{"id":229099,"date":"2026-01-12T02:14:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/229099\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T02:14:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T02:14:06","slug":"neglected-bowing-green-lawn-at-rotoruas-government-gardens-an-eyesore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/229099\/","title":{"rendered":"Neglected bowing green lawn at Rotorua\u2018s Government Gardens an \u2018eyesore\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Government Gardens are a huge tourist drawcard, especially at this time of year. I\u2019ve been photographing them for 30 years and have never seen the lawns like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just can\u2019t understand why they got into this state. It\u2019s totally unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotorua Lakes Council spokeswoman said the overgrown area was one of three bowling greens leased and maintained by the Rotorua Bowling Club.<\/p>\n

The spokeswoman said the area had since been mowed by a contractor. <\/p>\n

\u201cAreas in the Government Gardens for which the council is responsible are regularly maintained, depending on weather and growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rotorua Bowling Club president Brian Denny said he was unaware of the issue until contacted by the Rotorua Daily Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are terribly sorry that this has been witnessed. Due to the bad weather experienced in early December, we were unable to get to maintain that particular green.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the greenkeeper would make sure maintenance of the green was kept up, weather permitting.<\/p>\n

Sandra Conchie<\/a> is a senior journalist at the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post who has been a journalist for 25 years. She mainly covers police, court and other justice stories, as well as general news. She has been a Canon Media Awards regional\/community reporter of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Government Gardens are a huge tourist drawcard, especially at this time of year. I\u2019ve been photographing them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8831,1975,136538,45084,30407,266,2518,85414,119633,111,43,139,69,38715],"class_list":{"0":"post-229099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-an","9":"tag-at","10":"tag-bowing","11":"tag-eyesore","12":"tag-gardens","13":"tag-government","14":"tag-green","15":"tag-lawn","16":"tag-neglected","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-newzealand","20":"tag-nz","21":"tag-rotoruas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}