Spring Time in The Christchurch Botanic Gardens

It’s no secret that I love spring and everything it comes with.

I love the bright blue sky’s and mild temperatures of spring in the Southern Hemisphere . The mass planting of colourful spring flowers, tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and even pansies make me smile. And then there’s the smell of fresh cut grass from the first cut of the season. It hints that summer is on its way which for me means weekends by the pool enjoying the sunshine and the company of my family.

So it will be no surprise that top of my list of things to do in Christchurch, the self proclaimed ‘garden city’, was visiting it’s gardens. The biggest and best being The Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

After a 2am arrival into Christchurch on our first day we woke with only a few hours sleep but we’re excited to be meeting our good friends who we hadn’t seen for over two years.

We caught up over breakfast at the Addington Coffee Co-op and made plans for the days to come spent touring Christchurch and enjoying a long awaited catch up.

First on that list of plans was a visit to The Christchurch Botanic Gardens. The weather was fine and partly cloudy so we wanted to take the opportunity and get to the gardens before the forecast rain rolled in later in the day.

The Christchurch Botanic Gardens connect with Hagley Park to making it the biggest green space in the city centre welcoming over one million visitors each year.

The parklands and gardens are full of colourful flower beds, massive trees in all shades of green, red and orange that are hundreds of years old, ponds with ducks inquisitively waiting for passers by to feed them, the river Avon flowing through where you can go punting, green houses containing specialist plant species and long winding gravel paths meandering through it all, perfect for a stroll or bike ride.

We spent a few hours strolling around the gardens and parklands chatting, stopping for a rest every now and then and just generally enjoying the fresh air that was helping to revive us after little sleep. It was the perfect start to our visit to this city rising from the ruins.

Here are my collection of photos from  my walk around The Christchurch Botanic Gardens. I hope you enjoy looking through them as much as I enjoyed my visit.

Details

You can find a good map of the park itself on the Christchurch Botanic Gardens website.

We parked curbside on the eastern side of the park on Rolleston Avenue near the Christchurch College.  There is however two dedicated parking areas in the park, one of the western side and the other on the northern side of the park.

The park is free to enter and gates are open from 07:00 to 21:00 daily.

There are bathroom facilities scattered around the grounds and a visitors centre and cafe where you can get drinks and food throughout the day.

Over to you!

Where in the world is your favourite place to enjoy spring? 

Let me know using the comments section below or join me on social media to start a conversation.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post.