Beautiful Sunday in Christchurch Botanic Gardens

"The Garden City" of Christchurch has the most wonderful Botanic Gardens, and today, while it was warm and sunny, we abandoned the housework and met my my parents there for a walk. We even saw the first daffodils - and I hear that spring is coming in 38 days!!!!

Also look here - good article about it with some great pictures.

We had a coffee at the lovely Curator's Cottage...

We even had a cat for company :) The one at the back... not my mothers's fur hat!

We strolled past the turquoise and yellow Peacock Fountain, originally made in England from cast iron, and shipped over here about 1911. It has a history - here

 

I don't know what it looked like originally, but it does have an interesting colour scheme - and we were wondering about it today! So tonight I found this.

The Peacock Fountain was returned to the Botanic Gardens in 1996 with an improved pipe system and a new colour scheme. A local artist W.A Sutton was consulted by the committee on possible colours. However the final choice did not leave everyone happy. Some interesting responses were given in the letters to The Press, the fountain was described as looking "like a refugee from a confectioner's nightmare." The new colour scheme was blamed for "cause(ing) flu-like symptoms when looked upon." There was also the statement that "The new colour coding of the fountain has a closer cultural relationship to a nouveau riche garden in Bangkok

The other fountain I like is this one... hard to get a photo, but it is a lovely peaceful spot.

and because it is an area of special significance to my partner's family, here is another view of the trees behind it that were planted by Phoebe's mothers ancestors.

   

We also called in at the information centre... I had never really thought about how all the plants from England arrived here but we found this display showing how they shipped them over. Certainly, much of the flora here is not NZ native bush so the settlers certainly started all this off!

Founded in 1863 with the planting of an English Oak tree, the Gardens now features one of the finest collections of exotic and native plants found in New Zealand.

(That oak tree was planted to celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. )

 

There are some unusual plants in the gardens... amazing how many of them resembled cabbages!

:)