Week 2: Site Visit

Entrance

The entrance consisted of a double stone staircase, with a plaque placed between the two.

Walking up the stairs there is a second entrance into the courtyard. This is one of the entrances into the space, aside from the entrance through the Temperate House (currently unavailable as of March 2021).

Temperate House

I felt that the Temperate House had range of colours throughout, each section filled with vibrant floral plants. Because most of the plants were at eye level, the ceiling of the glasshouse was more exposed, letting more light into the space.

Tropical House

The Tropical House had bigger and overgrown plants that reached nearly to the top of the glasshouse, towering over us. Like the fernery, it felt more like we were enclosed in nature.

The Tropical House has a controlled temperature for exotic plants to thrive in. Although it is controlled through technology now, it was once controlled by the fireplace located across the entrance. The chimney itself remains unused.

I looked at some of the textures and colours of the plants in the Tropical House:

Courtyard

There are pergolas placed on both sides of the courtyard, with the north side having overgrown leaves on the roof, while the south side was more bare in comparison. The north pergola produced more “nautral” shadows, while the south pergola produced gridded shadows.

The courtyard has neoclassical statues placed around in a symmetrical pattern, and each of them had some sort of significance to the site.

These statues represented the seasons, the Winter and Autumn ones located by the Temperate House, while the Spring and Summer ones located by the Tropical House. I noticed that the Spring & Summer statues were overgrown with plants, while the other two were empty.

There are also four statues of infants on both sides of the courtyard. I believe each of them represent an element, which is aligned to the classical elements ancient cultures used to explain “the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances” (https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Classical_element).

The snail and harvest of plants indicate the element of earth.

Fernery

The fernery holds various types of ferns, which are grown all over the area. The fernery is not as “structured” as the rest of the gardens.

The fernery is not as uptight and organised the same way as the rest of the wintergardens. When walking through the fernery, I am often ducking down, dodging, or pushing away overgrown plants on the path, as if it was some sort of obstacle that was obscuring secrets within nature. It almost felt this way when I nearly stepped into the pond with the goldfish, as I felt the pond was camouflaged if not for the goldfish’s colour peeking through the floating plants.

Types of ferns found in the fernery.

There were little statues of native nz birds placed around the fernery: Kererū (wood pigeon), Pūkeko, Piwakawaka (fantail), Karoro (kelp gull), Tui, Kāruhiruhi (pied shag)