Queen's Park  The Pre-Symposium tour was called "Four Ways With Water" and we went to four places with water features after we visited Queens Park. This park is usually a mass of blooms for the Festival of Flowers in September, but this year the drought has been so severe that they thought the Festival would be cancelled altogether. The people of the district are only allowed to water their gardens with gray water, so it was a pleasure to see this many flowers in the park.
Bicentennial Waterbird Park	Then we visited the Bicentennial Waterbird Park, left, a local wetland and bird habitat, and at the right a retreat called Cloudlake, an organic agritourism establishment.	Cloudlake Mountain Retreat
The Rock Garden of Ben & Mavis Mundy   Ben & Mavis Mundy, the couple in the centre of the photo above, built this rock garden themselves by hand . They only got machinery in to help with a few very large rocks. They started building it when they were in their 60's - pretty incredible. The garden is on a fairly steeply sloped block, and covers all except this bit of lawn, the house and driveway.
Fountains and mosaics were the highlight of the Champion Garden Carnival of Flowers
Pre-Symposium Gathering at Ju Raku En Japanese Garden Awards Ceremony