologically friendly rammed-earth structure built with soil from the garden site itself. The Bonsai House features a variety of plants, including figs, maples and camellias.
The Cactus House brings to mind the arid landscapes of African and Central American deserts. The Fragrant Plant and Herb Garden is wonderful for children as it is a hands-on garden of herbs, including mint and lavender, which visitors are allowed to actually touch in order to release the fragrances.
The Lagoon and Bamboo Grove were in existence prior to the development of the Botanic Gardens, and they remain a habitat of native Australian birds and reptiles.
The Australian Plant Communities, a 27 hectare area, feature a variety of native plants including rare and endangered species. Plant communities are subdivided and include wetlands, savanna, open woodlands and heathland communities. There is a rainforest within the Australian Plant Community, as well as two other rainforests in the Gardens, an Exotic Rainforest with tropical vegetation and an Australian Rainforest representative of native species.
The Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium opened in 1978 and is named for astronomer and 19th-century New South Wales governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. The Planetarium is located on the grounds of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at Mount Coot-tha and features the Cosmic Skydome, a planetarium theatre which uses a Zeiss Star Projector to project an image of the stars over Brisbane. The Planetarium also features an Observatory for viewing the night skies and a Display Zone with photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. The planetarium, currently closed for upgrades, is slated to reopen in March 2010. 
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