This is the realm of the cultivated food crops. They were brought here on the waka; they're not native to New Zealand, and there's actually just recently been a really important archaeological discovery on the west coast of the South American continent of a chicken bone that proves contact between Polynesians and south Americans. The Polynesians came to south America. When Columbus got to South America and discovered that there were chickens there. They didn't know why and at the same time Polynesians have got kumara, and kumara is native to south America. It doesn't appear in Europe; it's a new world crop. So there are theories that Polynesians came from Taiwan or they came from the old world. It leaves that question: Where did they get the kumara from?

The kumara we've got growing in this area was the most important crop for Maori. It was the number one source of carbohydrate for them. All other the native plants together did not provide any productive capacity of this kind; the ease of its cultivation and so on. Kumara doesn't set seed in New Zealand because it is too cold. So every season they have to sort out the tubas that they're going to keep for the next year's planting and the tubas they're going to eat.

The maori accumulated a vast knowledge on this problem of how to make sure that they have got enough kumara for the next crop. When the European explorers got here they had this huge plantation of really well organized plantations of kumara.

So this entire garden is now set up for kumara planting in a central position. All kumara in this garden gets harvested and the first bit gets presented to the Maori King and then the rest of it gets eaten in a big hangi. The Hamilton Gardens grow at least two of the original four varieties from pre-European times. When Europeans got here and brought bigger, better kumara from South America, the Maori gardeners started using those as they yield bigger tubers. The old types of kumara got lost and then in the 1960s or 1970s the Crown science people were looking for the old varieties but could not find them anywhere. They had to go to a Japanese scientist who had been out here in New Zealand and got tubers to store them in Japan. So these old types that we have growing here owe their existence to a Japanese scientist.

You will see that each plant is planted in a mound. The mound is there for lots of reasons. It increases the amount of sunlight that hits the ground, to keep it warmer for longer; especially when the sun gets low. You can't plant kumara until November and so it's really crucial to keep the end of the season as far away as possible. April, May; and the sun is getting quite low in the sky. Another aspect is increased drainage so the tubas don't rock. It also provides soil improvement and Maori gardening sites are usually discovered by the existence of borough pits, basically big holes in the ground where good soil; which is usually very, very sandy; very pumicey, would be dug up and watered. So the soil you see here is full of rocks and pumice and sand to make it much better draining than it otherwise would be. So we find very advanced soil improvement techniques that are certainly far beyond hunter gatherer type societies.