Christchurch Botanic Gardens, Hagley Park & the Avon

Why it matters

The gardens began with a single tree. On 9 July 1863 the government gardener, Enoch Barker, planted an oak to mark the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Albert Edward oak still stands, and the city dates its gardens from that day. Their Māori name is Te Māra Huaota o Waipapa.

We read what grew around the oak as homesickness made visible. The settlers planted the trees they knew from England, oaks and limes among them, and later added sequoias and cork oaks from further afield. A century and a half on, those trees are enormous, and they are what gives the gardens their character.

A park reserved for ever

Hagley Park is older still. In 1855, five years after the first settlers’ ships arrived, the provincial government set the land aside in words the city has held to ever since: it “shall be reserved forever as a public park, and shall be open for the recreation and enjoyment of the public.” It was named after the English estate of Lord Lyttelton. It has been the city’s gathering ground ever since. The International Exhibition of 1906 and 1907 was held here, and the council still calls it a popular venue for outdoor events.

At 165 hectares it is very large for a park in the middle of a city, bigger than London’s Hyde Park. That promise is why Christchurch has open ground, sports fields and a golf course where another city would have streets.

The river’s two names

The river is the oldest thing here. To Ngāi Tahu it is the Ōtākaro, “the place of a game”, named for the children who played on its banks while their elders gathered food. It was a food basket for generations: eels, flounder, whitebait and ducks. The name Avon came in 1842, from the Scottish brothers William and John Deans, who farmed at Riccarton and named it after a stream in their native Ayrshire. Both names are in use today.

What the earthquakes changed

The earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 damaged the glasshouses and closed buildings all around the gardens, the museum at the gate among them. The glasshouses reopened after repair, and a new visitor centre opened in 2014. The work is not quite over: Cuningham House closed in late 2024 for a restoration of its own.

What it’s like

The main gate is on Rolleston Avenue, beside the museum, and the Peacock Fountain stands just inside it. It is an ornate, painted iron fountain in three tiers, and nothing else in the city looks like it. Beyond it the gardens open into wide lawns under very large trees, with paths running off in several directions. There is no set route. You wander.

The river is never far away. The Avon runs round the gardens in a loop, slow and close to the paths. Small footbridges cross to the car parks and to the Daffodil Woodland on the far bank, where 16,000 bulbs were planted in 1933 and half a million had followed within ten years. In early spring the ground there is yellow.

The formal gardens sit in the middle. The Central Rose Garden, which the council calls spectacular, is at its best in summer. Around it are the glasshouses, open daily from 10am to 4pm, where Gilpin House holds the orchids. Further on are the New Zealand Gardens, O Tāne Aotearoa, planted with native species. After the English lawns they are another country, and the contrast is the point.

There is more tucked among the lawns than a first walk finds. The council lists a memorial rotunda, a magnetic observatory from the gardens’ scientific past, the New Zealand World Peace Bell and a number of artworks. For families there is a playground and a paddling pool, both free, which makes this the easiest place in the city to spend a morning with small children.

The big trees are the thing to look for. On the Archery Lawn stand a cork oak and a giant sequoia. Beswick’s Walk runs between limes planted in 1917. In autumn the whole place turns copper, red and gold.

What writers and artists have made of it

The poet Ursula Bethell made her garden at Rise Cottage, on the Cashmere Hills above this city, and wrote it into From a Garden in the Antipodes (1929). In a poem called “Pause” she stops digging, lifts her head to the mountains, and sees her garden as one of “our small fond human enclosures”, which nature will one day wipe away. John Muir felt something like it in front of a single kind of tree. Of the giant sequoia, the species that stands on the Archery Lawn, he wrote in 1901 that it is “Nature’s forest masterpiece, and, so far as I know, the greatest of living things.” Both are writing about being made small.

Hagley Park begins where the gardens end. It is a different kind of place: open grass, long avenues of trees, sports fields, and Lake Victoria, dug in 1897 for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. A path runs right round North Hagley, 4.5 kilometres of flat walking. From mid-September to early October, depending on the weather, the park’s cherry trees are in blossom.

The gardens through the year

The council describes the gardens by their seasons, and each one gives a different visit.

Then there is the river at water level. Punts leave from the Antigua Boat Sheds, the green and white striped sheds of 1882 on Cambridge Terrace, beside the gardens. You sit low in a flat boat while a punter poles you along. The operator describes the ride as meandering through the Botanic Gardens and Hagley Park.

How to visit

Getting there and getting in

The gardens are on the western edge of the city centre. From Cathedral Square, walk west along Worcester Boulevard for about ten minutes, past the Arts Centre, to the main gate on Rolleston Avenue. There are two other ways in, each over a footbridge from a car park: one on Armagh Street to the north and one on Riccarton Avenue to the south. Entry is free and there is no ticket.

If you drive, the Armagh Street car park costs $2 for the first hour and $4.60 for three, and three hours is the limit. From there, cross the footbridge and you are in the gardens; the Kiosk is just inside.

Ways to see it

Most visitors simply walk, and that is the best way. But there are four other ways to see the gardens and the river, and two of them suit people who cannot walk far.

Punting and boat hire

The punts are run by one company, Christchurch Attractions, from two landings. The Antigua Boat Sheds, at 2 Cambridge Terrace, are the landing beside the gardens; punts leave daily, from 9am to 5pm in summer and 9.30am to 4pm in winter. A second landing at Worcester Bridge, in the city centre, runs on fewer days outside summer. The operator’s site does not say which stretch of river each landing covers, so ask for the gardens when you book.

A ride lasts 30 minutes and costs $45 for an adult and $30 for a child. The operator says booking is essential and asks you to arrive 15 minutes early. Punts go out in all weather, with blankets and umbrellas on board.

The Boat Sheds themselves are a separate business and hire boats by the hour. A single kayak is $25 an hour and a double $50. A rowing boat or Canadian canoe is $40 for half an hour or $60 for an hour, and a paddle boat is $35 for half an hour. We could not confirm their hours, so check before you count on it.

The garden tour

An electric shuttle makes a 50-minute circuit of the gardens with a commentary, leaving from behind the Peacock Fountain. It costs $30 for an adult and $15 for a child. In summer it runs daily; in winter, Thursday to Sunday, from 11am to 3.30pm. The operator gives the summer hours as 10am to 4pm and the council as 10am to 3.30pm, so treat the last departure as 3.30pm.

If it rains

Christchurch weather turns quickly, and the gardens have shelter. The glasshouses are warm and dry between 10am and 4pm. The visitor centre has a café and an exhibition on the gardens’ work, with the nursery where plants are raised behind glass. The punts go out in the rain with umbrellas, and the operator does not refund a ride you miss, so on an unsettled day, book once you can see the forecast.

Facilities and access

The visitor centre, in the middle of the gardens, has a café, a shop and an exhibition. It is open from 9am to 5pm from September to May and to 4pm in winter. There are toilets there, near the Rolleston Avenue gate, in the Woodland Garden and at the Armagh Street car park, all with accessible cubicles.

The paths are flat and mostly sealed. The council lends three mobility scooters free during visitor centre hours; ring 03 941 7590 to reserve one. A manual wheelchair is kept at the Kiosk. Dogs are not allowed in the gardens, cyclists must walk their bikes, and e-scooters are banned.

Making the most of it

The gardens ask nothing of you, which is their charm. A few choices still make the visit better.

Nearby

The gardens sit beside the oldest part of the city. The Arts Centre, in the Gothic stone buildings of the old university, is across Rolleston Avenue and open daily from 10am to 5pm. Canterbury Museum, at the gardens’ main gate, is closed for redevelopment and is not expected to reopen before late 2028; a free pop-up museum is open meanwhile at 66 Gloucester Street.

From the Antigua Boat Sheds the river runs on into the rebuilt city centre, a walk worth making on the same day. Our Christchurch guide sets out the rest of the city, with where to stay and where to eat.

If the park leaves you wanting what was here before it, go to Riccarton Bush, at 16 Kahu Road beyond the park’s western edge. It is a remnant of the forest that once covered this plain, beside the house of the Deans family who named the river. The grounds are free. And when you are ready to leave the city, our day trips from Christchurch compares the best days out.