The Victoria Esplanade is the green spine of Palmerston North, running along the south bank of the Manawatū River below the central city. The 27-hectare park dates from 1897 — Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee — and was designed in the formal English-garden tradition, with mature trees, ornamental gardens, an aviary, and a children's playground.
The park's two best-known attractions are the Esplanade Scenic Railway, a working narrow-gauge miniature railway that has been giving children rides since 1969, and the more recent Wildbase Recovery centre, which lets visitors watch sick and injured native birds being rehabilitated by the Massey University veterinary school. The park is also the starting point for the long Manawatū River pathway, a paved riverside trail that runs for kilometres in both directions.