Harwood Reserve - A Secret Garden Traditional Cache

This park is bounded on all sides by houses, you'll need to access from one of three alleyways. Please switch your stealth mode to extreme. Once you've found the cache, please replace *exactly* as you found it so that it is protected from casual passers-by. BYOP.  There is room for small trades and trackables only.

A Great War

This neighbourhood bears the pain and pride of a nation coming out of the scars of the Great War.  Much of the area near Dominion Road was a subdivision called Victory Estate. A stroll of the streets will reveal names like Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force between 1915 and the end of the war, Marshal Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch, Allied Supreme Commander for the last year of the war, and across Sandringham Road, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, Secretary of War at the outset of the war (source for all:wikipedia.com).

This park is named after Sir Henry Harwood Harwood, a British naval officer who won fame at the Battle of River Plate. The Battle of River Plate was remarkable in New Zealand military history due to the participation of the HMNZS Achilles, captained by Sir William Edward Parry, who gives his name to the nearby Parry Street.

I've chosen to dedicate this cache to a soldier from the Great War with the same name as this park, Private August Harwood who was killed in action as a stretcher bearer on 5 May 1915.  He was killed at Gallipoli.

http://100nzmemorials.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/private-august-harwood-te-aroha.html

A Secret Garden

We regularly walk our geohound Albert through this secret garden.  With no street frontage, it feels like an intimate spot to be away from the coming and going of cars.  While small, it has a nice little playground for geokids to play on, and park benches for the weary geocacher to sit and pass the time.  As a pocket sized park off the main route, on our travels we are usually the only ones in the park. While great for privacy, you should consider your safety if coming at night-time.  Surrounded on all sides by houses, it is a place for quiet enjoyment, even while geocaching.

The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1911.  The innocence of the novel could not have predicted the cataclysm that would envelope Europe just 3 years later.