Eye-catching landscape art garden opens in Paraparaumu

A landscape art installation in Paraparaumu featuring striking white rope sculptures and traditional carvings is now open to the public.

Designed by award-winning landscape architect Ben Hoyle, Te Huarahi Raupo is a garden created to represent tangata whenua's connections to the land and to provide a reflective space for the community to enjoy.

Located in Kapiti Rd, on Kapiti Coast Airport land, the garden features Māori carvings by Ōtaki master carver Chris Gerretzen, along with contemporary sculptures, internal paths, interpretive signage, lawn areas and native plants, including the existing remnant Raupo wetland.

The idea for the garden came about thanks to Sir Noel Robinson, who wanted to create an open space that shared the history of people and events that have shaped Kāpiti.

Mr Hoyle said the garden's design represents two journeys.

One reflects the original journey of waka (canoe) across the interior waterways that once dominated the Kāpiti landscape in precolonial time, and is represented in the blue pathway.

The second is a spiritual journey, where from the centre of the swirling eddies, five contemporary pou whenua (land post), emerge from Papatuanuku (earth mother), as kaitiaki (guardians).

These have been bound by the rope veins of their tupuna (ancestors).