GAY Guysers-Gazette-Issue-16

If you love plants, gardens and
landscaping you’ll thoroughly enjoy a day
out from Rotorua to visit the wonderful
and award-winning Hamilton Gardens.
Even in winter, as long as you have a fine
day you will love it here!
Hamilton Gardens is a public garden park in
the south of Hamilton owned and managed
by Hamilton City Council. The 54-hectare park
is based on the banks of the Waikato River.
It is the Waikato Region’s most popular visitor
attraction, attracting more than 1 million
people a year.
Hamilton Gardens is described as a botanical
garden, but does not technically qualify as a
botanical garden. Instead, the site features 21
gardens representing the art, beliefs, lifestyles
and traditions of different civilisations or
historical garden styles. These gardens
are grouped into the Paradise, Productive,
Fantasy, Cultivar and Landscape garden
collections, and there is space for gardens
which are still in development.
The first development of the gardens began
in the early 1960s at what was then the city's
waste disposal site. The first substantial
development, the Rogers Rose Garden, was
opened in 1971 in an attempt to block
highway development over the site. Since
1982 many newly developed areas have been
opened to the public.
Hamilton Gardens won the Garden of the
Year award at the International Garden
Tourism Awards in Metz, France in 2014, after
being selected by a global jury of garden
experts.
Lonely Planet encourages visitors to the
gardens to see the “extravagant themed
enclosed gardens” with “colonnades, pagodas
and a mini Taj Mahal”. Blogger David Farrer
described Hamilton Gardens as a “hidden
treasure” and a “great place to spend half a
day”.
guysers.co.nz
Continued over...
Oh! Hello!
This must be the
Maori Garden?
Guysers Gazette 15