I’ve been away again.
But the best kind of away. I put on one of my favourite hats to do my job as a Botanical Tour Guide for Botanica World Discoveries. I hosted a bus load of garden tourists across New Zealand over two back-to-back tours. Firstly, it was the NZ Taranaki Garden Spectacular and Private Gardens Tour followed by the NZ Private Gardens and Landscapes Tour. All in all, over 22 days, we took in 32 of the best gardens this country has to offer.
I have to say it is the best way to travel, with fellow travellers who love gardening as much as I do and gardeners are the nicest people. No matter where you come from we all speak the language of plants – even if we pronounce things a little differently.
The other great thing about a tour like this is in their names – ‘private gardens’. This kind of travel opens opportunities that wouldn’t ordinarily be accessible. And with me as your host, all you need to do is sit back and enjoy, while I take care of the details and ensure any worries you may have are taken off you and taken care of.
It is pretty full on for me, but the pay off is I get to visit these amazing gardens and soak in the beauty and maybe borrow an idea here and there for inspiration. As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate, but you can’t hold back a good idea… Stay tuned for a waterfall in my garden sometime soon… I don’t know how or where, but given enough time to ponder it, I’m sure it will be easy enough to do…
My garden survived in the meantime, under the care of my handy helpers and the teen lad. Hubby the Un-Gardener was with me on tour and was a great help counting guests and helping with the bags. But more on my garden later….
Sit back and enjoy a short slide show of all 33 gardens with never seen before images (not the ones I put on my social media each day while travelling – so check those out if you haven’t already):
And now I need to turn my attention back on the garden – it’s open next weekend for a fundraiser and there is much to do.
Come again soon – the garden will be my main focus going forward.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
NB: for those interested in finding out more about travelling with Botanica, check out: https://www.botanica.travel/
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Sarah, that looks like so much fun! I’m glad you got a way with your hubby and that you could tour so many beautiful gardens in your equally gorgeous country.
It is the best job ever and so much inspiration to be had. But I am looking forward to a bit of ‘normal’ whatever that looks like! : o)
I fully understand. Travel opens us up to new experiences, and home allows us to relax and reflect and perhaps implement what we learned along the way.
Will you be adding a ‘synthetic’ waterfall? The natural waterfall outside and another at work are overrated. However, the advantage to a synthetic waterfall is that, if necessary, you can turn it off! When natural waterfalls get noisy, I can do nothing about them!
We have no natural water here so it will have to be ‘synthetic’. I’m looking forward to the challenge and yes begin able to turn it off will be an advantage. : o)
Gee, it just occurred to me that, even if you can turn off a waterfall, you can not turn off the surf!
Oh yeah – that. The sound of the ocean becomes a little bit like white noise – after a while you don’t notice it! : o)