Queenstown Gardens

The stone gateway marking the entrance to Queenstown Gardens sits at the edge of a peninsula jutting into Lake Wakatipu. William Gilbert Rees, the town’s first European settler, set this land aside as a public reserve in eighteen sixty-seven. While the rest of the gold-rush settlement scrambled for quick profit, the local council planted Douglas firs and English oaks here. One gardener, David Tannock, later introduced exotic trees that now tower over the walking tracks and the championship frisbee golf course.