The Christchurch Botanic Gardens, located in the central city of Christchurch, New Zealand, were founded in 1863 when an English oak was planted to commemorate the solemnisation of the marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

The Gardens sprawl over an area of 21 hectares and lie adjacent to the loop of the Avon River next to Hagley Park. The Christchurch Botanic Gardens have a variety of collection of exotic and local plants of New Zealand. Some of the many attractions of these beautiful Gardens include:

A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden dedicated to the collection, cultivation and display of a wide range of plants labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be greenhouses, shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants. Visitor services at a botanical garden might include tours, educational displays, art exhibitions, book rooms, open-air theatrical and musical performances, and other entertainment.

Botanical gardens are often run by universities or other scientific research organizations, and often have associated herbaria and research programmes in plant taxonomy or some other aspect of botanical science. In principle, their role is to maintain documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display, and education, although this will depend on the resources available and the special interests pursued at each particular garden.

A botanical garden or botanic garden is a particular kind of formal garden, usually with a scientific or educational purpose.

It may also refer to:

Zurich

Transport

Books

See also

Botanic Gardens is a public park in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Occupying 28 acres (110,000 m²) of south Belfast, the gardens are popular with office workers, students and tourists. They are located on Stranmillis Road in Queen's Quarter, with Queen's University nearby. The Ulster Museum is located at the main entrance.

History

The gardens opened in 1828 as the private Royal Belfast Botanical Gardens. It continued as a private park for many years, only opening to members of the public on Sundays prior to 1895. Then it became a public park in 1895 when the Belfast Corporation bought the gardens from the Belfast Botanical and Horticultural Society. The Belfast Corporation was the predecessor of Belfast City Council, the present owner.

The Palm House

The gardens' most notable feature is the Palm House conservatory. The foundation stone was laid by the Marquess of Donegall in 1839 and work was completed in 1840. It is one of the earliest examples of a curvilinear cast iron glasshouses in the world. Designed by Charles Lanyon and built by Richard Turner, Belfast's Palm House predates the glasshouses at Kew and the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, both of which Turner went on to build. The Palm House consists of two wings, the cool wing and the tropical wing. Lanyon altered his original plans to increase the height of the latter wing's dome, allowing for much taller plants. In the past these have included an 11 metre tall Globe Spear Lily. The lily, which is native to Australia, finally bloomed in March 2005 after a 23 year wait. The Palm House also features a 400-year-old Xanthorrhoea .

Christchurch (/ˈkraɪstʃɜːrtʃ/; Māori: Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. The Christchurch urban area lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula. It is home to 381,800 residents, making it New Zealand's third most-populous urban area behind Auckland and Wellington.

The city was named by the Canterbury Association, which settled the surrounding province of Canterbury. The name of Christchurch was agreed on at the first meeting of the association on 27 March 1848. It was suggested by John Robert Godley, who had attended Christ Church, Oxford. Some early writers called the town Christ Church, but it was recorded as Christchurch in the minutes of the management committee of the association. Christchurch became a city by Royal Charter on 31 July 1856, making it officially the oldest established city in New Zealand.

The river that flows through the centre of the city (its banks now largely forming an urban park) was named Avon at the request of the pioneering Deans brothers to commemorate the Scottish Avon, which rises in the Ayrshire hills near what was their grandfathers' farm and flows into the Clyde.

Christchurch is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1997 by Christopher Chope of the Conservative Party. Centred on the town of the same name in Dorset that has a non-commercial harbour it includes the small resort of Mudeford, Ferndown, West Moors, St Leonards and station-served woodside settlement of Highcliffe and has been a Conservative safe seat since 1997.

History

The original Christchurch constituency, a parliamentary borough, existed from 1572 until 1918.

The constituency was re-created as a county constituency in 1983 from parts of the seat of Christchurch and Lymington, North Dorset and New Forest. It has since 1983 seen strong Conservative majorities, with the exception of a 1993 by-election caused by the death of Robert Adley when it was won by Diana Maddock a Liberal Democrat. The Conservatives regained the seat at the next general election in 1997, despite their landslide defeat nationally and Chris Chope has retained it ever since.

Christchurch was a parliamentary electorate in Christchurch, New Zealand. It existed three times. Originally it was the Town of Christchurch from 1853 to 1860. From the 1860–61 election to the 1871 election, it existed as City of Christchurch. It then existed from the 1875–76 election until the 1881 election. The last period was from the 1890 election to the 1905 election. Since the 1946 election, a similarly named electorate called Christchurch Central has been in existence.

The historic electorate was represented by 21 members of parliament. For some of the time, it was represented by one member at a time. During other periods, it was one of the few three-member electorates in New Zealand.

Population centres

In December 1887, the House of Representatives voted to reduce its membership from general electorates from 91 to 70. The 1890 electoral redistribution used the same 1886 census data used for the 1887 electoral redistribution. In addition, three-member electorates were introduced in the four main centres. This resulted in a major restructuring of electorates, and Christchurch was one of eight electorates to be re-created for the 1890 election.