The Christchurch Botanic Gardens are an island of nature and refuge smack bang in the middle of our city. Generations of residents and visitors can share memories and stories that melt into its legacy beginning in 1863.

The gardens are a living record and story of both the city’s colonial past and Aotearoa’s ancient vegetation. This place supports education, innovation and play while offering us botanical world travel by just exploring the extraordinary, carefully tended plantings.
It is a romantic, transporting and active space with a heartbeat - I think quite easily taken for granted by all of us who have stitched it into our own life stories.

What strikes me, is that on every visit, no matter the time of day, there are people interacting with these spaces. Visitors checking it off their ‘best places to visit’ lists, children and families running off energy, gardeners, scientists, photographers, joggers, commuters and those simply seeking some reprieve. This surface-level observation underlines the value that the gardens bring to my community, well beyond the obvious treasure trove of knowledge that exists within its collection for the plant curious.

My own connection to this place has morphed during different periods of living in the city. There may well have been a high school kiss under one of the giant trees that sweep the ground, creating hidden caves. There were also awkward group ‘hangouts’ of shy rural boarding school teens, struggling to socialise with the opposite sex!

In early adulthood, it was a place to walk, meet for brunch, and find creative inspiration for college projects. However, it was on my return to the city in 2016 that I connected to the gardens most. Its potential as a library and resource was uncovered as I put my spade to the earth for the first time.

Since then I have visited regularly, either to find inspiration and botanical ‘answers’ or with nieces in tow to adventure through its Narnia of secret spaces. I come to attend the monthly meetings and events of the Canterbury Horticultural Society who base themselves in the kiosk at the northwestern side of the gardens, even working with them to use the gardens at dusk to run a beginner’s photography workshop. I was also part of the wonderful Grow Otautahi Festival in 2021, which sprawled across the lawn in front of the visitors centre, spreading free information and ideas over three days to eager crowds. This sadly found no funding to continue (an utter travesty that still winds me up to think about it!).

I’ve lingered at the herbaceous border, waiting to trap unsuspecting staff members with my questions, snapping nameplates to google, and eagerly engaging Wolfgang Bopp, the highly knowledgeable and generous Director of the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, at every opportunity.

In the feature below are some spaces that I’m particularly drawn to, with photographs spanning many years and seasons.

*My niece Ada running through the meadow.*

Garden profile

GARDEN: Christchurch Botanic Gardens
Te Māra Huaota o Waipapa

LOCATION: Fringe of the central city, bordered by Hagley Park.

SIZE: 21 hectares
Established in 1863.

DIRECTOR: Wolfgang Bopp - since 2018.

@christchurchbotanicgardens

BAND ROTUNDA, DAFFODIL WOODLAND AND THE CURATOR’S HOUSE

This is a calmer woodland space, skirting Riccarton Ave that forms a romantic buffer between the hospital and Avon River. For any patients in north-facing rooms, an audience of tree tops and green await them, while staff spill out to enjoy this calm space on their breaks.

On the late spring day I photographed the fading crocuses and their delicate cross-over with the chorus of daffodils, the band rotunda was also being keenly used by graduating students to photograph their achievements. As the spring bulbs fade over the coming month, a fairyland of cow parsley will bloom in its place - somehow feeling very removed and far away from the hustle of the city centre just steps away.
This area also encompasses the Heritage Rose Garden which is SO special to me that I plan on telling its own story at a later date.
Just back across the river by Rolleston Ave, a stone’s throw from the Arts Centre precinct, Canterbury museum and art gallery, is the old Curator’s House. Its modern life is no longer for accommodation, instead, it offers a lovely cafe with a productive and beautiful potager garden for anyone to wander.

THE VISITORS CENTRE

The Christchurch Botanic Gardens visitors centre was a major addition to the grounds following the devastating 2011 Christchurch Earthquake. Designed by New Zealand architects Patterson Associates, its crisp modern lines are in awesome juxtaposition to the environment it sits in!
Within lies public spaces that include a lovely cafe, gift shop, toilets, function space and interactive education centre. The building also acts as a hub for the gardens team with offices, archives, research spaces, and protected propagation areas that can be peeped at through the windows.

THE CENTRAL ROSE GARDEN

The Central Rose Garden is one of many spaces that act as a living resource library for gardeners. Formal in design, it’s a humming fragrant zone filled with cultivars and hybrids of modern garden roses. As is their practice, the plants are also phenomenally well labeled, providing a brilliant resource when um-ing and ah-ing over what to plant at home!

*Cuningham House overlooking the rose garden in autumn.*

THE CONSERVATORIES

Cuningham House is not only a fascinating place but an architectural treasure! Built in 1923 its two-storied interior houses an intriguing collection of subtropical plants. The warm humidity is a welcome change of scene in comparison to our regions naturally dry climate.

Townend and Garrick houses connect to this main conservatory, offering two starkly different collections that shock the system as you explore between them. Garrick displays one of the most extensive publicly owned cacti and succulent collections in Aotearoa, set off by the fantastical desert mural by Gordan Gee - the sign and label writer for the gardens from 1956 to 1974. You can peep through the adjoining door to Gilpin House with tropical collections of orchids, bromeliads and carnivorous plants before returning to the bright revolving displays in Townend house.
Nearby you can also visit the dark and moody Fern House, exuding native New Zealand deep bush vibes.

CREVICE GARDEN AND NATIVE AREA

The crevice garden is a relatively new area within the gardens with construction beginning in 2020, making it the only public crevice garden in the country. Using slabs of vertically stacked stone, the designers and team have been able to mimic environments capable of displaying alpine, desert, and cliff-dwelling plants that they wouldn’t have been able to before.

The New Zealand native areas were established between 1910 and 1927, allowing all visitors to enjoy settled, mature plantings that are a treat! Between wetland and deep bush zones it’s possible to disappear from real life for a while.

ARCHERY LAWN AND WOODLAND GARDENS

With such easy access to Rolleston Ave, The Archery Lawn is a well-visited space where people relax on seats or sprawled on the grass. Passing the Pine Mound sporting an amazing group of huge Pinus pinaster (maritime pines - my favourites), visitors gravitate to the interactive sculpture and fountain ‘Regret’ by Sam Mahon. Towering cork oak and sequoia trees do a wonderful job at screening the existence of busy life beyond its borders.

Nearby, the woodland gardens always lure me in with the rolling seasonal display in dappled light.

THE LONG BORDER

The long herbaceous border is probably my personal hot spot for visits - I have certainly taken 100’s of images as I’ve researched over the years for my own garden, column and book writing, and now for Unearthed. Believed to be the longest border of its kind in a public garden in the Southern Hemisphere, its deep beds rise and fall with abundance throughout the seasons.
I’ve explored this area at length, accosting staff with questions and getting up close and personal with familiar and alluring new specimens.

“The gardens are a living record and story of both the city’s colonial past and Aotearoa’s ancient vegetation. It supports education, innovation and play while offering us botanical world travel by just exploring the extraordinary, carefully tended plantings. It is a romantic, transporting and active space with a heartbeat - I think quite easily taken for granted by all of us who have stitched it into our own life stories. ”

— Julia Atkinson-Dunn

THE DAHLIA BORDER

If there was one part of the botanic gardens that has the ability to lure in non-plant-minded people, I’d hazard a guess that it is the dahlia border. In late summer and into autumn, it simply cannot be ignored - a rainbow studded in lolly-coloured balls and stars that acts as a magnet to any passerby, whether they are planning to explore it or not.

Brilliantly labeled, it is an invaluable gallery to virtually ‘shop’ for plants. Their biggest battle would be stopping enchanted children snapping off stems at will!

BEHIND THE CONSERVATORIES

One of my favourite areas to drag my feet through is the very calm and quiet space behind the conservatories. Here great gingkos and exotic trees disappear you into another world and perhaps, even time - enveloping you in spring and summer, and sprinkling a yellow brick road in autumn.