ABSTRACT
Around 1875, W. W. Smith arrived in New Zealand, and worked industriously for four-and-a-half years as gardener on John Acland’s Mt Peel Station in Canterbury, a notable colonial estate with its large garden and extensive plantings of Australian eucalypts, conifers, elms, oaks and cedars. This chapter discusses the small stock of biographical studies of New Zealand park and domain curators and landscape architects. Smith’s reference from Burghley Park highlighted his intelligence and interests. Smith was actively involved in tree planting, but the Domain in the early years of his tenure suffered from some unseasonal climatic and weather events. In other parts of the Domain, Smith concentrated on trees and instead of straight pathways favoured curvilinear paths and more naturalistic plantings. The contrasting trajectory of Smith’s work at Pukekura Park has been separately addressed elsewhere, but it is useful to mention it here in order to place his earlier years at the Ashburton Domain into broader context.
