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Los Angeles County Arboretum in January

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Since it is now January, I thought it would be fun to introduce you to a botanical garden I visited twice last January, three weeks apart and each time on a one-day Los Angeles stopover on our trip to and from New Zealand.  (When flying in winter, we try to build in a ‘bad weather safety net’ to make sure we arrive on time at a tour launch in a distant location.)  In all my visits to Los Angeles, I’d never been to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, which is located in Arcadia, east of Pasadena, near the San Gabriel mountains. Using Uber, it was a $50 ride (about 50 minutes) from our airport hotel, but you can also reach it via the Metro Gold Line train, Arcadia stop, and bus from downtown L.A. (On my second visit, my husband elected to jump out at nearby Santa Anita Racetrack to take in some horse races).  Before you go, be sure to download the map, below (click to enlarge or go to their website and download an even larger version) so you don’t miss any of the gardens on this 127-acre property and historic site; even with two visits, I didn’t get to the greenhouse and some of the more remote features.

Prior to its opening as an arboretum in 1948, the garden was part of a tract of land that had originally been the territory of the indigenous Tongva people, the Gabrieliño. In September 1771, the Spanish colonists opened the Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel here, the fourth of an eventual twenty-one California missions. In 1821, Mexico (which had gained independence from Spain) began the process of selling all mission lands to rancheros. In 1838, a 13,319-acre parcel, Rancho Santa Anita, was deeded to naturalized Scottish immigrant John Reid and his Gabrieliño wife Victoria, who had  converted and become part of the mission.  Over the next century, the property was divided and changed hands many times, but its most colourful owner was definitely Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, the Ohio-born land speculator, gold mining investor and four-times-married womanizer (he survived two shootings from jilted paramours) who bought 8,500 acres of Rancho Santa Anita for $200,000 in 1875.  He soon built the Queen Anne style white cottage that sits beside Lake Baldwin to this day, where the photo below of him and family members was taken. After loaning money to a failing bank that later closed its doors, he cashed in the mortgages that had defaulted and bought most of the San Gabriel Valley, including what would become the towns of Arcadia, Monrovia and Baldwin Hills. And it was the horse-lover Baldwin who built the first Santa Anita Racetrack on his land; it opened in 1907 but it closed two years later when gambling was made illegal and later burned down. The racetrack clubhouse my husband visited while I toured the arboretum was built in 1934.

Early January

My principal reason for visiting the arboretum was the winter flowering of the aloes. I’d been to the succulent garden at The Huntington in late February in previous years, and so many aloes had finished flowering that I was determined to return to California to see the early winter bloom. So I quickly found the Aloe Trail in the African Garden.  The arboretum features over 180 different aloe species.

As I listened briefly to a botanist who was guiding a group around the collection, I noticed a northern mockingbird in Aloe marlothii, the large mountain aloe of South Africa. This aloe is easy to recognize because of its single stem and candelabra arrangement of several slanted- to horizontally-arranged dense racemes of tubular dark orange flowers.

There were beautiful aloes everywhere. Sadly, many were unlabelled, like the one below. But thanks to my friend Jim Bishop in San Diego, I have learned that this one is Aloe cameronii.

It wasn’t long before I saw one of the arboretum’s famous peacocks, wandering around one of the many South African cape aloes (A. ferox), which were at peak bloom.  The peacocks are the descendants of several pairs that Lucky Ellis imported from India in 1879; over the next century or so, they found the arboretum (and the surrounding residential neighbourhood!) much to their liking.

For a photographer, the lovely tilt-head aloe (A. speciosa) is always a joy to capture just as the flowers are opening.

Aloe vryheidensis bore lovely yellow and orange flowers.

If you love aloes, you could spend hours in this collection alone, which features over 180 different species!  The plants below were also unlabelled, but Jim Bishop tells me they are Aloe vanbalenii.

With its tall stems bearing the brown remnants of previous years’ foliage, Aloe candelabrum is a distinctive plant.  It has now been recognized as a separate species from A. ferox, with which it was previously grouped.

I was lured briefly beyond the aloe garden into the Madagascar collection, and a planting of several stunning, silver Bismarckia nobilis palms, my favourite palm species.

This is bismarckia’s fruit.

But there was still so much to see and my time was limited, since we were on an evening flight to New Zealand. So I carried on along the Aloe Trail past spiky orange sticks-on-fire (Euphorbia tirucalli) and the yellow daisies of grey-leaved euryops (E. pectinatus).

Look at this amazing display!

I stood for a while and watched a male Allen’s hummingbird (Sesalaphorus sasin) in the aloes turn his head, showing off the iridescent color transformation of his gorget feathers.  Then I headed on into the arboretum.

As an easterner, I’d never given much thought to “autumn colour” in California, especially in L.A. But I was pleasantly surprised by some species, given that this was January and at home our fall-coloured leaves had fallen long ago. This is the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera).

And this is a wine connoisseur’s favourite tree, the cork oak (Quercus suber).

I walked past Baldwin Lake, named for the notorious Lucky, who had deepened it and created a retaining wall.  As the next photo of a posted garden sign reads, the lake was originally part of the local Raymond Fault, which branches from the major San Andreas Fault. It begins in the nearby San Gabriel Mountains and runs straight west under the town of Arcadia and the Santa Anita racetrack, later forming the hills of south Pasadena, then west to Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Hills, the Santa Monica Mountains, Beverly Hills, Thousand Oaks, Malibu and out into the Pacific Ocean and the Channel Islands and beyond to where it stops. California’s geological history is dramatic; when I visit the state, I often forget that much of its built-up area lies over the north-south San Andreas Fault, whose last major earthquakes were the Loma Prieta in 1989 (Oakland) and the 1906 San Francisco quake and resulting fire.

The sign below asks for public support in restoring Baldwin Lake, following years of drought, mandatory water conservation measures and well-drilling from neighbouring cities. In 1991, the lake dried up completely and the fish had to be removed; the following season, the water table rose and the lake refilled.

Drought is a fact of life in California, one to which most native plants are well adapted, unlike the many water-dependent species in a botanical garden. So it was gratifying to come upon the Water Conservation Garden. I was interested in the plants chosen for this garden, especially Australian species like Grevillea and Maireana. It seems to me that this would be a great spot to focus on a large display of attractive, residential-scale landscapes using the most drought-tolerant of California plants – as an educational feature for visitors who are increasingly looking to enjoy gardens that require little water.

Given the time of year, the Grace Kallam Perennial Garden was mostly structure, with little in flower.

It would be fun to return to the perennial garden some spring (well, and the Huntington, too, of course!)

Nearby, I was enchanted by the myriad autumn colours of ‘Burgundy’ sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Presumably, leaf fall (abscission) is much delayed in such a mild climate, which accounts for these pretty leaves hanging on into winter.

Some outstanding specimens in the magnolia collection were already bursting into flower. This is Magnolia x soulangeana ‘Lilliputian’. There are over sixty magnolia species and cultivars in the garden.

Lavender was still in flower in The Herb Garden and it was charming to see…..

…..the formal knot garden here.  The herb garden was designed and laid out in 1955 by the Southern California unit of the Herb Society of America. It was renovated in the 1990s.

I cornered this bride and groom doing their wedding photography in the herb garden, and asked if they’d pose for a photo for my blog. Aren’t they fine looking?

Double-flowered apricot was resplendent in the herb garden.

I spied Lucky Baldwin’s Queen Anne’s cottage (once known as Baldwin’s Belvedere) behind a ginkgo tree, its leaves turning bright yellow.

The Citrus Grove was full of fruit. It was planted in 1961.

I breezed quickly through the Victorian Rose Garden, also installed in the late 1950s by the Herb Society, stopping to admire this yellow ‘Symphony’ shrub rose from David Austin Roses, whose renowned founder died in England just weeks ago at the age of 92.  This appreciation in The Guardian by my friend Victoria Summerley captures the man and his passion for roses.

As I walked along the road around Lake Baldwin, I passed a planting of prickly-pears (Opuntia ficus-indica). Sadly, there wasn’t enough time to head up to Tallac Knoll to see the plumeria grove there.

On my right was the Bamboo Collection.

Then I was standing across the lake looking directly at the Queen Anne Cottage through the boughs of a ‘Paulensis’ pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus impetiginosus).  This tree (formerly in the genus Tabebuia) was introduced to California via seed collected in the wild in ‘50s and ‘60s by hobbyist collectors like Dr. Samuel Ayyres, Jr., the local dermatologist, plant lover and later nursery owner who led the search for a site for the arboretum in the late 1940s. As it states in Dr. Ayres’s 1987 obituary, “The committee chose a 111-acre parcel in Arcadia where developer Elias J. (Lucky) Baldwin had once owned a ranch. The acreage had been purchased by Times publisher Harry Chandler, who intended to subdivide it. But Ayres persuaded Chandler to keep it off the market until he could find some financing. The state and county eventually purchased it for $320,000 and the Arboretum became a reality in 1948.”

Seedlings of the pink trumpet tree were planted in the arboretum in the 1970s; later, the cultivars ‘Pink Cloud’ and ‘Raspberry’ were developed here. The trumpet tree below sits near the entrance from the parking lot.

There were magnificent trees in this area, like this floss silk tree (Ceiba speciosa ‘Arcadia’), which seems to be a more rare yellow-flowered form of a tree that normally has pink blooms.

This Brazilian shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax grandiflorum) still had a few fluffy blossoms.

I took the path through the Cycad Collection, stopping to admire some impressive specimens.

The one below is Ceratozamia mexicana, aka “El Mirador”.

My last view from the garden was of the lovely San Gabriel Mountains.

*****

Then it was time to Uber back to LAX to check out of our hotel and catch our evening flight to Auckland launching a 3-week American Horticultural Society garden tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand. I wrote blogs about most of those gardens and natural sights in 2018. Here are a few of my favourites:

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I didn’t quite finish my blog reveries on the remaining gardens on New Zealand’s North Island, so stay tuned in 2019 for a few more!

*****

Late January

When we landed in Los Angeles at the end of our New Zealand trip on January 28th, we had almost a full day before departing L.A. for Toronto.  So, being a creature of extreme horticultural habit (and having already seen the lovely Getty Centre gardens), I elected to make a return Uber trip to Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden, with my husband getting out at Santa Anita racetrack. This time, I began by visiting the Celebration Garden, which features six different theme gardens. Once again, the peacocks were holding court, this one in the California Native Plant garden atop a fence near the red fruit of toyon (Hetermoles arbutifolia).  In the 1920s, this shrub had become so popular as a Christmas decoration in Los Angeles that the State of California passed a law prohibiting its picking without permission.

Honey bees foraged on the pink blossoms of lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia), below.

Further along I watched a big, black California carpenter bee (Xylocopa californica) foraging in the flowers of Caesalpinia cacalaco ‘Smoothie’, from Mexico.

In another garden, the beautiful Himalayan Michelia doltsopa ‘Silver Cloud‘ was in flower and perfuming the area around it.

I wished I had time to keep walking to the Australia Garden, but I was curious to check on the aloes. So I headed back via the Desert Display Garden…..

….. which is full of succulent and cacti treasures. Love all the golden barrel cacti (Echinocactus grusonii)!

This is beautiful whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia). Agaves, by the way, all come from the New World and are native from South America up into desert regions of North America; they are in the family Asparagaceae. Aloes hail from the Old World – Africa, Madagascar, Middle East – and are now in the family Asphodelaceae.

As a photographer, it’s always fun to shoot a plant like resin spurge (Euphorbia resinifera).

Then I was back in the African Garden, where the long season of aloes was still impressive, with new species flowering and the ones I’d seen 3 weeks earlier now winding down. This is the attractive hybrid Aloe x principis, believed to be a natural cross between Aloe ferox and Aloe arborescens.

Dawe’s aloe (Aloe dawei), below, is native to the mountains of central and east Africa, including the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. This is the cultivar ‘Jacob’s Ladder’.

Aloe lineata is from South Africa.

The flowers of Aloe barbertoniae were just beginning to open.

Another big planting of an unidentified aloe.

Aloe rubroviolacea was attracting honey bees…..

…. as were the aging flowers of Aloe ferox.

I had more time now to visit the Madagascar Spiny Forest with its peculiar species.  This excellent article recounts the development of the garden, which opened in 2007.

The tall Pachypodium geayi raised its spined branches to the blue California sky, alongside tall Aloe vaombe and the spiny alluaudias. It’s easy to see the effects of evolutionary pressure here, when a diverse plant population on an African island evolves to feature protections – height or spines – against ancient animal herbivores, likely ancestors of native Madagascar lemurs.    

The Malagasy tree aloe (A. vaombe) hosted a perching hummingbird, which I think is a female Anna’s (Calypte anna).

The alluaudias – all six species are endemic to Madagascar – are among the most unusual plants in the garden, with their columns of small leaves and various spines. This is A. humbertii.

It was fun to see lavender scallops (Bryophyllum fedtschenkoi) in bloom, a succulent plant I know from the desert house at Toronto’s Allan Gardens.

One of the world’s most beautiful palms, Madagascar’s Bismarckia nobilis has pride of place in the collection, and I spent several minutes walking through the grove.

And, of course, there was a peacock peeking through the fronds – a fitting image to carry with me as I walked back to the entrance to meet my husband (he didn’t win at the horse races… imagine that!) and call our Uber to take us to LAX and our flight back home – and to winter. What a lovely break we’d had, in the southern hemisphere and here at the delightful Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.

******

If you enjoyed this blog, you might like to read my blog on Lotusland in Santa Barbara.

A September Visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden

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On our brief stop in Seattle in September, we paid a visit to Bellevue Botanical Garden. I had been to the garden years earlier and it was still enchanting — if only the weather had cooperated (she says, with a wink). For unlike most people who revel in a warm late summer day without a cloud on the horizon, photographers tend to gaze skyward hopefully for the chance of overcast – even a light sprinkle – because midday sunshine creates difficult, contrasty light in a garden. Nevertheless, that’s what we had and I was resigned walking in that I would be focusing on shadier spots in the garden.

This is a map of the garden, which I modified to show both the small keys and actual sections in one image. From their website a bit of history:  “The Bellevue Botanical Garden Society (BBGS) was founded in 1984, by Iris and Bob Jewett, with the idea to build and support a free public botanical garden for their local community. It came to fruition when Harriet and Cal Shorts generously donated their home and 7.5 acres to develop the Bellevue Botanical Garden (BBG). The Society was then incorporated in January 1986, as a non-profit organization. Beginning in 1992, and in partnership with the City of Bellevue, more than 45 acres has since been added to the Garden. Today, the 53-acre Bellevue Botanical Garden is a world-renowned community treasure for everyone to enjoy”.  

The entrance walkway features a unique in-ground rock fountain which feeds a rill that flows along the pathway.

Beyond is an interesting slatted wall fountain.

If you have a cellphone, you can use the Tap or Scan app for the garden.

The Fuchsia Garden has been maintained by Seattle’s Eastside Fuchsia Society since 1992. I could have spent a long time here shooting macros, but we had a big driving day ahead, so I satisfied myself with….

…. just one or two close-ups. This lovely blossom is ‘Delta’s Sarah’.

Then we were approaching the famous NPA (Northwest Perennial Alliance).Perennial Border, which is actually a series of parallel borders arrayed on a slope.  Though this is an older article, I appreciated reading about the history of the border. 

There are attractive benches throughout the garden…..

….. and interesting stacked stone sculptures (these ones in goldenrod about to flower.)

I wish I could show you the border as it should be seen, but in the harsh light I took very few photos.  There was an ebullient display of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), Verbena bonariensis and blue mist bush (Caryopteris x clandonensis).

And out of the sun, I liked the way V. bonariensis insinuated itself into this heavenly bamboo (Nandina domestica).

Verbena bonariensis always attracts bumble bees, and since I do a lot of photography of bumble bees and all kinds of other native bees and honey bees, I stopped for a moment to watch a yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii) nectaring on the tiny flowers.

Gaura (Oenothera gaura) was a cloud of tiny flowers.

The purplish-blue spikes of anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) made a pretty pairing with the gaura.

Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Henry Eilers’ is one of the late season charmers among the myriad yellow daisies.

I loved the way false hemp (Datisca cannabina) created a living arch on a path behind towering pink Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium maculatum ‘Gateway’).

Ornamental grasses are featured abundantly in the perennial border.

Bulbs are also used in the perennial border, like this tropical ginger lily (Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’).

And the border features shrubs and small trees like crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) ….

…. and hydrangeas, which were undergoing their beautiful late summer colour transformation.

Red-orange heleniums (H. autumnale) were attracting pollinators in one section of the border.


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In a shady section, below, I was charmed by this small vignette of hydrangea, brunnera and geranium……

…. and the azure-blue flowers of Gentiana asclepiadea cascaded over stairs between the parallel paths.

The cultivar name of this pure white toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) is ‘Shirohohotogisu’, which means ‘white cuckoo’, a descriptive metaphor for the upswept petals.

On higher ground beside the lawn near the garden’s gift shop, I stood in the shade of the silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) and looked back at the borders below.

The silk tree was in full flower.

At the far end of the border, the Dahlia Display Garden maintained by the Puget Sound Dahlia Association was at its late summer best.

Who doesn’t love the brilliant colours of dahlias?

The bright sun on this dahlia suited the leafcutter bee just fine. (Bees love single-petalled dahlias!)

Even this southern green stink bug nymph looked fetching on an orange dahlia.

Since our schedule had us driving to the beaches of Oregon that day, we hurried out of the NPA Perennial Border area on a path through the forest. Here you’ll find the Native Discovery Garden. From the website: “The Native Discovery Garden, maintained by the East Lake Washington District of Garden Clubs and the Washington Native Plant Society, inspires visitors to look to the native plant palette when planning their home gardens. Adapted to the climate and conditions of the Pacific Northwest, native plants in urban landscapes can be ecologically sound, beautiful, and low maintenance. Adjacent to a natural wetland, this garden illustrates the many layers of plant life in the Northwest, from ground covers to trees. It serves as a transition from the gardens to the woodlands and forested lands to the south.” 

 

I stopped at a beautiful bench, sculpted from Washington state hexagonal columnar basalt by sculptor Barry Namm.

There were excited children watching the fish beneath the waterfall in the Shorts Groundcover Garden.

Water is used throughout Bellevue Botanical Garden, in inventive ways both natural and highly artificial.

I captured some of those water features in this short video.

To honor its ‘sister city’ relationship with Yao City near Osaka, Bellevue originally established the Yao Japanese Garden at Kelsey Creek Park.  In 1992, the garden was moved to the Bellevue Botanical Garden, where it opened two years later. This is the entrance gate.

Unlike many traditional Japanese gardens, there are lushly beautiful plantings here.

I loved this timber bridge.

But there are also the more traditional features of a Japanese garden.

We stopped briefly at the Tateuchi Viewing Pavilion, nestled under massive red cedars (Thuja plicata).  It was a gift from the Tateuchi Foundation, i.e. Atsuhiko Tateuchi and his wife, Ina Goodwin Tateuchi.

Then it was time to take the Tateuchi Loop Path to return to our car and drive south towards Oregon.

Christchurch Botanic Gardens

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As we pulled into Christchurch in late afternoon a few hours after our delightful lunch and garden tour at Akaunui Homestead and Farm, a few of us decided to leave the hotel and walk to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens less than a mile away. After the disastrous 2011 earthquake here, the city has been rebuilding for years, especially structures that were not earthquake-proof, like this old building en route.

The botanic gardens are open to the public from 7 am to 6:30 pm (conservatories 10:15 am – 4 pm) daily, except Christmas Day. Like all the botanic gardens we saw in New Zealand, there is no charge to visit. Covering 21 hectares (52 acres), they were opened in 1863, occupying a pretty site along the Avon River.  There is an excellent printed .pdf guide online.

We started in the Kitchen Garden adjacent to the former Curator’s House, which is now a restaurant (we would eat dinner there later).  I thought this was one of the finest edible gardens I’d visited…..

….with its focus on design…..

….and diversity of edibles…..

….and education.

We walked along the Avon River with its scrim of beech trees….

….past early evening picnickers.

With so little time until dark, we bypassed the lawn and adjacent heather garden.

The large Rock Garden seemed to need a little more TLC in the weeding and editing department……

….. but had clearly been an ambitious design with significant scale.

I liked seeing a new ornamental onion, Allium carinatum subsp. pulchellum, so happy here…..

…. and keeping the bees happy, too.

I had never seen Francoa sonchifolia in a garden, so was delighted to find it here along with its foraging honey bees…..

I walked slowly through the New Zealand Gardens….

….full of indigenous plants which in this country seem to be so understatedly…..

…. green that the overwhelming perception is unremarkable.

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But it takes time and local understanding to appreciate each of these plants, the smallest and the large, like the iconic totara tree (Podocarpus totara), below….

….and how they relate to wildlife, including this insect chorus on a Christchurch evening in mid-summer. Listen…..

Adjacent to the Native Plant Garden is the Cocayne Memorial Garden, designed in 1938 to honour Leonard Cocayne (1855-1934), New Zealand’s pioneering botanist and ecologist and author of The Vegetation of New Zealand (1921).

Given our limited time, we hurried through a cactus garden….

….. with some interesting large succulents that I later discovered were Furcraea parmentieri. A monocarpic Mexican species, these plants will grow until they achieve flowering, after which they will die.

A female paradise shelduck hovered at the water’s edge with her duckling nearby.

There were pretty, South African Crinum x powellii at the water’s edge here, showing why its common name is “swamp lily”.

Time was fleeting so we turned back toward the entrance past this lovely stand of fragrant lilies.

Nearby was a giant redwood (Sequoidendron giganteum), below, one of seven grown from seed that was ordered from California in 1873 (just 21 years after William Lobb first collected seed of the newly discovered trees in Calaveras Grove in the Sierra Nevadas for Veitch’s Nursery in England), making them 145 years old. Interestingly, though North Americans call this species “Sierra redwood” or “giant redwood” or “big tree” (since it is often confused with the smaller Coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens). New Zealanders and the British call it “Wellingtonia”, a name that recalls England’s race to be the first to name it. After Lobb returned to England with seed, seedlings and herbarium specimens, taxonomist John Lindley named the species Wellingtonia gigantea to honour the recently deceased Duke of Wellington (1769-1852).  Meanwhile, as tourists poured into Calaveras Grove, botanist Albert Kellogg was working to sort out his big tree specimens in his herbarium at the brand-new California Academy of Natural Sciences in San Francisco, intending to call the species Washingtonia.  In 1854, the Duke of Wellington would lose his “official” taxonomic honour when French botanist Joseph Decaisne placed the tree in the genus Sequoia as S. gigantea (Sequoiadendron came later), but the common name Wellingtonia stuck for giant redwoods grown in the Commonwealth.

We peeked in to the lovely Rose Garden with its 104 beds, but kept walking.

Two more trees caught my eye. The Madeiran lily-of-the-valley tree (Clethra arborea) was attracting bees to its pendant blossoms……

….. and I was happy to see a young kauri  (Agathis australis) growing here, having loved walking under towering kauris in their protected forest at Bay of Islands.

At the southeast fringe of the Rose Garden was the extensive Dahlia Garden, with 90 percent of the collection sourced from New Zealand breeders.

This is ‘Velvet Night’, a 1985 introduction from Dr. Keith Hammett, one of the dahlia world’s icons and New Zealand’s leading breeder of ornamental plants.

We walked past an old Kashmir cypress (Cupressus cashmeriana), with its elegant pendulous branchlets.

Sadly because of the lateness of the day, we missed seeing the large water garden and the far reaches of Christchurch Botanic Gardens including Hagley Park. And the six conservatories had closed a few hours earlier: Cunningham House (tropical rainforest), Townend House (cool greenhouse), Garrick House (desert), Gilpin House (orchids, bromeliads, carnivorous plants), Fern House and Fowraker House (indigenous and exotic alpines).  And somehow we missed the herbaceous border. But it was time to head back to the entrance, past our riverside picnickers who had now been joined by friends and a few waterfowl, in order to enjoy our own alfresco dinner at the Curator’s House Restaurant before walking back to the hotel and hitting the sack. For tomorrow would be one of the best days on our tour, starring three stunning and very different New Zealand gardens.