A new garden has opened at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens

A new garden is opening at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, just in time for summer.

The Arid Garden, which features more than 3000 cacti and succulents, will be unveiled to the public today.

Director and chief executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Professor Tim Entwisle, says it’s not the first Arid Garden.

The original Arid Garden was built in the 1940s, but it was vandalised in 2013.

“They gave it a make over in the 1980s, but it was looking a bit run down and we had some vandalism … someone macheted off the top of a lot of our cacti,” he told Ross and Russel.

“We had to repair it and we’ve now got this fantastic new garden.

“It’s probably the best collection of cacti in Australia.”