There will be daily garden and house tours, plus a weekend orchestra performance, at the world-rated Tūpare in New Plymouth.
With the guidance of permaculture tutor Dee Turner, urban gardeners can learn how to plant a food forest.
World-class garden Tūpare will be alive with the sound of music on the first weekend of the Taranaki Garden Festival.
On October 31 and November 1, the Taranaki Symphony Orchestra and Ensembles will be performing on the tennis court, from 9.30am to 4pm, in the highly rated New Plymouth Arts-and-Craft-inspired property.
Tūpare has been awarded the 2020 Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice Award, placing it in the top 10% of attractions worldwide. In 2019, it became a Garden of International Significance.
During the whole garden festival, on from October 30 to November 8, there will be free guided walks around the Taranaki Regional Council-owned garden at 2pm each day. There will also be free tours of the Chapman-Taylor house half-hourly from 10am to 12.30pm.
Guided tours at Pukekura Park, The Fernery and Display House, plus Pukeiti, Hollard Gardens and Te Henui Cemetery are all part of this year’s Garden Festival line-up.
Alongside the 40 festival gardens, a visiting star will be former NZ Gardener editor Lynda Hallinan, who is presenting a Garden to Plate event at Mitre 10 Mega on November 5 at 6.30pm.
She will tell her story of gardening at Foggydale Farm, share her gardening secrets for people with properties little to large and answer those pressing questions about growing fruit and veggies.
Tickets are $5 and the full amount will be donated to Sustainable Taranaki, which is behind the Taranaki Sustainable Backyards trail running alongside the garden festival and new partner the Taranaki Arts Trail.
The Mitre 10 Garden Speaker Series is on too. People can learn about propagating plants and making hanging basket with Manaia’s Jenny Oakley, join Hawera’s Ken Horner for a Visit Through the PĀst and learn how to make a food forest with Dee Turner. At Tikorangi, The Jury Garden, the New Directions with Sunny Perennials session is sold out and the Meadow Theory 101 session is close. However, Abbie Jury will be doing garden tours at 11am on October 30, November 4 and 6.
Two botanical jewellery workshops with The Jewel and the Jeweller on November 3 and 4 are already sold out, but creative folk can book for an Indoor Plant Styling session with Flora and Co on November 4. There’s also a great spread of Feast Festival Taranaki events celebrating the region’s hospitality sector, food producers, brewers and distillers.
Discover Taranaki offers a wide range of events and outings, including cocktail evenings and afternoon tea in glorious gardens, behind-the-scenes distillery tours, a botanical art class, feeding alpacas, visiting the studio of two Taranaki artists and seeing another creative woman’s eye-catching furniture.