Garden more a work in regress

The Chinese garden under way in Queen’s Park isn’t so much a work in progress as a work in regress. The project has been subject to shrinkage as the Invercargill City Council has decided to avoid a blowout of the original $600,000 budget by scaling things back.

Which sounds disciplined.

But that’s a description hard to apply to any undertaking that has proven quite this messy.

Great chunks of the public frowned upon what struck them as a costly and not-so-necessary proposal to begin with.

Then came word of, shall we say, complexities. A Chinese garden has four basic components: water, rocks, plants and architecture. On the basis that if a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing right, our civic planners wanted the architectural components to have authenticity. Or at least look like they did. So they figured some structures could be built in China and imported.

The council’s record for importing stuff from China had already been besmirched by the 2015 foray to acquire festive decorations that proved non-compliant with electrical standards. Additionally, keeping local projects to budget has been proving problematic, notably in the council’s new Don St investment property.

Sure enough, it became clear the intended Chinese structures wouldn’t withstand the huffing and puffing of the building regulation inspectorate. Which is yet another sensitive issue hereabouts, what with one thing (say a museum) and another (say an art gallery).

So a Plan B, spending a further $250,000, was floated by council staff. Under correction from councillors, this promptly became a Plan C, which chiefly entailed screwing Plan B into a tight wee ball and just building a more modest garden.

Gone are the features of a water pavilion and an entrance sculpture, leaving a pond, rocks, plants and a moon gate.

Are we all clear on what a moon gate is? Picture a wall. Put a round hole in it. Walk through that.

Actually they’re kind of cool; infused with spiritual symbolism. In many respects, this one particular hole might be said to have some civic symbolism as well.

Given the situation the council finds itself in, the decision seems the right one. The real problem is how often this particular ‘‘given’’ is a given. There’s a horrid sense of lessons unlearned. Cr Karen Arnold rightly criticises the lack of robust breakdowns of costing, and Cr Ian Pottinger is hardly alone in wondering how the council has contrived still to be spending $600,000 on a pond, paths, rocks and a moon gate.

Perhaps it will be like one of those TV makeover shows and the grand reveal at the end will explain a lot.

Let’s remember that this project was a civic commitment the council made to Invercargill’s sister city Suqian, which has itself constructed an Invercargill-themed garden in China.

It’s been a gracious sister.

In its handbook The Glamorous Aspects of Suqian it throws some nice words our way. Invercargill, it says here, possesses a very good variety of shops, bars and restaurants and a unique collection of Victorian, Edwardian and Art Deco buildings. ‘‘In the museum there is a large lizard, and the Rose Garden. In Anderson Park, exquisite works of art are on display ...’’

So a little updating may be in order there.

The council’s record for importing stuff from China had already been besmirched by the 2015 foray to acquire festive decorations that proved non-compliant with electrical standards.