Soaking in Wonderful Gardens – Part One

Soaking in Wonderful Gardens – Part One

I have been away again.  And of course there were gardens involved.  And really nice gardens at that.  Although when is a garden not a nice garden… 

I was invited to attend the New Zealand Gardens Trust Conference which was held in Blenheim this year.  The NZGT is a fabulous organisation that curates and rates all the best gardens our country has to offer and invites anyone interested in gardens to become a friend with extra benefits, like being able to come to the wonderful conference (not as dull as going to a conference may seem – as I’ll explain.)  But any one can use the website >New Zealand Gardens Trust< and find some exceptional public and private gardens that open their gates for the general garden loving hoi polloi to experience the wonder of a well-done garden.

I’ve known about this wonderful organisation for a while and through my tour guide travels with >Botanica<, I had already experienced a large number of these exceptional gardens, so it was so nice to arrive nervously at the first event on the schedule to discover I already knew a lot of people.  And of course, gardeners are such loveliest  people and so I quickly made a lot of new friends that I could enjoy speaking gardenese with.

With conferences there are times when you sit and listen, but on each of these occasions there was something fascinating being said.  There was the Royal NZ Institute of Horticultural  Bank’s Lecture, given by Bill Brett and it was on the fascinating topic of ‘Global Food Security in a changing world and the impact on NZ’.  I found it a really interesting topic as I’ve been going on about the value of growing food for years, so it was good to see what was being said at a scientific level. 

There were also some eye-opening talks.  Not eye opening for anyone else, for everyone else it was superbly interesting and even relatable, but for me a penny dropped.  The common theme and thread was of dry gardening – which was quite ironical given the weekend weather conditions.  After listening intently it suddenly occurred to me (although others probably already knew better than me – but I have a dry garden- who’d have thought it?! – I’ll dig deeper into this mind-blowing discovery in another post in a few days – to give it time to sink in.)  The lovely Jo Wakelin from >Wakelin Garden< and the fabulous Jenny Cooper from >The Blue House Garden< are the ones that have completely upended what I think about my garden.

There were also some fascinating talks about a couple of unusual farms in the Marlborough region – oyster farming with FlipFarms and pine nut growing with Pinoli.  We also visited Puro – NZs largest grower of medicinal cannabis.  It was interesting to step out of the realm of ordinary gardening to see what these creative businesses were doing.

However, as a gardening conference – aside from the fellowship and comradery, we were there for the gardens and boy did they deliver.  Although it wasn’t just the great gardens that delivered.  The heavens opened and over the weekend delivered very welcome, but tad excessive 100mm of rain and a few drops more.  After 400 days without significant rain in the region, it poured down.  Ideally it would have been nice if it waited a day or two, but I had my brolly, raincoat and waterproof boots.  Besides well refreshed plants look their best, and cloudy days make better photos than sunny days.  There was an incident with a bus stuck in the mud, but we won’t dwell on that, and wine flowed freely until everyone was rescued. 

We’re here for the gardens but if I use too many more words this post will be too long and be in danger of becoming boring, which it certainly isn’t, so stay tuned for the next post where I’ll tell you all about the fabulous gardens. 

Come again soon – there will be garden gloriousness.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)