Whangārei Quarry Gardens
Visitors make a beeline for Whangārei Quarry Gardens’ Ficus dammaropsis, the dinner plate fig, named because the 60-centimetre pleated leaves are big enough to eat off.
Interestingly, its fruit never matures here because the one species of wasp that ripens them is not present in New Zealand. The dinner plate fig is just one of many curious plants found here. Ceiba speciosa, the silk-floss tree, has a wickedly thorny trunk and produces pods that burst to release a candyfloss-like fluff. The bottle tree Brachychiton rupestris has a swollen trunk that gets so big in its native Queensland that Whangārei Quarry Gardens manager Guy Hessell was told the trees have been hollowed out and used as prison cells.
The gardens – sited on a disused quarry, once littered with abandoned cars and overgrown with gorse and pampas grass – have been turned into a horticultural attraction over 25 years, through the vision of Whangārei man Laughton King and a gritty volunteer army, who spent two years clearing rubbish before planting could begin. Local supporters rallied around after fire and flood disasters, and a group of 35 regulars now maintains the gardens. Our native Kiwi live in the surrounding bush and have been heard in the gardens.
Designed around a man-made lake,
