Dunedin Chinese Garden - Garden Features

Garden Features

The Dunedin Chinese Garden is designed as a late Ming/early Qing Scholar’s garden, and is separated from the rest of the city by a four metre perimeter wall. It is centred on a large lake, around which are numerous structures: an Entrance hall, a square pavilion, a study, a climbing mountain half-pavilion and corridor, a tea house, and two-storey conference rooms. A zigzag bridge crosses the lake and connects with Chongyuan, a central pavilion. At the entrance to the garden is an elaborate Pai Lou archway.

Particular care was taken in the balance of movement and static elements, with the latter predominating . The most important vistas were to be those overlooking the central lake, with elements of movement and stasis linked by winding paths.

The garden's site covers an area of some 2500 square metres, and its construction included the pouring of 560 cubic metres of concrete, the use of over 280 tonnes of sand, 130 tonnes of hand-finished granite paving stones, as well as 380,000 hand-made roof tiles, and hand-constructed bricks and lattice-work. Trees planted around the outside of the garden walls will eventually shield the garden from many of the views and noises of the city which surrounds it. Almost 1000 tonnes of rock from Lake Taihu - an important feature of Chinese architecture for over 1000 years - was imported for the construction. Taihu faces environmental damage from excessive quarrying from the lake floor.