Gage Park Tropical Greenhouse

Gage Park in Hamilton has long had municipal greenhouses: a local history site dates the park's first greenhouse to 1919, and the site was opened to visitors in the 2010 Doors Open programme. These installations house the City's horticultural programmes.

The City of Hamilton built the new tropical greenhouse as an extension of the heritage park's network of greenhouses, whose spirit it takes up. The project was entrusted to the architecture firm McCallumSather, led among others by Drew Hauser and Liam Brown, which won an Award of Excellence for public buildings at the 2019 Hamilton Urban Design Awards. The new structure triples the height of the old one and covers about 1,300 square metres.

Opening dates differ between sources: an online encyclopaedia speaks of a greenhouse constructed in late 2020, while other references consulted point to an opening in 2019 or 2021. As the year is uncertain, it is not given here.

The new greenhouse is carried on large glulam (glued laminated timber) beams, a choice that sets it apart from classic metal glasshouses while recalling the nineteenth-century greenhouses that inspired it. It triples the height of the previous structure and was deliberately oriented to frame views of the escarpment and to connect with the historic park. Exposed timber trusses rise above a space where bleacher-style seating allows visitors to sit.

A sophisticated mechanical system sits behind glass walls and remains visible to the public. The interior has an indoor walking path, paver seating, waterfalls and ponds with fish, turtles and waterlilies, and a large ventilation installation for climate control. The architects stress the absence of pesticides: pest control relies on colonies of buttonquail and diamond doves living in an enclosed ecosystem.

The greenhouse brings together subtropical and tropical plants, including palms reaching 10 metres. A gardening article names the Fiji fan palm (Pritchardia pacifica), the Cuban wax palm (Copernicia hospita) with its bluish foliage, the cycad Encephalartos ferox, an orange-flowered vine of the genus Combretum, bleeding-heart vine (Clerodendrum thomsoniae) and hanging ferns.

The ponds hold turtles and koi, and a colony of finches flies freely under the roof, alongside the buttonquail and diamond doves mentioned above. The same writer visited during the Spring Bulb Show, one of the seasonal displays held inside.

The greenhouse is at 1000 Main Street East, in Gage Park, and admission is free. It also serves as a community gathering place, an educational centre and a space that can be rented for events, including wedding photography. An hour is generally enough; seasonal shows, such as the Spring Bulb Show, give reasons to return.

The park itself, laid out from 1920 by Howard and Lorrie Dunington-Grubb in the spirit of the City Beautiful movement, invites a stroll. It is also the site of the Hamilton Children's Museum, close by.