Lennox Gardens District Park

Canberra Nara Peace Park

Canberra Nara Peace Park features a small Japanese-themed garden, large wooden gate and gazebo, and a number of iconic cherry blossom trees. It also has two large stone lanterns: a large Kasuga lantern weighing 5 tonnes and a large Yukimi lantern weighing 3 tonnes.

The park was officially renamed to Canberra Nara Peace Park in 2010 and the occasion was marked by the commissioning of a major new artwork by the Japanese sculptor Shinki Kato. Shinki Kato's pagoda, made of pre-rusted steel plates, is 8 metres tall and references Nara's famous 5-storey pagoda, erected in 725 by the Empress Komyoh.

The gardens were a gift from the people of Nara to the people of Canberra and celebrate the sister city link between Canberra, Australia’s modern capital, and Nara, Japan’s ancient capital.

Design and construction was carried out by local designers and contractors who consulted closely with the city of Nara and the Embassy of Japan. The park was designed to create the feel of a traditional Japanese garden within the surrounds of a Canberra public park. A distinctive feature of Canberra Nara Peace Park is its ‘borrowed landscape’ or the extension of the park's boundaries to encompass landmarks such as Lake Burley Griffin, Black Mountain, Mount Ainslie and Lotus Bay.

Plantings include:

• 24 cherr­­y blossom trees
• 4 crepe myrtles
• 10 Japanese maples
• 1 Japanese red pine
• Japanese lily of the valley (which is the most common shrub grown in the city of Nara's parks because the deer will not nibble its leaves)

European heritage

Lennox Gardens has strong historic links to the early days of the national capital. The formal and exotic style is intended to be consistent with the gardens of Hotel Canberra and Albert Hall.

Lennox Gardens is a small part of the original Royal Canberra Golf Course established in the 1920s on the Molonglo River floodplain downstream of Lennox Crossing. Lennox Crossing was a low-level bridge linking Acton with South Canberra.

With the filling of Lake Burley Griffin in the 1960s, the golf course and the crossing were submerged. Remaining above lake level was a portion of one fairway, the clubhouse and associated tree planting. This area was named Lennox Gardens.

There is a large ageing Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) amongst a group of coniferous trees marking the site of the clubhouse near the northern end of Lennox Gardens. It is the sole survivor of several planted by Charles Kaye late in 1918 to commemorate the return of his son Frank from the First World War.

The park was named after David Lennox (1788–1873) who was a noted Scottish-born bridge builder in NSW and Victoria.

Major development of Lennox Gardens started in the 1980s.