Auckland Domain Wintergardens, botanical garden in Auckland Domain, Auckland, New Zealand
Auckland Domain Wintergardens is a glasshouse complex in the Arts and Crafts style, featuring two separate buildings filled with plant collections. The site also includes a courtyard with marble statues and a sunken pool surrounded by varied plantings.
William Gummer designed these gardens in the early 20th century, and they opened to the public in 1928. They later received the highest heritage designation in New Zealand and remain an important example of Arts and Crafts architecture.
The courtyard statues represent the Four Seasons and Four Elements, with a cat on a column among them. The Fernery holds over 100 native fern species in a former scoria quarry that supplied stone for the 1913–14 exhibition paths. On 1 December 2013 the Tropical House became the first place in New Zealand to flower a Amorphophallus titanum, a plant that can take a decade to bloom and smells of rotting flesh.
The two glasshouses stand either side of a courtyard, with the Fernery reached from the courtyard and set in a former scoria quarry in the side of Pukekaroro. The Tropical House is heated to an average of 28 °C, so dress in layers when moving between it and the unheated Temperate House. The glasshouses were restored between 2021 and 2023.
The two glasshouses are deliberately maintained at different temperatures to recreate distinct plant climates. Visitors move between tropical conditions and temperate settings, experiencing entirely different plant worlds within the same visit.
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