Hamilton Gardens

In March, we took a small vacation to Hamilton. Not a long trip or a far trip but we thought we would take Thomas and do a few experiences. The first one on Saturday was the Hamilton Botanical Gardens.

It was a really nice botanical gardens, much like the one in Adelaide, in that it was more an example of different garden styles than different plants and their morphologies. The first part was gardens around the world so we wondered through Japanese Zen and water gardens, Indian, Italian, English and Chinese gardens. There is definitely something intriguing and mesmerizing about the oriental gardens. My personal favourite has always been the Japanese water gardens, the way it doesn't try to manipulate nature in any great degree. It has an elegant and yet natural feel to these gardens that conjure a sense of serenity as you sit and enjoy the view. I also love the use of water as well as rock in these gardens, both an integral part of nature that we often leave out in western style gardens.

These oriental gardens also included some amazing architecture, from the very ground we stood on to the numerous walls, tea rooms, and pagodas that brought a bit more authenticity to the gardens that made you almost feel like you were in an the countries where these styles are prominent.

The architectural components were even more heavily integrated into the Indian and Italian gardens. Walls, buildings, and heavily structured gardens, fountains, and walkways. The buildings on the far end of these gardens not only offered optimal view of the garden setting, but also a wonderful view of the Waikato River that runs below the gardens. Both of these places were wonderfully set up to accommodate weddings and indeed there were numerous wedding parties coming and going on the day.

As much as I do enjoy a well structured garden sometimes I find a garden goes from architecture supporting a well planned out set of plants as was seen in the previous gardens, to a more architectural designed space that is more about the artistic placement of the structural elements and the plants are just an accent. The modern garden was more of the later and probably my least favourite. Nature is amazing and for me (not everyone obviously), a garden is about showing off the plants, not the structural elements, or at the very least having both complimenting each other.

Aside from the wedding parties we were also inundated with people dressing up for some sort of cosplay event. From popular television and movies to anime and video games, there were all kinds of characters and costumes abound including what seemed to be an Anne of Green Gables costume.

Next were the Maori, herb, and kitchen gardens. The Maori garden was adorned with wood carvings over a Kumara field, which was definitely interesting to see, however we found ourselves distracted by a roaming choir practicing.

The herb and kitchen gardens were much as you would expect, filled with herbs and vegetables, respectively. The kitchen garden was a nice walk, but the shining part was the herb garden, filled with plants that were very familiar taking up residence in our spice cupboard, some that were familiar but not what we would have considered herbs, and others we had never heard of before. My favourite was sneezewort, which was used in herbal medicine for many ailments, but none that necessarily have to do with sneezing.

At this point, someone started to wake and was definitely hungry so we hurried through the few remaining gardens, being followed by the choir. So along we pressed through the intricate tudor garden with well trimmed bushes in mesmerizing shapes and the tropical garden that resembled the wonderful gardens we had seen in Cairns.

Finally with a fully awake and smiling baby, we found a place to eat while we listened to the choir sing Africa by Toto. Excited from all the sounds of the choir, we packed Thomas back up into the car and headed to the hotel where we would get some food and wait for the activity, the balloon festival.