Surrounded by butterflies - Visit to Wellington Botanic Garden

May 2026

Over the Easter school holidays I took the family down to Wellington to visit the capital and I suffered the nature equivalent of culture shock. I got incredibly excited when I spotted a kākā in my Auckland garden last winter. In Wellington they have flocks of them year round. In Auckland I celebrate when I have a couple of butterflies in the garden. In Wellington I was surrounded by them.

This is mind-blowing for an Aucklander who only knows the waspy state of things. There is a term for this - shifting baseline syndrome. We don't know there is environmental degradation because our "normal" is what it is like afterwards. I have to admit to thinking the stories of butterfly numbers from our older generation were rose-tinted, despite having seen the photos of Butterfly Bay in the 1960s, but visiting Wellington has underlined how bad things are at the top of the North Island.

It is easy to see a range of butterflies in the Wellington region - coppers, blues, monarchs, admirals, the list goes on. You don't even need to leave the city centre - a walk along the waterfront yields sightings. However, if you want to see a lot of butterflies, the best place is the Wellington Botanic Garden.

The view towards the duck pond from the Treehouse deck - a great place to also spot admirals

The Botanic Garden is 25 hectares of themed spaces that stretches from the top of a hill down towards the city centre. I used iNaturalist to see where the most butterfly sightings were and took the iconic cable car from Lambton Quay. There were yellow admirals / kahukōwhai as soon as I got off the cable car. Indeed, yellow admirals are the most recorded butterfly in the region, followed by red admirals, which means that there must be a lot of nettles around.

A monarch on a dahlia in the display garden

As I walked down through the gardens I saw yellow admirals sunning themselves on the trunks of trees and flying around, as well as cabbage whites and the odd monarch. Red admirals will also land on sunny tree trunks to sun-bake, but I wasn't sharp-eyed enough to see one. I blame getting distracted by all the kākā activity - there was constant calling and bickering overhead. North Island kākā are now classified as "at risk: recovering" (although this category has been re-named "threatened – nationally increasing", which sounds less like getting over a hangover and more long-term.) It is apt that the Māori name gifted to the gardens means kākā perch.

The signage at the display garden asking some pertinent butterfly-related questions

The main site for butterflies was on the far side of the Botanic Garden in the display garden, which is at the bottom of the hill. I didn't even make it into the space before a trio of yellow admirals chased a monarch butterfly around me. Having been used to the monarchs seeing off all-comers, it was amusing to see the yellow admirals ganging up and ruling the roost instead.

The display gardens had annuals and perennials planted in large strips, alongside grasses. There were Mexican bush sages, single French marigolds, dahlias, hebes, what looked like Salvia mexicana 'Limelight', burgundy Arctotis / African daisies, red penstemon, lavender, ajuga and more. It was an amazing pollinator garden. Nearby I saw a yellow admiral and a monarch feedingon the flowers of Fatsia japonica. In the display garden it was the dahlias and the French marigolds that were feeding both butterfly species. I wish I'd seen it in full midday sun at the height of insect activity. You can see from the photos that the shadows were already long when I got there, but it was still lovely. I heartily recommend a visit.

One of the beds in the display garden with echnicaea, salvias and hebes

I also went looking in the Botanic Garden for the kārearea. Whilst I found their favourite pine trees and a half eaten young rat below, they were not at home. Later, from the bar at the top of the cable car, I saw one flying in the distance below me. That was a pretty good way to end a visit to Wellington Botanic Garden!

Wellingtonians' urban and suburban relationship with nature is streets ahead of ours in Auckland. I was going to say that Wellingtonians are lucky, but a lot of it is vision backed up with hard work. When Google tells me Wellington is a global leader in urban biodiversity restoration, I believe it. I visited the city in 2006, including the (then named) Karori Sanctuary, and, in the last few years, as my interest in restoration has grown, I followed Wellington's progress and was aware of the achievements. Experiencing the results in person in 2026 was still a shock. There is a lot of good work being done in Auckland, but the sanctuaries are off shore or on peninsulas, so the overspill is less dramatic than from Zealandia into the Wellington suburbs. Auckland needs more backyard trapping before it can hope to host some of these rarer species of birds beyond the fences.