#6: Botanical Gardens

The city planners of NZ obviously had a grand vision and a love of plants. There are botanical gardens in every city we visited and even small places with a population less than 10,000 people had impressive public gardens. This often included water features, as pictured here in Dunedin, NZ, a rock garden, herb gardens and ROSES were the big highlight. They were at the peak of their season and I saw so many varieties, most with names I'd never heard of. We were sorry to have been a bit late for the rhododendron shows but what we did see was impressive - luckily for us it was a late spring and lots of rhodos were still blooming. Absolutely hundreds of hectares are given over to the development of public gardens in the towns and cities of NZ and I applaud the fact that we didn't pay for entrance and every one that we visited was a delightful public space. Joseph Banks came with Captain Cook to collect plants in NZ - his legacy lives on!