The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in New Zealand
7 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in New Zealand are Fiordland National Park, Abel Tasman National Park and Tane Mahuta. The list covers 7 gardens, parks and forests. Last updated 14 October 2026.
New Zealand split from other land masses tens of millions of years ago, and its forests evolved in isolation, full of species found nowhere else. Glaciers carved its southwest into fiords, the Southern Alps rise steeply from a rainy west coast, and ancient conifers such as the kauri survive in the north. A large share of the country is protected as national parks and reserves.
Fiordland National Park, part of the Te Wāhipounamu World Heritage Site, includes Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, where waterfalls pour down walls of rock into the sea. Abel Tasman National Park, the smallest in the country, is a coast of golden beaches and granite headlands at the top of the South Island. Tāne Mahuta in the Waipoua Forest is the largest living kauri tree, named after the Māori god of the forest. Westland Tai Poutini National Park holds the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, which descend toward lowland rainforest. That Wānaka Tree is a lone willow growing in the waters of Lake Wānaka, sprouted from an old fence post.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fiordland National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 2 | Abel Tasman National Park | National park | |
| 3 | Tane Mahuta | Remarkable tree | |
| 4 | Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park) | National park | |
| 5 | Westland Tai Poutini National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 6 | Mount Aspiring National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 7 | That Wānaka Tree | Remarkable tree |
01 Fiordland National Park
New Zealand45.386° S 167.347° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Julius_Silver from Pixabay That rain does something specific underwater that most visitors never see. Runoff stained brown by forest tannins settles into a layer up to 10 metres deep on top of the denser seawater, and that dark layer filters sunlight so effectively that light conditions at 10 metres underwater match what you'd normally find at 70 metres in the open ocean.
Did you know? Captain James Cook named Dusky Sound Dusky Bay in 1770 and later sheltered there with HMS Resolution on his second voyage.
02 Abel Tasman National Park
New Zealand40.900° S 172.971° E
Image by Ricardo_Helass from Pixabay The park was opened on 18 December 1942, three hundred years after the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman became the first European to reach New Zealand, when he anchored in Golden Bay in 1642. Much of the credit belongs to the ornithologist Pérrine Moncrieff, who campaigned for the reserve and served on its board for three decades. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was made its patron.
Did you know? Split Apple Rock, a granite boulder just off the park's southern coast, was cleaved in two along a natural joint in the stone.
03 Tane Mahuta
New Zealand35.601° S 173.527° E
W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0 Nobody knows exactly how old it is. Estimates range from about 1,250 to 2,500 years, which means the seed may have germinated anywhere between the centuries before Christ and the early Middle Ages. The tree is a survivor of the ancient subtropical rainforest that once covered much of the peninsula. It came to wider notice in January 1924, when surveyors marking out the route of what is now State Highway 12 through the forest came upon it.
Did you know? The Waipoua Forest around it was declared a sanctuary in 1952 to stop logging, and is the largest surviving remnant of northern New Zealand's kauri forests.
04 Te Papa-Kura-o-Taranaki (Egmont National Park)
New Zealand · 23.5 km from New Plymouth39.267° S 174.100° E
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 The park takes in three volcanic centres. Taranaki itself is geologically young, active for roughly 200,000 years, with a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak, on its southern flank; its last eruptive activity dates from the mid-19th century. To the north-west rise the much older and long-extinct Pouākai and Kaitake ranges, between which lies the Ahukawakawa Swamp, an unusual high-altitude sphagnum wetland at about 920 metres.
Did you know? Māori legend tells that Taranaki fled west after losing a fight with Tongariro over the mountain Pihanga.
05 Westland Tai Poutini National Park
New Zealand43.567° S 170.083° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by ThierryBEUVE from Pixabay Franz Josef Glacier, Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere, and Fox Glacier, Te Moeka o Tuawe, descend from the snowfields of the main divide towards valleys lined with rainforest, so that ice and green forest lie within sight of each other. Near Fox Glacier township lies Lake Matheson, a small dark lake formed when a block of glacial ice melted out as Fox Glacier retreated some 14,000 years ago. 6 km leads round it to the classic viewpoints.
Did you know? The snowfield feeding Franz Josef receives up to 15 metres of precipitation a year, among the highest totals in the world.
06 Mount Aspiring National Park
New Zealand44.383° S 168.733° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Tomas Sobek · CC BY 2.0 The landscape was shaped by ice. More than a hundred glaciers still cling to the ranges, and the broad, flat-floored valleys of the Matukituki, Dart, Rees and Wilkin rivers were scoured by much larger glaciers during the last ice age. Waterfalls spill from the valley walls, braided rivers spread across the valley floors, and above the bushline lie alpine meadows and tussock.
Did you know? Major Bernard Head made the first ascent of Mount Aspiring in November 1909.
07 That Wānaka Tree
New Zealand · 2.2 km from Wanaka44.698° S 169.117° E
Image by ArnaudMalanPhotography from Pixabay The tree's beauty is almost entirely a matter of setting and season. It is small and slightly crooked, its trunk rising from the lake as if from a mirror, and on still mornings its reflection doubles it exactly. Autumn turns the willow gold against the blue of the water; in winter it stands bare and graphic, with snow on the ranges beyond; at sunrise the lake can go pink and silver while the tree stays a dark silhouette.
Did you know? Life in cold lake water has left it stunted for a willow, with a single scrawny trunk and a crown only about six metres across.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful gardens, parks and forests in New Zealand?
- On our list, Fiordland National Park ranks first, followed by Abel Tasman National Park and Tane Mahuta.
- How old is Tāne Mahuta?
- Its age is estimated at between 1,250 and 2,500 years. It is the largest known living kauri, with a total height of about 51 metres.
- Is Milford Sound a fjord?
- Yes. Although it is called a sound, Milford Sound was carved by glaciers and then flooded by the sea, which makes it a fjord.
- How many gardens, parks and forests are on this list in New Zealand?
- The list covers 7 gardens, parks and forests.