MANAWATU SHOW HIGHLIGHTS MICROGREENS expert Fionna Hill and Bugman Ruud Kleinpaste were centre of attention at the 10th anniversary Manawatu Garden Festival at Manfeild Stadium in Feilding. Palmerston North landscape designer Leonard Wall took the honours at the landscape design awards with his ‘typically New Zealand’ (pictured above) garden scene. View www.beyondthewall.co.nz A minimalist Japanese [...]

RAUMATI South School pupils prepare their sustainable garden for the 2011 Kapiti Coast Sustainable Home and Garden Show’s Resourceful Living Landscape Design competition. The seventh annual event is a showcase of sustainable living with the pupils developing a keyhole garden concept – a way of growing food for a village where the natural environment would [...]

TEN-YEAR-OLD Georgia Cassidy, of Silverdale north of Auckland, has been crowned the Tui Great NZ Grow Off Champion for 2010-11. The national grow off challenge encourages more people to grow their own veggies. Overall winners Georgia and her dad David started veggie gardening in the school holidays – and the father-daughter team have gone ‘veggie [...]

TICKET holders to the cancelled 2011 Ellerslie International Flower Show in Christchurch will receive refunds. The show site, marquees and infrastructure in North Hagley Park is being used as shelter following the February 22 earthquake. Christchurch City Council, owners of the show, says the temporary facilities have been invaluable as a shelter to those in [...]

WELLINGTON’S South Coast Gallery, one of hundreds of exhibitors at the cancelled Ellerslie International Flower Show, is holding a fundraising event at the Island Bay gallery (302 The Esplanade) on March 12 – 13 (noon to 5pm), with 25% of the sale price of each item to go to the Earthquake Fund (Red Cross).

The Canterbury Horticultural Society’s 150th anniversary celebrations through 2011 are on hold in the aftermath of the earthquake. The society’s Hagley Park headquarters mostly escaped damage, general manager Iain Clark reports. “We had no injuries to our staff,” he says. “But all March events are off and we will be accessing the situation after that.” [...]

THE gardens of Christchurch’s majestic Otahuna Lodge and gardens, one of the features of the Christchurch Horticultural Society’s Ellerslie Garden Tours was to be Weekend Gardener’s cover story this issue. The homestead itself, a Category 1 historic building, suffered significant damage during the September earthquake and repairs had not long been completed. Owners Hall Cannon [...]

CHRISTCHURCH’S 22nd annual Festival of Flowers was having record attendances until the earthquake. The festival offices in the CBD were destroyed but staff were not injured. The major festival attraction in ChristChurch Cathedral (pictured top), the Floral Carpet exhibition designed by Dawn Laughlin, had this year concluded earlier, a couple of days prior to the [...]

POPULAR Weekend Gardener advertiser Garden Room Gifts (www.gardenroomgifts.com), based in the devastated suburb of Avonside, has phone (021 120 6725) contact with customers. Owner Sharon Delaney says she is attempting to fulfill orders despite having damaged stock as courier services resume. At press time she had ‘borrowed’ email access: gardenroomgifts@xtra.co.nz

THE Englefield house and garden of Christchurch gardener and writer Robyn Kilty was severely damaged in the earthquake. A Garden of National Significance, Number Eleven and the tiny 19th century cottage are regarded as one of the Garden City’s treasures.