Colonial landscape gardener : Alfred Buxton of Christchurch, New Zealand, 1872-1950

Abstract

Alfred Buxton (1872-1950) was New Zealand's most prominent landscape gardener of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. His first company, A.W. Buxton Limited, was a major Christchurch nursery, garden shop and employer, while rural fortunes prospered before and during World War 1. During that period he landscaped farmhouses, townhouse and urban parks and recreation grounds throughout New Zealand from Tolaga Bay to Invercargill, but mostly on the east side of North and South Islands. After A.W. Buxton Limited went into liquidation in 1926 he completed outstanding landscape contracts and continued landscape work until the late 1930s. In his final years he was an innovative flower grower based at Otaki. He died in 1950.