Hamilton Gardens

Hamilton is 150kms from Auckland – a 90 minute drive, just like a drive from Worli to Andheri!!! The quiet small town houses the Waikato University from where I had got a call for the other course that I was keen on – Masters in Digital Business. But in the end, I chose Masters in Business Analytics as it was based out of Auckland where there might be more job prospects for someone who came from a media background. Am not sure anymore if this was a good decision.

Anyways, Hamilton is also famous for its gardens. The large park spanning 54 hectares on the banks the Waikato River includes closed and open gardens, lawns, a lake, a nursery, a convention centre and behold, a cemetery.

We left by nine and on the way took a detour for another park, the Taitua Arboretum, which featured lovely trees, lakes and lots of cocks, as in roosters. These roosters were crowing at noon and the sound was nothing like “COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO”. Upon finishing a trail, we were hungry for chicken, desi style. And settled for Sub-Way.

 

On the way to the gardens we picked up beers and were discrete about the choice of where we parked to finish the subs with swigs of Asahi. The empty bottles were stowed away in the trunk to erase all trace and we entered the park soberly only to see a fat bare chested man sprawled on his garden chair in one of the park’s lawns sipping a bottle of Corona.  So much for discretion. You can drink responsibly in many of the NZ parks.

Meanwhile the gardens are famous for its themes:

  • -      Countries (Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Italian etc.)
  • -      Productive gardens (Sustainable backyard, herb garden, kitchen garden).
  • -      Fantasy collection (surrealist garden, picturesque garden, tropical garden) and so on.

Herbs garden looked like a lot of work, sustainable looked boring and the tropical and the English garden needed help. My overall favourites were the Japanese and the Italian section. In fact the Japanese one was more surreal than the surrealist garden itself. The Indian one called boastfully the Indian Char Bagh, arguably the finest of all the gardens, was closed for maintenance! What a shame!

A day well spent on a lovely drive and good company.

P.S - For some work, I had to go to the city of Cambridge a few days later which is close to Hamilton. I went to the gardens again to see if Indian Char Bagh was open but it wasn't. However on that day, the gardens looked super pretty with less crowd and cloudy weather. 





Winter trees at the Taitua Arboretum




Discrete beers at the Hamilton parking lot



Splitting point - from where all gardens begin in different directions






Italian Section




















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