The shrinking $600,000 Chinese garden

Wednesday, 6 June 2018

A $600,000 Chinese Friendship Garden being built in Invercargill will be about half the garden that was envisioned, and not everyone is happy.

Invercargill city councillors agreed at a Tuesday meeting to order kitset structures from China for the garden.

Groundworks and landscaping for the 1500 sqM garden in Queens Park is well under way and the pond preparation has been completed, while final placement of rocks and paving will wait until the kitset structures have been put in place.

However, the council will not get all of the garden it had agreed to due to a cost blowout.

Parks manager Robin Pagan said the 'cultural corridor' would not be included in the garden in order to keep to the council's $600,000 budget.

When questioned by Cr Karen Arnold, Pagan said the cultural corridor was itself worth $600,000, and described it as an open-sided walkway that would have made up about 45 per cent of the total garden structures.

Despite this, the Chinese garden would still include include a waterside pavilion, moon gate and entrance structure.

Arnold was not impressed.

'I want to record my absolute disappointment that we are getting 45 per cent less of a garden than what was suggested,' she said.

'You may as well say 50, so we are getting half of what we gave approval for, so that's a disappointing outcome.'

But councillor Ian Pottinger said Pagan needed to be cut some slack because working with foreign contractors was tough. 

Pottinger said he had visited the Chinese garden in Dunedin and was impressed at its authenticity, and the Invercargill Chinese garden also needed to tbe authentic.

No-one wanted to see Kiwi 4x2 timber painted up as something else, he said.

'The thing I will love about this when it's finished is it will be set in Queens Park … I am really looking forward to this, even in a slightly more restricted state.'

Cr Lesley Soper said the council would still get a very good Chinese garden.

Pagan told councillors that additional buildings could be put into the garden at a later date, while the landscaping work, to be done by parks staff, would be additional to the $600,000 budget.

Cr Lindsay Thomas said he wanted to see the reformed design.

'At the moment we are talking about $600,000 of what?

'We need to see what we are doing because I don't want us to have another delay, delay, delay,' Thomas said.

'Three years down the track and we have got a duck pond, so I want to see some detail and know exactly what our budget is, even the landscaping budget Mr Pagan, because we told the public $600,000 and when we tell the public we expect that.'

Cr Lloyd Esler said there were a lot of negative people in the room. 

'I think it's going to be a wonderful cultural addition.

'We are looking for things like this in our city … this is going to be a drawcard, even if it's not completed according to the original design.'

Part of the sister city agreement was Suqian would build a New Zealand garden, and Pagan said it was in the design stage.