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FESTIVAL REVIEW
Some things don't live up to our memories and are simply not as much fun the second time around. Hunter's Garden Marlborough is a standout exception to this rule.
Groups of friends and keen gardeners such as the 'Canterbury Gardening and Gaiety Girls' return year after year. It is clear that Hunter's Garden Marlborough has something special to offer.
Marlborough's Garden Festival just keeps on growing. It is no mean feat to keep the festival fresh and interesting. New gardens are introduced and another tour joined the programme this year. New speakers and a diverse range of topics fill the speaker programme and make choosing a seminar a tough job!
Bands of volunteers are conscripted to manage the registrations of some 2,000 visitors, to act as couriers on the bus trips, take tickets at the seminars, dispense tea and coffee in the lounge and dispense advice on the reception desk. Welcoming, cheerful and helpful they make the festival a very personal experience.
It is easy to unwind and relax far from pollution, crowds and traffic. Blenheim's town centre is small enough that once there; you can walk to everything- your bus pickup point, your seminar or to a café with scrummy muffins and coffee.
Garden Tours
Marlborough is a very beautiful region and its gardens are amongst the best in New Zealand, comparing favourably to overseas gardens. Yet Marlborough has tough climate to garden in - cold dry winters and scorhing, often droughty summers on the plains and Kaikoura coast. Wet and humid in the Marlborough Sounds yet with severe frosts.
The established garden tours (Awatere Valley - East Coast, Wairau Valley - Havelock, Rapaura - Lower Wairau, and Blenheim Town gardens) always include new, fresh gardens, and many visitors enjoy revisiting gardens to see how they have developed and changed from year to year. This year a new tour, the plains, introduced some innovative, younger gardens to the line-up of gorgeous country and town gardens that Garden Marlborough is famed for.
In response to a flood of requests from those who have been to every Marlborough garden festival, this year there were nine all-new gardens in the tour programme. The Plains Tour is all new and visited five beautiful and yet diverse gardens.
On the Awatere tour, formal and impressive gardens such as Winterhome are full of inspired ideas and innovative planting despite the sever climate, droughts and coastal winds. This is a garden that truly makes the most of its cliff top site while providing a host of sheltered areas within the shelter of aged ngaios and other natives. Gorgeous herbaceous plantings and roses, roses everywhere are the inspiration from Barewood, and inland garden that is clearly the first love and lifework of its creator.
The highlight of the Wairau Valley tour must surely be Bankhouse, a garden that makes the most of its established trees. From the garden terraces near the house, where drought resistant and sun-loving plants predominate, the visitor descends into a shaded gully where hosts, heucheras and shade loving plants enjoy the cooler conditions.
Vastly different climatic conditions make Braeside, overlooking the Marlborough Sounds, a fascinating mix of native plants, rhododendrons and a simply stunning bog garden. The warratah, Telopea speciosissima, are in flower especially for Hunter's Garden Marlborough and the visitors and the birds are especially appreciative.
The new Plains tour brought a mix of smaller and large gardens, both more contemporary and classic, traditional styles. For the most part young gardens, visitors found inspiration and a hugely enjoyable day.
A beautifully sited pond at Tussock, where a rustic seat seemed to float before the backdrop of the Richmond Range, housed a colony of frogs that kept everyone amused. Closer to the house a sunken garden and some modern interpretations of patterned gardens as well as sitting-out areas were source for inspiration.
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Hunter's Garden Marlborough 2001 |
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Scrapbook from Garden Marlborough
Bold colour dazzles at Dartington
Formal style in the Canal Garden at Winterhome
Roses, nobody does it better than Marlborough. Barewood, a stunning Awatere Valley garden
Gardens with contrasting styles - the sunny terraces at Bankhouse
Clematis impress at Hunter's Garden Marlborough
The pond bench and the frogs fascinate at Tussock
The other side of Tussock -
the sunken garden
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