Dunedin Botanical Gardens - Glasshouses and Nursery

Celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2013, the Dunedin Botanic Garden is New Zealand's first botanic garden and holds the status of Garden of International Significance. It has more than 6,800 plant species and the song of wild native bellbirds, wood pigeons and tui.  It occupies 30.4 hectares in North Dunedin at an altitude of 25 – 85 metres above sea level.

The current project was designed to upgrade and enhance this facility. The nature of the project created a few challenges for the Dunedin designers MSS Consultants such as having the alpine and tropical sections side by side.  Tropical temperature needed to be 28 degrees while the alpine section requires temperatures of 8 – 15 degrees.  This required a separate chiller plant for the alpine section as the client didn’t want insulated panels between these sections. 

Because Dunedin City own vast tracks of forestry, the decision was made to install a wood chip boiler which was the most economic and sustainable option. 

Mechanical services pipe work was run in aquatherm blue multi fibre pipe and all plumbing pipe work hot and cold water in aquatherm green. This is the second botanical garden project that we are proud to be involved with, the former project being the new Christchurch Botanical Gardens at Hagley Park completed last year.

The completion date is March 2015 with the complex open to the public upon completion.

Consultants  : MSS Consultants Dunedin (Howard Healey & Mike Reid)

Plumbing      : Impact Plumbing Dunedin

Mechanical  : Atmos Engineering Dunedin