City & Garden tours

Christchurch Botanical Gardens

A brochure is available from the Information Centre in the Gardens describing the background of various points of interest visited in a 'Historic Walk'. This self guiding walk covers a selection of important sites and buildings around the ChristchurchBotanic Gardens and Hagley Park. The walk is a circuit which takes a lesiurely one and a half hours. The notes are designed to start and finish at the Information Centre. However, you may begin at any convenient point. Information is provided on the origins of many familiar landmarks. The Gardens Restaurant, for example, first known as the Tea Kiosk, suffered several serious fires after it was built in 1910.

Few Cantabrians would contemplate swimming in the Avon now, however in the 1870's public bathing in the Avon River had become a popular pastime for the men and youth of the settlement. Surrounded by a thick belt of trees, the official bathing place was upstream of the footbridge, behind the present nursery. In 1881 The Canterbury Public Domains Board thinned trees and undergrowth in this area to form a footpath along the riverbank. This caused a storm of protest for the would be bathers. The walk also visits Settlers Corner where a memorial encloses the natural spring used by many of the pioneer settlers.

Surprisingly the Daffodil Woodland was once inhabited by a menagerie which included silk worms, deer, ferrets, kangaroos, angora and cashmere goats, oppossums monkeys, wallabies, llamas, a lemur, a tortoise, a Californian bear and an emu called Jack.

This occurred in 1864 when the Canterbury Horticultural and Acclimatisation Society leased the use of 1.5 hectares of ground in this area. During the years the Society leased the grounds the public were able to view these unusual birds and animals which were bred for liberation throughout Canterbury or imported for public enjoyment. To many people, this popular area became known as "The Zoo". 

Text courtesy of www.canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz