Dunedin Botanic Garden

Dunedin Botanical Gardens

Cloudy, for a change, Cool 60∞s

Upon Leaving Dunedin we save d the central garden for last. Dunedin Botanical garden is the primary horticultural entity for the city of Dunedin. Accessible as many of the city gardens are here by simple paths that take you in many cases through the garden on your way to work or to the rest of your daily life. Accessible horticulture, not necessarily a special trip is what strikes us when we visit.
Weather too strikes us this morning. For the first time a cool cloudy day greets us at breakfast, not the usual sun and gentle temps. This continues thru the morning hours. But for the first time in our visit the light is conducive to photography, a nice change.
I admit I’m no photographer but I still try to follow a few rules.
We certainly underestimated the light levels here in high summer.
Day light begins at 5:30 ish, usable daylight until 10:30. And ridiculous high bright light the rest of the conscious daytime. Enough excuses, lousy photography but a real sense of what happens here.
It’s warm and it feels good.
A creek that runs thru the middle of the garden separates Dunedin, dividing it into two distinct sections. Formal borders and a rose garden, collections of herbaceous and a conservatory and band shell for the most part occupy the lower portion.






Cross the one of the several bridges and then you can visit the larger collections such as the Bush, Rhododendron and the Australian as well as the North American Continent collections.
Contained in the hillside garden is an aviary, collections of indigenous birds. Normally I would recoil at something like this, comparing it to a collection of randomly screeching kids.





However, a newly planted Native landscape ties this facility to the garden, and the birds are immediately accessible, and are completely curious about us.
As we weave down the slope to the lower garden, we are impressed by the lawn management practice of the larger collections. Lawns that just a few years ago that would have been mowed entirely, are now just mowed along the edges. The aesthetic is a loose skirt that defines a collection of plants or families in an area. The upside is that mowing intervals are increased, fuel consumption is reduced and labor is reduced. This is something we have employed at Chanticleer and should do more of as well as advocate for all of us in our home landscape.
As we strolled down the slope we noticed seating, conventional park benches set into the steep slope on narrow shelves. Perching ourselves on a bench for a moment, we realize they are the cheap seats for the band shell on the lower portion on the other side of the stream. This garden serves as a venue for live entertainment in the evenings. Again free and open to the public. Public Horticulture, of a high quality, accusable and vital to a community.