The Rimu Avenue
It’s official, more or less. We are reopening the garden later this year but just for the ten days of the Taranaki Garden Festival. If you have been hoping to visit, those dates are October 30 to November 8. After seven years of being closed, it feels the right time to open again but for strictly limited periods of time.
The old garden remains more or less as visitors from past times may recall – the Rimu Avenue, sunken garden, rockery, avenue gardens and other house gardens.
No longer mown park, now a meadow
The park has been transformed to a meadow over the past seven years.
Opening the new summer gardens for public viewing
The new summer gardens are ready to be seen. We refer to these individually as the borders, the court garden, the caterpillar garden, the Iolanthe garden and the lily border (although the lily border will just be lily shoots in November). Collectively, these are close to an acre of sunny gardens planted predominantly in perennials.
We will offer a series of garden tours and workshops to be scheduled at that time – details to follow.
There will be no plant sales – we are well and truly over that and no longer produce any plants except for our own use or as part of Mark’s plant breeding programme.
We are hoping to be really busy for those ten day and it will be a pleasure to meet some of the regular readers of this site.
Fantastic. Looking forward to seeing the garden as the photos always look so tempting.
Thank you!
I shall begin saving up for a Taranaki Garden Festival excursion!
Good luck, Abbie – it’s looking wonderful. I’d love to be wandering past those irises!
Will be the highlight of the festival for me!
Thank you!
Oh, I so miss opening to the public. It has been longer than sever years for us. It was fabulous while it lasted.
Fabulous might be overstating it but it can certainly be very affirming.
If you thin of it like guests do, it seems more fabulous.
Loved reading this newsletter Abbie, it will be a pleasure to visit the garden, I have been waiting so long to hear this news. A garden such as yours is so inspirational. It looks like another roadie back up to Taranaki this year !
Michelle
That is wonderful, Michelle.
Very pleased to hear this news Abbie, we have been longing to get a chance to visit your garden once again (last time was 2008) and it will be exciting to see all the more recent developments ‘in the flesh’. So that’s at least one ‘must see’ garden for the 2020 Taranaki festival for us.
Do introduce yourself when you come, Tim.
Thank you Abbie, we will do that :-)