spinofflive
robot trees
At Hamilton Gardens, robotic trees called ‘trons’ move and shake around visitors. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Archi Banal)

SocietyJuly 3, 2022

‘It’s not finished’: Hamilton Gardens’ creator wants his masterpiece to get darker

robot trees
At Hamilton Gardens, robotic trees called ‘trons’ move and shake around visitors. (Photo: Supplied / Treatment: Archi Banal)

Peter Sergel spent several decades turning a city dump into a major tourist attraction. Now semi-retired, he hopes VR monsters complete his vision.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. “Trees can bend over and appear to grab people, devour them, munch them,” says Peter Sergel. “A giant little old lady could come through the gate, collect children up and turn them into a nice pie.”

I’d called Sergel, the former director of Hamilton Gardens, to congratulate him on his creations. Over Matariki weekend, the family and I charged off around the North Island, stopping in for what we thought would be a quick walk around the famed Waikato tourist attraction’s 44 hectares. It’d been years since we paid it a visit.

It’s changed. Holy wow has it changed. We found an upgraded attraction full of surreal installations we hadn’t experienced before. New exhibits were around every corner, like the Huddleston blimp, a steampunk airship with a sign claiming it’s used after hours to trim tall topiary, or a garden tea party, complete with a band, tents and tables laden with food.

Inspired by Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party, it was so believable we initially thought we’d stumbled into a private wedding venue and turned to leave.

blimp
The Huddleston airship at Hamilton Gardens is definitely not giving people rides (Photo: Chris Schulz)

But the showstopper was the surrealist wing. Entering through a short tunnel, visitors emerge into an enclosed Alice in Wonderland-inspired space where everything is five times the normal size. A door, wheelbarrow and a hay fork are all gigantic. It’s then, while taking that in and snapping selfies with the kids, that you realise something’s rustling around in the trees above you.

They’re not normal trees – they’re the first taste of Sergel’s darkening vision. “We call them trons,” he says. Built over five years, as contractors were found, components were created from scratch, concrete structures were moulded and hardened, and ivy grew up and over them, are mechanical trees with branches that rotate, making it seem as if they’ve come to life.

Yes, Peter Sergel made creepy robot trees in real life, the kind Peter Jackson used for CGI when he made Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Hamilton Gardens
Robot trees are the standout feature in Hamilton Gardens’ surrealist exhibit (Photo: Supplied)

Inspired by the drawings of British painter David Inshaw, Sergel spent years developing them, carving smaller models out of clay. Along with the Huddleston airship, he names his trons as among the most technically challenging things he’s ever done, finally revealing them to the public just as borders shut and everyone stayed home when Covid arrived in 2020.

Along with a new Egyptian-themed garden, his surrealist section has quickly become one of Hamilton Gardens’ most popular attractions. But Sergel admits he has far darker visions for it, which is where his child-munching ideas lie. “It’s getting a lot cheaper having a real world superimposed in the metaverse,” he says. “We can mix virtual reality with the real thing.”

He wants visitors to arrive with cheap VR sets the size of sunglasses on their heads, ones programmed to turn static gardens into interactive, virtual reality displays. “Hopefully the surrealist garden can be experienced … in a terrifying way.” I’m not quite sure I’d be on board letting my kids get chased and baked into a pie, even if it is in the metaverse.

Sergel began working on his grand garden vision in 1979, when he joined Hamilton Council to get work experience as a landscape gardener. There, they asked him to come up with a plan for the unused site neighbouring the Waikato River. “It had been a sandpit and a rubbish dump,” he says, but he quickly saw potential in it. “I was hooked.”

By 1995, he’d become the garden’s director and, inspired by the interactive museums he’d visited overseas, he decided to attempt creating a series of 30 interconnected gardens showcasing different eras dating back to 2000BC. “More than anything else, gardens reflect different societies and technologies and beliefs,” he says. “The gardens tell the story of mankind.”

Peter Sergel
Peter Sergel working on a small model of his ‘tron’ robot trees (Photo: Supplied)

Around 20 of Sergel’s major exhibits have been finished, with Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Indian areas all created in consultation with local community representatives and enjoyed by tens of thousands of visitors over the years. Recently, new additions like the Egyptian and surrealist garden have opened up. Three more are nearly ready, with a Game of Thrones-style baroque garden, a Pasifika garden, and a medieval garden set to open soon.

Sergel says it’s about 70% finished, with plans for Roman and Persian areas ratified by Hamilton Council and being readied for the future, as well as other areas he won’t discuss. What happens once it’s all finished? “At that point, you run out of space.”

Over the years, his gardens have become like nothing else in Aotearoa. I’ve lived in Tāmaki Makaurau for more than 20 years, and Auckland Domain has not changed a jot over that time. In comparison, Hamilton Gardens is constantly evolving. That, says Sergel, is the secret to its success. “It’s got a wide appeal,” he says. “You don’t have to be interested in gardening. You can be interested in the Tudors, conceptual art or all sorts of subjects and find something that engages you.”

Robot trees also help bring the crowds. Sergel laughs heartily when I say I believed rumours his blimp was flyable, and that the tea party was the real thing. Two helium companies got in touch offering their services after it opened, he says, and some visitors complained about the gardens using such a ridiculous balloon-based system to trim tall trees.

Complaints also came in about the tea party scene from those worried the food would be ruined, and the instruments damaged, by rain. “The violin’s made of bronze,” he chuckles. “Most of the food is made of concrete.”

Hamilton Gardens
Snack time? Katherine Mansfield’s The Garden Party was the inspiration for this display (Photo: Supplied)

Sergel semi-retired at the end of last year, but he handed all his plans over, and his vision is being carried out under a new director, Lucy Ryan. “It’s a typical Peter idea to come up with something slightly crazy,” says Tamsin Webb, the park’s director of visitor services and products. She says the surreal giant gate, where Sergel wants to station an old lady to entice kids through in his virtual reality world, is among the most photographed locations in the Waikato. His VR ambitions are being actioned, with a recent digital Easter egg hunt proving popular, and signs up promising more is on its way. Good things, however, take time. “We’re working on gardens that are five years away.”

Since retiring, Sergel’s trying to stay away from his masterpiece so Ryan doesn’t feel like he’s hovering over her shoulder, watching her work with his eagle eyes. But his garden at home is tiny, and he’s struggling to find things to do. Hamilton Gardens is, after all, his vision, his life’s work, and he hopes he gets to see it finished one day. Is he happy with how it’s progressing? There’s a lengthy pause, then Sergel says: “I have to bite my tongue. There’s always things you’d do differently, but I can’t be around forever.”

Keep going!
Image: Getty creative
Image: Getty creative

SocietyJuly 3, 2022

Returning to tapa

Image: Getty creative
Image: Getty creative

Some traditional practices have faded, but tapa-making is on the rise again, writes Taualofa Totua. 

When I was eight, I pressed my fingers over the dark panel of wood that leaned against our family television cabinet. The brown panel was tall and slim. It was out of place in our sitting room, because it had no purpose. Unlike the photo frames that lined the walls, or the spotless material couch covers, it stood there awkwardly. If it was supposed to be art, it looked unfinished, desperate for a splash of colour. There were perfect Sāmoan patterns carved into the wood. Plant motifs. During family prayers, I would imprint the designs by memory, tracing frangipani and lauti leaves on my thigh with my fingers over and over. It wasn’t until I studied Pacific Studies when I was 19, that I learned the Samoan name and purpose of such panels. ‘Upeti fala, a design board used to print stories and images onto siapo or bark cloth. 

Due to colonialism, tapa-making as practice dwindled in several Pacific islands. Cheap, imported fabric and the widespread migration of communities meant that the practice was no longer valued in the same way. Now, a resurgence of tapa-making is happening here in Aotearoa. There are as many processes as there are names: Ngatu, siapo, hiapo and Māori aute. Each is unique to different Pacific cultures, with separations in texture, colour and design. I’m in awe of this beautiful practice because, like most Indigenous forms of storytelling all over the world, it involves working with the earth. Tapa-making is continuing to grow, thanks to teachers who share – like Auckland-based artists and Sāmoan tapa makers Jasmine Tuia and Doron Semu. These makers are redefining what the cloth means to us, adding to the tangible ways we as Pasifika diaspora can feel connected to our culture. I went along to their community workshop with some friends to learn how the cloth is made.

My first Pasifika tapa workshop was held in Avondale, at the welcoming space of All Goods on Rosebank Road. Laid out on the floor were colourful mats and in the corner, a trestle table was piled with Sāmoan coconut bread and pineapple pies. I rolled up to the workshop late, (not in a fashionable way, more like an island time, hour-late way). My friend and I were called into the circle by a smiling Semu. We slipped off our shoes and joined the 15 or so tapa students of varying age, gender and ethnicity on the floor. I was surprised to see a few males present as, traditionally, tapa is widely considered the women’s domain. Semu’s story, as a proud queer person, showed me how wrong I was. His demeanour was almost challenging when he said, “ I claimed it”.  Semu stepped into his birth right in 2019. He travelled to Sāmoa, where he watched Faapito Lesatele, a respected siapo maker. “I turned up on her doorstep, willing to learn, and I was there for three weeks after,” Semu said. “I’ve been going back ever since, learning about tools and the process too.” 

Doron Semu (Image: Tagata Pasifika)

Unlike entitled foreign visitors who historically have been ignorant of Sāmoa’s traditions and practices, Semu has looked after his relationship with Lesatele and thus the cultural knowledge he has gleaned from her. Wanting to practice siapo has been a way for Semu to learn more about his Sāmoan heritage. Now an expert, Semu has hosted a range of workshops; including tailored ones for MVPFAFF queer youth, and was hosted by Te Papa Musuem last weekend. At our workshop, he pointed out the scars on a piece of bark, a sign that branches had been pulled off during the tree’s life. Semu advised that the wooden tools used to shape and form the cloth must have matching wood, for example a pine anvil and a pine mallet.  “Otherwise the tapa cloth will not spread nicely. There are different densities for each wood type.”

For two hours, we observed Semu make tapa. We smelled the wet bark and touched the soft material of the tapa pieces he’d prepared earlier. We watched as a small mulberry branch became cloth. We scored branches, peeled bark, soaked pieces in water and scraped with shells – a technique specific to Sāmoan tapa-making. Semu encouraged us to experiment using an assortment of coloured flower petals, beaten into our widening tapa cloths. It felt magical and oddly familiar to touch the material and tools. 

Our tapa making group naturally ended up splitting into two. Some of the others migrated to the mountain of coloured threads on the other side of the room. Jasmine Tuia sat with her legs folded, holding a needle and thread.  Her tattooed fingers demonstrated to us how to embroider onto tapa. Tuia returned to the practice of siapo as a student at the Elam School of Fine Arts. She grew up in Sāmoa, where it was not as popular to see siapo as it was to see the different woven mats found. Her artwork is empowered by many influences. From everyday conversations to Pacific body politics, and Sāmoan land cases in her home village of Matautu Lefaga. Tuia has said that tapa-making highlights the voice of women as cultural carriers of knowledge. It’s a shift from the exclusivity of titles like “cultural guardians” or “knowledge protectors”, as more and more Pasifika embark on a path of sustaining practices. 

At All Goods, I worked on my tapa pieces until I was the only one still by Semu’s side. Each hit of the mallet became more precise and even, a task that demanded a lot more than I had anticipated. Guided by Semu, I found a groove and eventually placed my tapa cloth onto the window to dry with everyone else’s. I had added two scarlet hibiscus petals onto the cloth, which, thanks to my earnest beating, had widened significantly from the sliver of bark peeled from a branch. I felt an overwhelming sense of pride – for myself, my friends and everyone else there that day. Grateful, we passed contact details between ourselves, buzzing and excited to take our new learning back to our families. 

When I was 18 years old, I felt the touch of bark cloth on my skin for the first time. The material wasn’t stiff like I had imagined. It had been beaten till it was supple, and felt like a second skin, massaged gently with gardenia oil. Brought out from under my Nana’s mattress and unfolded gently, the cloth was part of a design process: my taupou traditional dress. We opted for an ie’toga mat over the siapo in the end.  

Tapa would appear to me at special moments; through a goodbye exchange gift, on a wall at a memorable exhibition and online thanks to a wave of contemporary makers, Sāmoan and non-Sāmoan. It wasn’t until a Saturday in June, 2022 that I finally learned the Sāmoan way to make the cloth my Tongan great-grandmother used to make. The same cloth made from mulberry trees my grandpa and his brothers would cut down for her. Banging echoes of the wooden tapa beater, meeting the wooden log or tutua, would sound through the village, signalling women at work. At my first tapa workshop, the same banging resonated at the All Goods space – this time including women, men and gender diverse individuals. 

Semu, my first tapa teacher, is hopeful. “My dream is that we have a community of tapa makers claiming it as their own.”

Taualofa Totua is a cadet in the Next Page cadetship programme, public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air. She will be working with The Spinoff for four weeks before working with Metro, North & South, New Zealand Geographic and Pantograph Punch.

But wait there's more!