Gardens of the World - Auckland Domain, New Zealand

The Auckland Domain is Auckland's oldest park and one of the largest. It is located near downtown, includes the Auckland War Memorial Museum and is also near the Auckland City Hospital, the largest in New Zealand.

It includes the Wintergarden with two glass houses as worth visiting as the Domain outside.

There's also a 'Sensory Garden' designed especially for the visitors with disabilities, an unfrequent feature in a public garden.

Here are some photos from this domain-park-garden:

 This is what the glass house looks like from the outside.

  

The glass house has a nice collection of pitcher plants.

 

 

Pitcher plants are carnivorous and the ones shown here grow in South East Asia, Madagascar, Australia, and India.

They are climbers.

 

 

 

 

Above is a central piece near the entrance, a lotus basin - the large leaves are those of the sacred blue lotus.

 

The plant below - acalypha - has several names : cat tail, copperleaf, chenille plant. It is cultivated as a house plant for its flowers. Easy to see why. 

 





 

This tree is so large that the child sitting on its roots is dwarfed.

 



 

 

The Auckland Domain also has a Sensory Garden:

 





 

The goal of a sensory garden is to provide visitors with an experience that appeals to as many of the senses as possible, not just visual or olfactory. Features would include raised beds to eye level for someone in a wheelchair for example, with plants to touch to feel the various textures of leaves and flowers and seeds and trunks. Sometimes music can be included. This is what the central row looks like in that sensory garden:

 

Mandevillas (above) are climbers with spectacular fragrant flowers, a popular choice for many gardeners around the world. It would be considered an annual here - if we can grow it at all - due to being a zone 10-11 plant.

 

 

Finally, the photo above shows the Wintergarden main building from the outside.

 

(article and photos by Denise Motard)