Bason Botanic Gardens Conservatories

The story of these glasshouses begins with a family of brickmakers. Reuben Bason and his nephews Thomas and John came out from England in the late 1840s and set up a brickworks in the port town of Wanganui. In 1900 John Bason and his wife Mary bought a farm at Rapanui, outside the town, and the following year adopted a baby boy, Stanley. When John died in 1934 the farm turned out to be bankrupt; Stanley persuaded the creditors to let him work it out of debt, married Blanche Prideaux and, once the debts were paid, the couple created a homestead garden of almost an acre with more than 140 named camellias and 500 roses.

In 1966 the Basons offered their debt-free 25-hectare farm, valued at about $50,000, to Wanganui City Council as a botanical reserve. Stanley pledged further money on one condition: at least the first stage of a conservatory complex had to be built within ten years. Several councillors and local farming bodies objected, but the council accepted the gift in July 1966. Blanche died in 1969 and Stanley in 1976.

A master plan followed, starting with roads and the damming of the Mowhanau Stream into a pair of ponds, and the promised conservatories were finished in 1980, the first of them dedicated to Blanche's memory. The Bason Botanic Gardens Trust, formed in 1982 according to Wikipedia and in 1998 according to the gardens' own history, has since drawn on bequests to add collections and buildings, among them an orchid house paid for by a bequest from Winston and Agnes Larsen.

The complex was designed by landscape architect Tony Jackman, the first president of the New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architects, and built in 1980. It groups three glasshouses, the Blanche Bason Glasshouse, the Larsen orchid house and a tropical house, together with the Scoullar Room, which holds information displays, and visitor toilets. What sets it apart is the brickwork: the walls were raised with bricks salvaged from two demolished Whanganui picture theatres, which the gardens present as a tribute to the Bason family's brickmaking heritage. The same bricks turn up again in paths, raised beds and barbecues across the grounds.

Each house runs to its own regime. The Blanche Bason Glasshouse is unheated and is arranged around a waterfall and pool built of stone from the Rangitikei River; the water drops into an intermediate pool before reaching a fishpond at the centre, keeping the air humid. The tropical house is the only heated one; it is often kept locked to hold its temperature and doubles as a nursery for plants that move into the other houses when conditions allow. A pergola serves as the shared entrance to the conservatories and the homestead garden.

The orchid house holds what the gardens describe as one of the most extensive public-garden orchid collections in New Zealand. Built up largely from donations over the years, it concentrates on Phalaenopsis, Cymbidium, Dendrobium, Pleione, Paphiopedilum (slipper orchids), Oncidium, Masdevallia and Sarcochilus, including the Australian Sarcochilus hartmannii.

The unheated Blanche Bason Glasshouse carries a changing display of exotic seasonal plants such as African violets, begonias and ferns, with hybrid tuberous begonias brought in for their season. Other plants singled out in the complex include Anthurium andraeanum, Kalanchoe blossfeldiana and the bromeliad Guzmania lingulata. Outside, subtropical beds of shell ginger, ponytail palms, bird-of-paradise and Canary Island dragon tree surround the houses, close to a Chilean coconut palm (Jubaea chilensis) planted in 2005, and an avenue of Phoenix canariensis palms leads on to the homestead garden.

The conservatories sit at the heart of the 25-hectare Bason Botanic Gardens on Rapanui Road, in the Westmere countryside northwest of Whanganui, and are reached through the pergola across from the main car park. A visit extends easily to the neighbouring homestead garden, Millennium Hill with its Mediterranean plants, the lake and its Japanese tea house, and the Boothby Fern House of native ferns at the far end of the grounds. From July to October the spring gardens fill with camellias, daffodils, magnolias, rhododendrons and azaleas, and in summer the natural amphitheatre hosts open-air theatre. The tropical house is often closed to protect its temperature. In town, the Virginia Lake Winter Gardens offer a second glasshouse.