Anderson was given no power to purchase plants nor was he given funds to establish the gardens. By 1880, because of the Municipal Council's inaction, the gardens had been removed from its control and trustees appointed by the Queensland Government. Among these trustees was Thomas Allen Gulliver jnr, who had previously collected botanical material in Tasmania and North Queensland for Baron Ferdinand Von Mueller, Curator of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens and later Victorian Government Botanist. Thomas Gulliver and his brother, Benjamin Thomas Gulliver, had several plants collected from the Gulf of Carpentaria and Arnhem Land named in their honour. Baron von Mueller devoted his life to the study of systematic biology, and was the finest botanist in the southern hemisphere, describing and naming over 2000 Australian species and distributing Australian plants across the world.