I’ve come to find that Hamilton Gardens are one of the city’s most marketed attractions. I spent around 1.5 hours at the attraction to discover what all the fuss was about. The hype was warranted from the English rose gardens to the Japanese Garden of Contemplation. This popular tourist attraction has something for everyone from the tourist in search of cultural authenticity to the tourist in simple admiration for landscapes. I found this space wasn’t overtly gendered or sexed. I observed tourists of differentiating genders and sexual identities although I couldn’t help thinking about the security nature spaces provide for reinforcing heterosexuality- as there were far more straight couples then there were queer. If I had to position the space in terms of sexuality though, heterosexual would be my observation. The local workspaces of the gardens were noticeably gendered however with women in much more domestic roles i.e. working at the cafe and men in much more labouring roles i.e. landscape gardeners operating heavy machinery. The gardens provide cultural diversity in terms of tourist identities vastly because some type of physical feature for many of the prominent tourist cultures in New Zealand (Asian, Maori, Pakeha, American, Chinese, and Indian) was present. If you are in search of a space full of beautiful natural (majority) wonder then I would highly recommend the Hamilton Gardens for a morning or afternoon of gaze.
Comments welcome
Photographs by Kimberley Higgison
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