It’s Anniversary Season for Pukekura Park

New Plymouth’s Pukekura Park will chalk up three significant milestones this summer season.


On 6 November it will be 100 years since The Rec Board changed the park’s name from The Recreation Ground (or ‘The Rec’) to Pukekura Park.

Then on 28 January the Fernery and Display Houses will mark 80 years of operation, while on 25 February the TSB Bowl of Brooklands will have its 50th anniversary since it began with the first Festival of the Pines event.

“This anniversary season is a good time to reflect on the generations of people who have grown up enjoying the park and its major features over the decades,” says Curator Pukekura Park Chris Connolly.

“Pukekura Park is recognised nationally and internationally as a great example of a public park. Over the years it has won horticulture and event awards, and it has seen some of the biggest entertainers in the business on the Bowl’s stage.

“Yet it all started as a lake for public swimming. The park itself has grown over the years – both in size and in its plant collection – and its success is due to the commitment of successive councils, highly regarded curators and the general public to continually develop its potential,” he says.

When The Rec opened in 1876 it covered just 15ha – a little more than a quarter of the 52ha that comprise Pukekura Park today.

Over the following years the Pukekura Stream was dammed to create the main lake, a bathing shed was constructed for swimmers to change into their togs, a swamp was transformed into the sportsground, and Poet’s Bridge, the bandstand, the sportsground’s terraces and the fountain lake were built.

Then on 6 November 1907, an 18-line long and involved motion to adopt the name Pukekura Park was approved by The Rec Board, by four votes to five, after considerable argument by the board’s members.

By 7 December the Sports Ground Committee was referring to ‘the Pukekura Park Board’, and the 15 January 1908 meeting of the board was reported in The Taranaki Herald as ‘Notes from Pukekura Park’.

The Fernery and Display Houses with their unique connecting tunnels were built out of a gorse-tangled clay bank and opened to the public on 28 January 1928. The resulting facility is regarded as the best public display conservatory in New Zealand, and compares very favourably with major ones overseas, says Mr Connolly.

Meanwhile the idea of a sound shell for the park was raised by the Pukekura Park Committee in 1954 before it was later shelved – but two years later it was picked up again by New Plymouth public relations officer Eric Handbury.

Thousands of hours of volunteers’ time over several months in 1957 saw a large bowl-shaped valley containing a lake at the far end of the park gradually transformed into the Bowl of Brooklands.

Just four weeks before the first Festival of the Pines event was to start, 25 volunteers hoisted the soundshell into place, and the full stage was completed just two weeks before the festival opened.

That first Festival of the Pines ran for seven days, attracting 45,000 people to a line-up that included Irish tenor Patrick O’Hagen, ballet, an open-air theatre, a Miss Bowl of Brooklands contest, a massed choir and a concert by the National Orchestra. The orchestra’s show ended with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture with howitzers borrowed from the New Zealand Army, and fireworks giving a glorious display.

The largest audience for a single concert at the Bowl was in 1968 when 17,500 people attended a Seekers concert. About 15,000 turned up for Split Enz in 1984, 10,000 for UB40 in 1989, 15,000 for Cliff Richard and Olivia Newton John in 1998 and 7,000 for Michael Crawford in 2006.

This concert season will be launched with one of the biggest names in the business, Elton John, performing his only New Zealand show at the TSB Bowl of Brooklands on 6 December. Meanwhile, Womad (World of Music, Arts and Dance) will return to the Bowl in March next year.

“Over the years the name Pukekura Park has become synonymous with large-scale, highly popular events that keep bringing people back year after year, such as the award-winning TSB Bank Festival of Lights,” says Mr Connolly.

“Everyone who works in the park today knows they have a huge legacy to live up to. They are the caretakers of this magnificent park, and they are working not just for today’s visitors but also for the generations of people to come.”

To celebrate the Fernery and Display House’s 80th anniversary, the first 80 visitors to the fernery during the week of 28 January will receive a free plant. The public are also encouraged to dress up in period costume and bring a picnic to the Hatchery Lawn on Wednesday 30 January and enjoy entertainment by The Ritz Big Band, playing music from the ’30s to the ’60s, from 7.30pm-10.00pm.
The 100th anniversary of the naming of Pukekura Park will be marked with a tree planting by people who have had a long association with the park.

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