Begonia House and Picnic Cafe

The almost sixty-meter-long glass building stretches along the rose garden and continues its formal pattern. Inside, collections for the public were kept year-round, and the air was cooled by fans passing it through wet fibrous panels. Over time, a tearoom section appeared at the side, where Picnic Cafe now operates. While the halls are being renewed, the plants are kept in nurseries, and the cafe remains open.

Wellington's first begonias were shown to the public in a working greenhouse established at the garden nursery in nineteen thirteen. There were so many visitors that the space had to be enlarged; in a photograph from nineteen twenty-four, hundreds of people stand in front of the entrance.

Rosina Norwood decided to help the gardeners turn the cramped greenhouse into a true winter garden. In nineteen thirty-nine, she offered two hundred pounds, but war began and the city postponed the project. After the war, Edward Hutt returned to the idea. He set aside the south side of the rose garden for the new building: its long glass facade was to enclose the garden's formal layout.

There was still not enough money. In June nineteen sixty, Charles Norwood gave the city twenty thousand pounds—one hundred times Rosina's first contribution. He had earned this money from cars: he founded Dominion Motors, which imported and assembled Morris cars in New Zealand. The family had waited twenty-one years for the plan to be realized; Charles now paid for the construction in full.

Staff from the city's parks department designed and built the approximately sixty-meter-long building themselves. Gardeners from New Zealand and other countries sent plants and advice. To regulate the temperature, they installed a system that was still rare here: fans drew air through constantly moistened fibrous panels. Plant propagation was moved to Berhampore Nursery, and the new greenhouse was given over to visitors and year-round displays. On December twenty-second, nineteen sixty, it opened as the largest glasshouse in the Southern Hemisphere at that time.

Begonias gave the building its name because in summer their tuberous varieties occupied the main display cases. The plant's name also comes from a surname. The French botanist Charles Plumier named plants he found in the Caribbean after his patron Michel Bégon, a colonial administrator who supported botanical research.

The Norwood family continued to add to the public part of the complex. In nineteen eighty-one, a room for tea gatherings appeared at the eastern end through their donation; the present tearoom was built in nineteen ninety-four. It is now occupied by Picnic Cafe.

The glass halls are temporarily closed for repairs. Gardeners have moved the collection to the Botanic Garden and Berhampore nurseries, where the plants will be kept until they return to the renovated greenhouses. The cafe at the eastern end remains open—on the very site the Norwood family added to the winter garden given to the city.