The place
A garden of native plants only
Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush is New Zealand’s only public botanic garden devoted solely to native plants. More than 1,200 species grow here, including some of the rarest alive. It is eight minutes from central Wellington, in a valley of old rātā and podocarp.
The rock garden, Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush.
Time
A hundred years of long-term thinking
In 1860 a farmer named Job Wilton fenced off seven hectares of old forest while his neighbours were clearing theirs. In 1926 the botanist Leonard Cockayne turned the land beside it into an open-air museum of native plants, the first garden in the country given only to them. Cockayne wrote a four-point plan that year. The garden still runs on it.
The community
The people who brought the birds back
Volunteers have planted 55,000 native plants in the Kaiwharawhara valley since 2000. A trapping group called RAMBO, Rodents and Mustelids Blitzing Ōtari, has worked the forest for close to 20 years. Bird numbers are up more than 40% in 12 years and kererū have tripled. That is the soundscape the Pae will sit inside.
A path through the bush, Ōtari.
The designer
Announced in October
The designer is announced on 12 October, in the garden’s centenary month, and the Pae is installed by the middle of 2027.
Time
One hundred down
Ōtari has been working in centuries since 1926. The Pae is the garden’s gift to its own next hundred years.
The timeline
- 1860 Job Wilton fences seven hectares of old forest while his neighbours are clearing theirs.
- 1926 Leonard Cockayne founds the open-air native plant museum, the first garden in the country given only to native plants.
- 1970s The council plans a road through the bush. Architect Robert Fantl organises a protest that stops it, and saves the 800-year-old rimu, the oldest tree in Wellington.
- 2018 The Lions Ōtari Native Plant Laboratory opens. It has since saved rare orchids from extinction and seed-banked kauri against dieback, using seed from Cockayne’s own trees.
- March 2026 Four partners issue a brief to seven invited artists.
- 12 October 2026 The artist is announced, in Ōtari’s centenary month.
- Mid 2027 Pae installed.
What your gift builds
A Pae in a garden that has been thinking in centuries for a hundred years. Four organisations are making it together: the Wellington Sculpture Trust, the Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush Trust, Wellington City Council and Paererewā.
Regenerating bush, Ōtari.