Work on New Plant Nurseries Starts Soon

Dunedin, 30 September 2013 – A major part of the Dunedin Botanic Garden’s operations will soon have a new home.

The long-awaited replacement of the Garden’s old and dilapidated glasshouses will begin next week, with contractors on site from today. The work is part of a $6 million asset renewal project.

Dunedin City Council Project Manager Hamish Black says replacement of the existing plant nursery facilities has been overdue for many years and it is great to have the project finally underway.

The garden’s ageing propagation facilities and plant nursery, located near the aviary, will be replaced with new facilities on Lovelock Avenue, where the Botanic Garden Centre is located. The Centre will be demolished to make way for the new glasshouses, propagation building and boiler house, but some of the materials will be salvaged and used in other Garden projects. Work has already begun on site so a new boundary with the Opoho Bowling Club can be completed before the bowling season starts.

As well as providing plant nursery facilities, the new buildings will also be a base for education activities for school groups, public workshops and demonstrations.

Cook Brothers Construction has won the tender for the construction work. Mr Black says the car park closest to the site will be used as a construction base and will be unavailable to the public until work is complete, which is expected to be September 2014. The other two public car parks are unaffected.

The existing glasshouses will be demolished next year once the new facilities are operating.

The new buildings will be a maximum of 6m high and there will be landscaping and planting to screen the buildings from people walking along the edge of Lovelock Avenue and using the nearby walkway. The walkway between the construction site and the Northern Cemetery will remain open.

Mr Black says the new plant nursery facilities are the first part of a larger vision for that area of the Garden, which includes establishing a café, visitors’ centre and viewing platform. He also points out that moving the nursery and glasshouses means the site they currently occupy in the upper garden can be developed to achieve its potential as a prime landscape feature.

“This site has a lot of visitor attraction potential, which we would like to develop in the future.”

ENDS

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