Media Release July 23, 2015

‘Green’ theme of 2015 Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular

This year’s Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular is going greener than ever.

“There’s a theme around sustainability, organics and taking things back to basics,” says Festival Manager Lisa Ekdahl.

This is reflected in events such as Kath Irvine’s The Abundant Vegie Patch Workshop, Ecostore founder Malcolm Rands’ No Nasty Chemicals presentation and Home Made with celebrity chef Simon Gault, who is into healthy food.

“The thing about Simon is that he’s not just a fabulous chef, he is an entertainer who is concerned that his entire audience has a great experience,” Lisa says.

In the speaker series, Jodi Roebuck Seed Keeper will show people around his bio-intensive property at Omata, and there are also talks on bees and bee-keeping and monarch butterflies.

Jodi’s place is one of seven new gardens in New Zealand’s premiere spring festival, which runs from October 30 to November 8.

The six other new properties are the Palmer Garden at Hawera, KenKora at Opunake, Manganui at Inglewood, Te Puke Awa at Lepperton, plus Hilltop Vista and Holyoake Garden, both in New Plymouth.

These gardens are spread around Taranaki and vary greatly in styles, Lisa says. “We have contemporary inner city slightly tropical gardens to more traditional ones in rural settings.”

In total, there are 47 open gardens in the 28th annual festival, which includes a variety of events, including tours of New Plymouth’s Chapman-Taylor homes. “They were so popular last year that people were disappointed they missed out, so we’ve put on two tours.”

Many people in the festival plan to expand visitors’ experiences by providing food, having pop up shops, displaying artworks and one gardener is even opening the family home for people to see.

There are also events about dressing up. Frocks on Bikes is an outing that encourages women to decorate their cycles and themselves. Owner of Et Vous, Kate Macfarlane, has been inspired by New Zealand’s fashion week and is organising a fashion session called She Who Walks in the Theatre Royal. “People love the excellent goodie bags Kate puts together for these events.”

Lisa says the Spectacular is ever-changing. “It is evolving as younger people become interested in gardening and the experience it can bring as a focus for entertaining and sharing with their friends and eventually the public.”

That’s what the festival is about, says Egmont Seeds General Manager John McCullough, guest speaker for the Spectacular launch this July.

“It allows a brief sharing of the pleasure, pride and reward between the visitors and our best gardeners. These gardens act as an inspiration to some of us and a testament to those that created and maintain them,” John says.

“So much skill, patience, time and dedication goes into these masterpiece gardens. It is just fantastic how they will share their works with us.”

Powerco’s Acting Corporate Affairs Manager Krysti Wetton says the annual garden festival is a wonderful event for Taranaki.

She says Powerco is committed to supporting the communities in which it operates. “We are delighted to be sponsoring the garden festival, which attracts visitors from wide and far to see the spectacular gardens and experience all the event offers.”

Tony Barnes, one of the garden assessors for the Spectacular, says the people who open their properties for the festival are plant lovers.

“Taranaki has such a huge variety of plants that grow well and we are passionate gardeners and real gardeners,” he says. “Because people are interested in different sorts of plants we get the different designs of gardens to go with the plants.”

As a long-time assessor and nurseryman, Tony and partner John Sole have Ngamamaku at Oakura, which has been open on and off for festivals since about 1990.

Not only are gardens assessed to join the festival, those accepted are then inspected every three years. “We feel it’s important that standards are maintained because people come from around New Zealand and the world to see the gardens,” Tony says.

Ends

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