Dunedin Chinese Gardens: Out of this world

My first experience of the passion people have for their gardens was in Dunedin.
I was 10 and my pony, corralled in the fenced-off lower half of our section, grew bored with eating the apples off our six apple trees and escaped into my mother's rose garden, where he beheaded an entire avenue of prized blooms.
My father said the delinquent equine just wanted pudding, but my mother was not amused. The pony was banned from coming home and I had to walk a couple of miles, carrying food and tack, to his paddock to feed and ride him every afternoon.
I thought it particularly unreasonable of my mother, since the roses grew back the following season, but now, 40-something years on, I understand.
Gardening in Dunedin is a bit of a mission, not so much because the climate doesn't support growth (it does - think rhododendrons), but because it sometimes gets too cold to stick your fingers into the frosty soil.
Surprising then to find, on a recent return trip to the city of my birth, that the gardens, both public and private, are utterly spectacular and warrant a visit wherever you are.
We went to the southern city for a graduation, but it wasn't long before we were swanning off to check out the railway station gardens (acres of fabulous parsley) private flower gardens (just about everywhere) and the jaw-dropping Chinese Garden in the centre of the city.
The Dunedin Chinese Garden was first proposed at the time of the city's sesquicentennial celebrations in 1998. As the idea gained momentum, the Chinese community established the Dunedin Chinese Garden Trust, intending to create a fitting, permanent recognition of the Chinese who first came to Otago during the 1860s gold rush.
It took around eight years to finalise the design of the garden - there was a need to ensure authenticity and cultural accuracy, as well as functionality.
Then the garden was prefabricated and assembled in Shanghai on an identical site to the one in Dunedin. I've always been a bit derisive about people with more money than creativity who buy display gardens and have them reassembled in a completely different location, but this was a bit different.
The Chinese Garden was dismantled and transported to Dunedin, where it was reconstructed on-site using artisans and supervisors from Shanghai. It's the only authentic Chinese Garden in New Zealand and one of only a handful outside China.
The day we visited it wasn't raining or cold, and we were the first people through the gate. It was nice to have the place to ourselves, to appreciate that this is more than just a garden in the European sense. This is an example of a late Ming, early Ching Dynasty Scholar's Garden, surrounded by a 4m perimeter wall, with the symbolic rocks, water, plants and buildings.
Authentic Chinese materials crafted by a team of artisans were used. So in addition to the handmade wooden buildings, the garden features handmade tiles, bricks and latticework and hand-finished granite paving stones.
The use of lake stone - 900 tonnes of it - represents an essential element of Chinese art dating from the Tang Dynasty (600-900AD).
If you're looking for practical inspiration for your own garden, I wouldn't go here. The level of creativity and craftsmanship are pretty intimidating. But you may be able to take away some of the atmosphere of this beautiful, tranquil, mysterious space, and bring those elements to your next space.
If you'd like to make suggestions, ask questions, agree, disagree, advise, elaborate, comment or berate, please email me at: info@gardenpress.net