The Wellington Botanic Garden occupies 25 hectares of the hillside above the city centre in Kelburn, directly accessible from the upper cable car terminus. The garden combines formal sections — a rose garden, the Lady Norwood Rose Garden — with large tracts of protected native bush. The bush section feels genuinely wild for somewhere so close to the city centre, with tall podocarp trees and tuis calling overhead.
The best approach is to take the cable car up from Lambton Quay, walk through the garden at leisure, and descend on foot through the Town Belt tracks back into the city. The descent through native bush takes about 25 minutes and deposits you near the Thorndon neighbourhood, a short walk from Parliament. The garden is free to enter and is popular with Wellington families at weekends. The observatory near the top has evening public stargazing sessions when the sky is clear.