A garden of vision
Sarah Foy visits her hometown several times a year and is inspired by Hamilton Gardens.
Taranaki Daily News
Tourist explore the Herb Garden.
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Gardening & Lifestyle
The mornings were cold and foggy. Our skirts were blue and then, as we progressed to high school netball, brown.
The courts seemed vast, but distances expand when you're young. We seemed to play on a plateau with nondescript ground sloping down below and in the distance, the wide Waikato River. The only thing of note was the rose gardens. But beds of staid hybrid teas and floribundas held no interest for a kid, even one who fancied flowers.
That was about 30 years ago. Now the netball courts I played on have gone, replaced in part by a smart carpark and grassy areas. And the rose gardens are far more expansive. Every year, they are the site of a highly regarded competition called the Pacific Rose Bowl Festival.
But what's captivating for a gardener is Hamilton Gardens as a whole. It's owned by the council, it spreads out across 53 hectares and it's a varied network of themed gardens. There's the exuberance and formality of the English Gardens, the preciseness of the Japanese and Chinese gardens, the boldness of an American Modernist Garden, gaudy colour in the Indian Char Bagh Garden and elegance in the Italian Renaissance Garden. The Kitchen Garden seems at least as big as a rugby field, the Sustainable Garden contains quirkiness and tight corners, the Herb Garden is ordered, and the new Maori Garden is lofty in design and horticultural ambition.
There's more: bush walks, traditional greenhouses, a cemetery, a horticulture education centre, a lake and big lawns, a cafe and information centre.
None of it was there when I was growing up in Hamilton. Development had begun back in the 1960s, but to us, it was merely the rose gardens. Pretty but dull. We had no expectation of sophistication or exoticism. We booked plane fares to Europe in the 1990s to find those things.
In pre-European times, Te Parapara, a part of the hapu Ngati Wairere, had occupied part of the area. In the early 19th century, part of the gardens was a rifle range and work began on a cemetery in another part. British military personnel manned a redoubt in the early 1860s.
A nursery was established on one edge about 1900 and that became the municipal nursery in 1951. In areas perceived to be less desirable, rubbish from the city was dumped.
Peter Sergel has been at the helm of the gardens for 15 years and has been designing its theme gardens since the early 1980s.
The Hamilton-bred landscape architect recalls it as "pretty wild", covered in gorse and scrubby vegetation. It officially opened on July 24, 1960, but no development happened until the early 1960s, when a tropical glasshouse was built. The glasshouse sat among 4 acres of traditional flower beds laid out among separate lawns.
In the meantime, other activities took place (and continued for some time afterwards), such as a go-kart track, the netball courts, a dog pound and a council works depot.
As a new decade approached, Hamilton announced it would hold a world rose convention, the idea driven by the mayor of the day, Denis Rogers. The Rogers Rose Garden was ready for the first convention in 1971.
Still another decade passed without any further change until the early 1980s, when a management plan was written. Hamilton garden architects wanted to explore the relationship between people and gardens or the "context and meaning of gardens", Peter says. People and the way they mould plants and gardens are the focus, not solely the plants.
These days, the gardens are broken up into the Paradise, Productive, Fantasy, Cultivar and Landscape collections. The Chinese, English, Japanese, Modernist, Italian and Indian gardens represent different aspects of small garden design and come under the umbrella of the Paradise Collection. But there's no intention to represent every culture.
"It's the story of gardening. It's not gardens from different countries," Peter says.
The productive collection encompasses the Te Parapara Maori Garden - about to be completed - the walled Kitchen Garden, the Herb Garden and the Sustainable Backyard Garden. The Cultivar Collection is the original rose garden and the 40-year-old glasshouse, as well as the surrounding Camellia Garden, a Rhododendron Lawn and the New Zealand Cultivar Garden.
The Landscape Collection includes a woodland area, the historic cemetery, a valley walk and bush on the river banks.
The fifth collection, the Fantasy Collection, contains just one garden, the Perfume Garden, but three more are planned. A pamphlet on the Surrealist Garden, to begin in July, says everything will be five times the normal size.
"The oversized flowers may even talk to you. However, what will really set this garden apart are the giant topiary figures or 'Trons'," the pamphlet says. "Out of the corner of your eye, you might even notice some of them moving."
Impressive as the gardens look, it's the behind-the-scenes stuff that is unexpected. The friends of the garden voluntarily staff the information centre every day except Christmas Day. They also run tours. At least a dozen trusts have had input into each of the gardens, including raising funds.
City council staff carry out much of the maintenance, but contractors are also involved. The same individuals or groups of people tend to the same gardens, ensuring consistancy.
It's hard to work out if there's been one driving force - a particular group of city councillors, a passionate parks official, a group of horticultural buffs, or Peter himself.
"For me personally, it's my hobby and interest," he says of the continual development and of gardening itself. But he's wary of self-promotion.
"It's the community behind it. A lot of people see it as very good for Hamilton. I think we can say with some justification Hamilton Gardens overseas is better known than Hamilton, the city."
According to the last visitor survey conducted about three years ago, the gardens attracted 1.3 million visitors per annum, half of them out-of-towners. About 2000 events are booked in its grounds and rooms each year.
Being on a state highway is an advantage and "free and independent travellers' may be more likely to come than coach tours. One reason people don't come and drop tourists off is, if they enjoy themselves, they can't find them easily," Peter says.
It would be hard to do the gardens justice in an hour.
After our interview, I wander the gardens as I've regularly done, marvelling once again at the ongoing vision.
Hamilton Gardens stacks up well against the handful of overseas gardens I've visited. I also prefer it to the Auckland Botanic Gardens and find it more attention-grabbing than Christchurch Botanic Gardens.
Visitors I chat to agree. A young couple from Belgium love the different styles within its grounds and can't believe it's free. Two men from Israel are shyly complimentary, while a group of three women, two of them Aucklanders, are equally impressed.
Two families from South Africa, one living here, one visiting from their homeland, gush with enthusiasm.
"We have nothing like this in South Africa," they say. "You could pitch a tent here, there's so much to see. When you got tired of looking at the plants, you could look at the river."
The gardens are open year round and are free. There's a good information centre, good toilets and a reasonable cafe. There are also lots of picnic areas and good signage.
