Today we visited one great garden called Flaxmere. In the afternoon I visited the Christchurch Botanical Garden. FLAXMERE The owner, Penny Zion, explains the history of the garden: The garden is about 7 acres on a huge farm which she owns. She does all the maintenance with a couple of helpers. Everywhere in the garden…

We did not see any gardens today but we did travel 6 hours from the west coast to the east coast of the south island. During this trip we encountered the pancake rocks, beautiful countryside, an engineering marvel and snow covered mountains: PANCAKE ROCKS The pancake rocks are located in Paparoa National Park. The rock…

Before we drove across the South Island we visited two gardens: Woodend Garden and the Hammond Garden. WOODEND GARDEN I asked a man who had a name badge on if he was the gardener who pruned all these hedges and he said that he was the owner but he did prune the hedges: Arbors and…

On our second day in Blenheim, NZ we saw the Paripuma Garden, lunched at the Allen Scott Family Winemakers vineyard and visited Welton House Garden. PARIPUMA GARDEN As you can see from the first photo, the grass is getting drier in the hills and there will be more watering required in gardens on the South…

The South Island of NZ tour starts today and this is the route to the gardens: We took the ferry through Cook Strait and then visited Upton Oaks, the chocolate factory and Hortensia House. COOK STRAIT The ferry took us, the bus and our luggage from Wellington to Picton on the South Island of NZ….

We have the day off today as the North Island tour is ending and the South Island tour is beginning tomorrow. Several of us decided to go to Zealandia which is a place where you can see birds and animals in a natural but fenced area in a valley in Wellington: The main paths are…

It was raining hard this morning so they canceled the trip to the Wellington Botanic Garden. Then the weather cleared up so we all decided to walk to the Te Papa Museum since the bus was gone. We saw an exhibition about New Zealand’s part in WW1 at Gallipoli. We then got a tour around…

We visited 3 gardens today on the way to Wellington: Paloma Garden, Greenhaugh Garden and Hlomo Hlomo. Corn PALOMA GARDEN When I first arrived at this garden I thought that it was a little strange. The owner is a cowboy type guy who didn’t even know how much land he had. He said his garden…

Many gardens were open for the Taranaki Garden Festival and today we saw 3 of the best: Cairnhill Garden, Oakley Garden and the Puketarata Garden. CAIRNHILL GARDEN This garden is about 1 1/2 acres and was started from scratch over 50 years ago by the owner. This is what it looked like back then: The…

It rained a little today but that didn’t dampen our spirits in the gardens. First we Saw Saxton Sanctuary, then Pukeiti and finally the Nikau Grove Garden. Some of us walked through Pukekura Park on the way back to the hotel. SAXTON SANCTUARY This garden has an interesting story. It was built by a schoolteacher…