Otari-Wilton’s Bush

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Janet

It’s been a while since I blogged about New Zealand and our 2018 trip, but I’ll correct that today, since there was one garden omitted – and it was my favourite. If you recall, in my last blog we were sailing back to the North Island from the South Island and settling ourselves into New Zealand’s beautiful capital city of Wellington for the final chapter of our trip. Today, I want to take you to what was my favourite public garden of our entire 3-week tour, Otari-Wilton’s Bush (whose proper name is Otari Native Botanic Garden and Wilton’s Bush Reserve, but I’ll call it OWB for short). Let’s walk from the car park through the main entrance gate or warahoa…..

….. past the Kauri Lawn and the familiar trunks of the kauri trees (Agathis australis) we’d fallen in love with a few weeks earlier on the Manginangina Kauri Walk in the Puketi Forest near Bay of Islands, on our Maori culture day.

The path leads past interesting New Zealand natives towards the information centre where we can……

….. find a map. This place is massive! There are ten kilometres of walking trails over 100 hectares (247 acres) of native podocarp-northern rata forest featuring 5 hectares of gardens containing half of New Zealand’s native plants. In total, there are.1200 species, hybrids and cultivars of indigenous plants, and we have such a short time to visit! On that note, I should add that there was a reason why it took me so long to get this blog together: the complexity of the garden and our speed rushing through it meant that I didn’t feel I could do it justice without researching it a little more than the other public gardens we’d visited, which were more straightforward…. rose garden, perennial border, etc. There is not that kind of typical botanical garden approach here at OWB. It’s all about native plants and their conservation! I could have spent two days there, easily

Because it’s difficult to read the map (click on it or download it for a better look), here is the legend:

1 –      Plants for the home garden
2 –      Brockie rock garden
3 –      Wellington coastal plants
4 –      Grass and sedge species
5 –      Threatened species
6 –      Hebe species
7 –      Rainshadow garden
8 –      Flax cultivars
9 –      Pittosporum species
10 –     Coprosma species
11 –     Olearia species
12 –     Northern collection
13 –     Divaricate collection
14 –     Gymnosperm (conifer) collection
15 –     Fernery
16 –     Alpine garden
17 –     Dracophyllum garden
18 –     38
19 –     Broom garden

The garden and surrounding bush has a complicated history, from the Maori first inhabitants – Taranaki tapū or sub-tribes – who migrated to the general area in 1821 from the Wellington region; to the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s; to the allocation of 500 acres to Maori tribes; to the 1860 purchase by Job Wilton of 108 acres for farming; to the leasing by one tribe of 200 acres to three settlers; and subsequent sales by other tribes to other settlers. By 1900, prominent citizens of Wellington began to realize that the natural land around the city was in demise. As another 134 acres of tribal land was being sold to settlers, Wellington City Council stepped in and purchased it. By 1918, Otari’s status was changed to a reserve “for Recreation purposes and for the preservation of Native Flora.” In 1926, the well-known botanist, plant explorer and ecologist Dr. Leonard Cocayne presented a proposal to create a collection of indigenous plants on the site: the Otario Native Plant Open Air Museum. He was named Honorary Botanist to the Wellington City Council and effectively Director of the Plant Museum. Over the next few years, he collected 300 native plants and published the guidelines for the development and arrangement of the museum. Upon his death in 1934, he was buried on the site.

Let’s head out over the canopy bridge spanning the ‘bush’ below.

Visitors gazing out over this scene can appreciate how this part of New Zealand looked before cities and highways were built and invasive plants outcompeted native flora.

The garden has done a good job of labelling native trees to inspire visitors to choose these for their own gardens. This is karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus).

This is the tawa tree (Beilschmiedia tawa).

This is rewarewa (Knightia excelsa).

Looking down, you can see the exquisite structure of the silver ferns or pongas (Alsophila dealbata, formerly Cyathea).

It’s easy to see why this fern enjoys such an elevated position in New Zealand.

Interpretive signage is well done in the garden.

Though it is far away, I attempt a photo of New Zealand’s wood pigeon.

After the canopy walkway, I find myself in a section devoted to plants for the home gardener. Seven fingers or patē (Schefflera digitata) is a small, spreading tree fond of shade and damp places. It’s the only New Zealand species in the genus Schefflera.

The Three Kings kaikomako (Pennantia baylisiana) was down to a single extant plant in New Zealand when it was discovered on a scree slope on Three Kings Island in 1945 by Professor Geoff Baylis of Otago University. Seeds were harvested, allowing it to return from the brink of extinction.

Gold-variegated karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus ‘Picturata’) is a colorful Otari-Wilton’s Bush introduction of the evergreen New Zealand laurel tree. Its Maori name “karaka” means orange, and is the colour of the tree’s fruit.

The Leonard Cockayne centre can be booked for small meetings, workshops and education sessions.

Our American Horticultural Society tour group listens to Otari Curator-Manager Rewi Elliot giving an overview on the garden. You can see the memorial plaque at the base of the large rock, the burial site for Leonard and Maude Cockayne.

In the adjacent Brockie Rock Garden, I find Chatham Island brass buttons (Leptinella potentillina) is a rhizomatous groundcover adapted to foot traffic.

Slender button daisy (Leptinella filiformis) is bearing its little white pompom flowers.

Purple bidibid or New Zealand burr (Acaena inermis) has become a popular groundcover plant in Northern hemisphere gardens.

Chatham Island geranium (G. traversii) has pretty pink flowers. Its easy-going nature recommends it as a good native for New Zealand gardeners.

Like a lot of shrubby veronicas, Veronica topiaria used to belong to the Hebe genus before DNA analysis. It has a compact, topiary-like nature and tiny white summer flowers.

Silver tussock grass (Poa cita) is a tough, drought-tolerant native adapted to the poorest soils.

This is a lovely view from the Cockayne Overlook.

Below, a path is flanked by some of the sedges (Carex sp.) for which New Zealand has become renowned throughout the gardening world.

We catch a glimpse of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) on the right along the path.

Castlepoint daisy (Brachyglottis compacta) is native to the limestone cliffs on the Wairarapa Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Like many species here, it is considered at risk in the wild.

We had seen Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis) at the Dunedin Botanical Garden earlier in the trip. It’s such a handsome plant.

A gardener trims the base of a sedge along the path. There are signs in the garden stating “Please do not pull out our ‘weeds’”, explaining that they may look like weeds but several are threatened endemics that are allowed to casually self-seed in the garden.

Orange tussock sedge (Carex secta), aka makuro or pukio. is common to wetlands throughout New Zealand.

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Gardeners are at work trimming the sedges with the podocarp-northern rata forest in the background.

The Wellington Coastal Garden, below, is home to native plants found on the rocky foreshores, sand dunes and scrub-coloured cliffs of Wellington. Many plants here have thick, fleshy leaves or waxy surfaces to cope with wind and salt spray.

The Rain Shadow Garden features plants native to Marlborough, Canterbury and Otago in the South Island, specifically to regions lying east of the Southern Alps where rainfall is scant. From Wikipedia: In the South Island of New Zealand is to be found one of the most remarkable rain shadows anywhere on Earth. The Southern Alps intercept moisture coming off the Tasman Sea, precipitating about 6,300 mm (250 in) to 8,900 mm (350 in) liquid water equivalent per year and creating large glaciers. To the east of the Southern Alps, scarcely 50 km (30 mi) from the snowy peaks, yearly rainfall drops to less than 760 mm (30 in) and some areas less than 380 mm (15 in). The tussock grasslands are common in New Zealand’s rain shadow.

To northern hemisphere eyes, New Zealand has a lot of strange plants, but none tickle our fancy more than toothed or fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox). You’ll see its mature tree form a little further down in our tour of the garden but I love this photo illustrating the juvenile form, often described as Doctor Seussian or like a broken umbrella. It is now seen in gardens throughout the world, mostly owing to the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show where it starred in New Zealand’s gold-medal-winning garden exhibit.

This is my favourite image in the garden because it celebrates plants that typify the New Zealand native palette – the buff sedges and the wiry shrubs in ‘any-colour-but-green’. Save for the sword-like leaves of the cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) at the top of the picture, there is nothing ‘luxuriant’ about the plants in this garden. They evolved their sparse foliage to outsmart hungry predators or to protect themselves from wind, heat and salt.

As an illustration, here is Coprosma obconica, considered threatened in its native niche, with its “divaricating” growth habit (branching at sharp angles) when young. Note that its tender foliage is in the centre of this wiry sphere, thus protected from the nibbles of herbivores.

But then there are the big grasses and phormiums, which lend the opposite lush feeling. I love this garden, too, with its collection of flaxes, both the large New Zealand flax or harakeke (Phormium tenax) and the smaller mountain flax or wharariki (Phormium colensoi, formerly P. cookianum). In milder climates of North America, we see P. colensoi cultivars used extensively, e.g. ‘Maori Maiden’, ‘Black Adder’, ‘Sundowner’, etc. This is P. tenax ‘Goliath’.

A closer look at ‘Goliath’. The Māori grow harakeke plants especially for weaving and rope-making. Note the leaves of the Carex, illustrating the mnemonic “sedges have edges”.

At the base of the steps is a beautiful stand of South Island toetoe grass (Austroderia richardii, formerly Cortaderia). It is related to the South American pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) which has become an invasive in New Zealand (and also coastal California).

Below we see the juvenile (right) and mature (left) forms of fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox) growing side by side. Note the stout trunk and the different leaves on the adult tree. Botanists theorize that the tree evolved its narrow, young form with its hooked leaves to thwart herbivory by New Zealand’s flightless bird, the giant moa, which was hunted to extinction by Polynesian settlers five hundred years ago. Once the plant reaches a certain height – around 3 metres or 9 feet in 10-15 years – it gets on with the regular business of being a tree. The forms are so different that early taxonomists mistook them for different species.

Nearby is a garden labelled “the hybrid swarm”, featuring offspring of crossings of two other lancewood species, Pseudopanax crassifolius or horoeka and P. lessonii or houpara.

One of the tour members calls to me that she has heard the tui bird and I pass a stand of Richardson’s hibiscus (H. richardsonii)…..

…. as we go exploring into denser garden areas.

Sure enough, there it is – not the best photo, but it’s a treat to find it here. The Māori call this bird the ngā tūī, and this particular bird’s black-and-white colouration (its iridescence isn’t notable in this light) illustrates why the colonists called it the parson bird. It is one of two extant species of honeyeaters in New Zealand, the other being the bellbird. If you read my blog on Fisherman’s Bay Garden, you might have watched the YouTube video I made of that lovely garden with the entire soundtrack comprised of the bellbird’s song.

But time is fleeting and we still have the Fernery to visit. I stop for a moment to photograph Kirk’s daisy or kohurangi (Brachyglottis kirkii var. kirkii). It is in decline and classed as threatened, mostly due to predation from possums, deer and goats.

Common New Zealand broom (Carmichaelia australis) is not related to European broom (Cytisus scoparius), which is as invasive in New Zealand as it is throughout the temperate world.

Here is a large specimen of bog pine (Halocarpus bidwillii).

I pass a small water garden surrounded by rushes.

Crossing back over the canopy walkway, I come to the totara (Podocarpus totara) with its stringy, flaking bark. This specimen was planted in the 1930s and could live for more than 1,000 years. It is one of 5 tall trees in the Mixed Conifer-Broadleaf Forest type here; the others are kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), matai (Podocarpus taxifolia), rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and miro (Prumnopitys ferruginea). Totara wood is strong and resistant to rot; it was used traditionally by the Māori for carving and to make their waka or canoes. On trees 150 to 200 years old, an anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory medicinal product called totarol can be extracted from the heartwood on a regular basis. A dioecious species, female trees bear masses of fleshy, red, edible berries that the Māori collected in autumn by climbing the trees with baskets.

Now I’m on the boardwalk heading back through the Fernery to the parking lot and our bus. It was April 10, 1968 when Cyclone Giselle brought sudden winds of 275 kilometres per hour (171 mph) to Wellington, sinking the interisland ferry Wahine in sight of the harbour, with 53 lives lost of the 734 aboard. But the cyclone, the worst in New Zealand’s history, also knocked down trees throughout the country, including a swath cut through the forest at Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The opening created light favourable for the growing of ferns, and thus the fernery was launched late that year.

I see New Zealand’s iconic silver fern or ponga, which has had a botanical genus name change from Cyathea dealbata to Alsophila dealbata, courtesy of DNA sequencing. Look at the ferns colonizing its trunk.

Later, I get a closer look at the plants climbing another silver fern, which were identified for me by an Otari botanist for my 2018 blog New Zealand – The Fernery Nation. The climbing thread fern is Icarus filiformis (formerly Blechnum filiforme) or pānoko. The broadleaf plant is scarlet rātā vine or in Māori akatawhiwhi (Metrosideros fulgens).

I pause at a few low-growing ferns, including Cunningham’s maidenhair (Adiantum cunninghamii).

…… and the rhizomatous creeping fern Asplenium lamprophyllum.

But it’s the tree ferns that are most spectacular here. Milne’s tree fern (Alsophila milnei) has also had a genus name change from Cyathea. It is endemic to Raoul Island.

Kermadec tree fern (Alsophila kermadecensis) is also native to Raoul Island.

Mamaku or black tree fern has also been moved out of Cyathea; it is now called Sphaeropteris medullaris. It can grow very tall, up to 20 metres (60 feet).

I take a quick glimpse into the native bush, which encompasses 100 hectares here as our guide calls for me to hurry. I’m the last one on the bus!

Leaving the garden, I glance back at the beautiful pou whenua carved with the creatures of the forest. Given that “Otari” is a Māori word for “place of snares” recalling its heritage as a traditional place for bird-hunting, it is fitting that it is now celebrated as a place for watching birds and all manner of wildlife and plants.

As I run for the bus, I stop to take one last photo, of the unfurling crozier, or koru in Māori, of rough tree fern or whekī (Dicksonia squarrosa). Traditionally, the koru symbolizes perpetual movement, a return to the point of origin. It seems that the people of Wellington and those who fought to reclaim the bush for nature and education have done that here very well.

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If you enjoyed this blog, be sure to read my New Zealand series of blogs:

We Sail to Wellington

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Janet

In my last few blogs on our 2018 American Horticultural Society tour of the beautiful designed landscapes and natural areas of New Zealand, I wrote about the gardens of the Marlborough region on the South Island. With just a few days left on the tour, we were ready to sail back to the North Island where we had begun more than two weeks earlier. As we waited for the Interislander Ferry to load, we wandered around and window-shopped in the small, picturesque town of Picton. You can see the previous ferry heading out into the Marlborough Sounds.

On board, we sailed out through the tops of green hills which form the fingers of land and islands that are the Marlborough Sounds. If you read my blog on our spectacular overnight stay in Doubtful Sound at the southeast tip of the South Island, you’ll see the difference between these hillsides, which are often cloaked in invasive conifers referred to as ‘wilding pines’, and those on Doubtful Sound, which were cloaked in a variety of native tree ferns and evergreen trees and shrubs.

The Marlborough Sounds are known in geology as drowned river valleys. Eighty-five million years ago, New Zealand broke away from the supercontinent Gondwana, which also included Africa, India, South America, Antarctica and Australia. This drifting body of land about the size of half of Australia, called Zealandia, subsided almost entirely into the Pacific Ocean. Thirty-five million years ago, Zealandia was less than one-third the size of modern New Zealand and occurred as an archipelago of islands, then was uplifted by volcanic activity at the junction of the Pacific and Australian plates. These collisions raised up the hills on the east side of the north island and the mountainous backbone of most of the south island, i.e. the Southern Alps including Mount Cook, which we had hiked under four days prior. New Zealand’s oldest rocks, from Gondwana, are sedimentary in nature and dated at 510-360 million years old. Its Greenland Group rocks are similar to those found in eastern Australia and Antarctica.

Looking down from space over the Space Shuttle Challenger you can see the Marlborough Sounds and the cloud-shrouded Cook Strait, on the shores of which lay the wonderful Paripuma garden we’d visited hours earlier. Cook Strait connects the Tasman Sea on the east in the upper left and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Our route this afternoon and early evening would take us down Queen Charlotte Sound and into Cook Strait…..

…..then into the protected harbour at the bottom of the North Island where the city of Wellington lies.

We passed a variety of holiday houses clinging to the slopes of Queen Charlotte Sound…..

…… and of course all the wilding pines. I wrote about New Zealand’s effort to eradicate these trees in my earlier blog on Queenstown.

Courtesy of our knowledgeable, New Zealand-born tour host Richard Lyons, I enjoyed a Speight’s beer as the ferry sailed down the sound. The wind was constant and in places buffeted so much that others went inside, but I decided it was too beautiful to leave.

I used my zoom lens to check out details on the shore of Queen Charlotte Sound, like these mussel lines.

The Picton-bound Interislander passed us on starboard.

As we passed Arapawa Island on our left, I could make out tiny sheep on the hills. In fact, Arapawa has a specific breed of sheep. Island ecology!

As Cook Strait came into view, the wind became relentless.

I photographed some of my tour pals being blown about as they compared images. Though Cook Strait is renowned for its rough waters…..

…… it was not terribly rough on this day, and before long we were sailing towards the sunset over the North Island.

Finally, the lights of Wellington came into view.

Not long after docking, we were comfortably ensconced in the Copthorne Hotel Oriental Bay, looking out over the boats moored in the harbour.

The next morning, the view across the bay was much brighter……

…. and we headed out for our Wellington tour. Our first stop was Government House, the home of New Zealand’s Governor-General. Because of the nature of our tour, we were taken around the gardens, which have been named one of the Gardens of National Significance.

In 1990, they redesigned the grounds to focus on native plants like New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) and fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox) with their Dr. Seuss-like shapes.

Borders featured native grasses like toetoe (Cortaderia richardsonii) mixed with ornamentals such as hydrangea….

….. and a reflecting pool created a beautiful focal point.

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At the rear was a vast lawn for use in official ceremonies. It had a colourful border where…..

…. monarch butterflies were foraging on single dahlias. (New Zealand’s monarch butterfly population does not migrate.)

We walked down the hillside behind Government House where a magnificent collection of colourful conifers was arrayed like a tapestry.

Our tour continued inside the building where we heard the history of the British colonial role in New Zealand, which is an independent constitutional monarchy.

I loved these official dining chairs, which featured the crests – and often the plants – of the country’s various regions.

Then it was time to head to lunch at an appropriately-named restaurant on Lyall Bay.

Afterwards, I walked across the road to get a closer look at the brand-new Lyall Bay Surf Life Saving Club, which replaced the old 1950s club.

Then we were dropped off at the stunning Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand on the edge of Lambton Harbour, fairly close to our hotel.

Our first stop was a tour of the native garden behind the museum, where various nature programs occur.

I could have spent a long time photographing in this garden, but……

…… there was so much to see inside the museum!

I loved the ecology displays, naturally.

And I could have used this display in a lot of places in the previous few weeks.

If you read my post called Bay of Islands – Māoris, Kauris and Kia Ora, you might remember the magnificent protected Kauri forest we visited. This is a piece of fossilized kauri gum (Agathis australis) with a trapped insect.

When we left to head back to our hotel, we walked between the museum and the harbour where there was a very cool native landscape…..

…. that was designed by the firm Boffa Miskell.

After walking along the ocean for a while, we came to a pretty view of Oriental Bay and our hotel at the base of the hill. At the top is St. Gerard’s Church and Monastery.

We finally arrived back at our hotel. On our last day, we’d have time to walk down Oriental Parade, the road flanking the bay. The beach here is extremely popular with fit, active Wellingtonians, including these participants in a swim race.

Putting our feet up at the hotel, we sampled a glass of the wine from the renowned vineyard that Doug did not get to visit in Marlborough…..

….. then headed out to Whitebait Restaurant on the pier across the road. It was exquisite. This was just one dish: smoked Mount Cook alpine salmon cured in sauvignon blanc, dill and oyster cream with dilled carrots.

Then it was time to head to bed. Tomorrow we had three gardens to visit in Wellington!

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I will complete the last few entries in my NZ trip journal as soon as I return from Chile and Argentina in late March. Ciao!

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Tag Archives: Wellington

Otari-Wilton’s Bush

We Sail to Wellington

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