Information:

In 1973, Hundertwasser traveled to New Zealand for the first time on the occasion of an invitation from the City Art Gallery in Auckland and the opening of his exhibition tour of museums in New Zealand and Australia.
In 1975 he purchased a farm in the Bay of Islands and in 1976 Hundertwasser started reverting his estate back to nature, effectively standing up for nature's rights.
 
Hundertwasser, who long before the existence of the green parties was an advocate of the ecological movement, has planted more than 100,000 trees in the Kaurinui Valley, not in order to produce timber, but to improve the soil, the water, the air, and for the sake of beauty. He built canals, ponds, water wheels and water purification plants. He utilised solar and water energy, he experimented and used the humus toilet.  In the Garden of the Happy Dead he practiced his ecological burial.
 
Hundertwasser built his own individual homemade architecture complete with grass roof. The Bottlehouse was built in 1978/79 with glass bottle walls and a grass roof. The former pigsty was redesigned in 1994/95 with walls designed with earth tiles and pieces of firewood. The Mountain Hut was cut into the slope of the hill so three quarters of the height of the back of the hut is the natural clay earth.