50 Gardens in one Month
It isn’t often you can say you have visited over 50 gardens in one month, but this November that is what I did. Well, if I’m completely honest – a few were in the very tail end of October and one of the gardens was mine, so the exact tally is a little hazy, but it was all part of two epic events so the tally stays – all up I visited 54 gardens!
The most recent gardens visited were part of the 2023 Surf Lifesaving Kariaotahi Garden Ramble here in my local community. We were helping to raise funds to build a new surf club house as the old one was becoming quite dilapidated, and it has an important job to do to keep one of the country’s most dangerous beaches safe for everyone to enjoy.
With only 8 days between arriving home from my epic garden tour of NZ and the garden ramble, I pushed my weariness aside and threw myself into the garden, primping and preening and getting it looking lovely. Knowing I had this ramble coming up, I organised for a garden club to come and visit the garden two weeks before I left on my big tour, so I had no excuse not to have it in some kind of control and order before heading away. It was touch and go getting it ready for that first garden visit, with bad weather and multiple pre tour deadlines that all clambered for my attention.
But I got there in the end and headed away, safe in the knowledge that that garden was pretty much good to go. I had two handy helpers weeding, watering and spreading mulch while I was away so gratefully, in those 8 days all that was needed was a little tweaking to be ready for the ramble.
The ramble weekend itself was fantastic and I appreciated that just over 300 people took the time to come and visit the garden as we are a little way out of town. With 20 other amazing gardens closer to town and closer together, the return trip out to my garden would have meant missing another garden that could have been squeezed into a busy schedule. The weather was lovely, although on the second day it was a bit blowy, but nothing too bad on our coastal standards.
One of the best bits of visitors to the garden is overhearing the comments. There were so many ‘wows’ as people turned the corner and walked into the garden. Often all I see is the things that need to be done and all the imperfections. It takes looking through the eyes of someone else to truly see your garden as a whole and complete picture. All of your hard work to date, laid out and admired for what it is, not what it could be with a little extra work.
What came next was quite special. With everyone’s gardens in peak condition and taking into consideration that all of the garden owners were tied to their gardens and couldn’t get out and do a bit of rambling for themselves, the organisers arranged for us all to meet up and visit all the gardens in a whirl wind whistle stop tour of all 21 gardens in two days. And it was wonderful. Gardening can be such a solitary thing as you work away on your own garden, but gardeners are the nicest people and make a great community. So, after the final two days in my season of extreme busy, I finished up with new local friends, sore feet and a head jam packed full of good ideas. Everyone was so lovely, all the of gardens were amazing and completely different and also different from the previous 33 gardens.
As crazy as these last few weeks have been – I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Garden visiting is such a fabulous thing to do – I highly recommend it.
Come again soon – we’re getting back to basics in the vegie patch. Summer starts today.
Sarah the Gardener : o)