Hamilton Gardens
New gardens planned for Hamilton Gardens
1 - Baroque Garden – in development
2 - Medieval Garden – opening 2025
3 - Pasifika Garden – in development
4 - Victorian Flower Garden
5 - Roman Peristyle Garden
6 - Structural Garden
7 - Vedic Garden
8 - Persian Garden
9 - Hortus Botanicus
10 - Bee Meadow
11 - English Landscape Garden
12 - French Parterre Garden
13 - Mahayana Sanctuary Garden
You can help realise this ultimate vision for Hamilton Gardens!
ASB
Momentum Waikato
12-3476-0003665-50
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Let's Grow the Gardens!
Hamilton Gardens is an iconic and much-loved feature of Kirikiriroa-Hamilton and the Waikato, both a neighbourhood park that provides wellbeing to the local community, and an international attraction that brings in visitors and investment.
It is well proven that the average length of visits increases after each new garden is opened. The Gardens is now at a ‘tipping point’, where the addition of the next few new gardens will make it a full-day or two-day destination, which will significantly increase the overnight stays and the overall visitor spend the estate generates.
The completion of Hamilton Gardens, as envisioned by its founding director Peter Sergel, would see a further thirteen theme gardens added in the years ahead, as shown in the map above and as detailed in his recently published book The Time Travellers Guide to the Hamilton Gardens.
The concept for the fully realised Hamilton Gardens, as explained in the book, is to tell the story of civilisation by showing how different garden designs reflect the transformational moments in history that shaped the modern world.
Hamilton Gardens is becoming an internationally recognised botanical experience, but it also has the potential to become a unique, internationally recognised museum of humanity.
Currently three of the planned new spaces are in active development. The Medieval Garden has now been funded (in part via a campaign run by Momentum Waikato), and will open in late 2025.
Then the initial installations and plantings for the Baroque and Pasifika Gardens described below are in place, ahead of further planning and resourcing for their full completion in the next few years.
Please donate towards the development of new gardens, and the full potential of Hamilton Gardens, via the payment portals above.
Or if you would like to discuss making a larger contribution, a sponsorship, a bequest or other financial support for completing the Hamilton Gardens, get in touch with Momentum Waikato.
The next new gardens…
Pasifika Garden
Immerse yourself in the vibrant flora of the South Pacific islands.
The Pasifika Garden will display plants from the South Pacific islands and their closest equivalents. In the centre, a Samoan Fale Afalau shelter will provide an event or teaching space as well as screen the upper glass structure. Within a jungle setting productive plants would be grown such as the: yam, talo, ta’amu, sweet potato, arrowroot, sugar cane, ti, paper mulberry, pandanus, taro, banana, breadfruit; possibly the kava and coconut showing their use and cultivation.
Baroque Garden
Experience the grandeur of European royalty through this dramatic theatrical garden.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, European royalty developed dramatic theatrical gardens that included the elements of stage set design. These gardens weren’t just used for theatrical events, they provided a setting for important people to dress up in expensive clothes and powdered wigs and to be seen. This German or Austrian form will feature a Rococo / Baroque façade, large reflecting pool and two sculptural groups. This garden design has a direct association with classical music, linking it to the arts inspired theme of the Fantasy Collection.
About the Hamilton Gardens…
In 2023, Tripadvisor gave Hamilton Gardens a Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best Award and ranked this Waikato wonderland as one of the top three attractions in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The beloved city landmark is in the top one percent of travel experiences in the world, with more than 500,000 visitors strolling through our enclosed gardens and more than one million visits to our open park spaces every year.
A jewel of the Waikato that significantly contributes to local culture and the regional economy. The Gardens is a collection of evocative places that tell the story of civilisations, an internationally unique concept. Each beautiful space is a chapter of human culture, together they take you on a journey across centuries and continents.
The vision for Hamilton Gardens sprung from the imagination of Dr Peter Sergel, its founding director, who in the 1980s was asked to devise a new public garden beside the Waikato River on the southern edge of the city. Peter dreamed of a living gallery of the gardens of the world that would delight and inspire locals and visitors alike.
Over the decades since, the Hamilton Gardens team and its supporters have created 18 incredible gardens spanning the ages and cultures, from ancient Egypt to modernist America, from Te Parapara to the Magic Flute.
The story is not finished yet. The next exciting new space, the Medieval Garden, will take you to the cloisters of a monastery in the Middle Ages, and we need your help to make it happen.
Best of the Best 2023: Trip Advisor Travelers’ Choice.
Sustainable Business, Qualmark Gold: Tourism New Zealand.
Outstanding Park Award 2016: New Zealand Recreation Association.
Highly Commended, Best Creative Place 2016: Local Government Awards.
Garden of the Year 2014: International Gardens Tourism Council.
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