Hamilton Gardens

If you’ve ever wanted to be transported not only to another place but also another time, New Zealand’s Hamilton Gardens might be the spot for you. The themed gardens include: an Italian Renaissance Garden, an Indian Char Bagh Garden, a Sung Dynasty Chinese Scholar’s Garden, a Japanese Garden, an American modernist garden, and a pre-European Māori garden called Te Parapara Garden. Beyond highlighting garden styles from around the globe, Hamilton Gardens also tells the “story of gardens” from other time periods, so visitors can learn about different types of gardening styles over the last 4,000 years. Amazingly, before Hamilton Gardens was constructed in the 1960s, the land was actually a landfill. Thankfully that is not one of the periods highlighted in the garden today!