Functions:
Service and Public Relations: Identification and advice, tours and lectures, liaison with Botanical Gardens (label checking etc), exchanges, loans and donations, staff well being.
Maintenance and Extension (with technical assistance): Drying, mounting, incorporation, housing, fumigating, indexing.
Research and Field Work: Taxanomic Papers, monographs, historical reports.
Library: Consultation for staff and general public, loans and exchange, selection of items for purchase, housing of reprints and drawings, arrangement and cataloguing of material.
Special Projects: Investigation of new flora of Victoria, plant surveys, seed collection and exchange.

Building:
The first Herbarium building was situated on the Domain near the Shrine of Remembrance. It was built in 1861 after Mueller repeatedly petitioned the government for space to house his collection of 45,000 specimens. The new building had room for 160,000 specimens, and this was filled in the first year. It was in use until 1934 when it was demolished to build the Shrine. The collection was transferred into the present building completed in 1934 as a gift to the state from Sir Macpherson Robertson to mark the Centenary of Melbourne. An extension was completed in 1989 facilitating the entire collection on the ground and first floor, and the library on the second floor.

Directors/Curators of the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, 1846-1970:
1846-1849 John Arthur (Curator)
1849-1857 John Dallachy (Curator)
1857-1873 Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich Mueller (moved to Victoria in 1852 and was appointed the colony's first Government Botanist the following year (a position which he held until his death in 1896). He was appointed first Director of the Botanic Gardens, which for a time incorporated the zoo (1858-61).
1873-1909 William Guilfoyle
1909-1923 John Cronin
[Acting Director 1922-1923 Edward Edgar Pescott]
1923-1925 William Laidlaw (1920 Government Botanist and 1925 Director)
1925-1941 Frederick J. Rae (Government Botanist and Director)
1941-1957 Alexander William Jessup (Government Botanist and Director)
1957-1970 Richard Thomas Martin Pescott (Government Botanist and Director)
[Acting Director 1970-1972 James Hamlyn Willis]