Festival Combines Gardening and the Arts

Media release from Write Now
'Personality Plus' Festival

‘Personality Plus’ Festival Combines Gardening and the Arts

A garden ‘guru’ from Australia, Dunedin’s Larnach Castle’s garden creator, sculptors from Picton and Taranaki, an award winning young gardener from Ashburton and visitors from all over the country will converge on the Bay of Plenty for the biennial NZ Garden & Artfest 1-11 November.

Stephen Ryan is a well regarded broadcaster and author who created an extensive garden in rural Victoria after the grounds had been destroyed in the devastating ‘Ash Wednesday’ bush fires in 1983. He appears in the festival Speaker Series with a virtual tour of the garden which includes many rare plants. Another speaker very popular on the garden festival circuit is NZ Gardener magazine editor at large, broadcaster and author, Lynda Hallinan who is likely to produce many laughs as she describes her new rural life, subject of her book, “Back to the Land: A Year of Country Gardening’. Dunedin’s Margaret Barker will speak of her 45 years transforming the Larnach castle grounds into a ‘Garden of International Significance’.

Fifteen sculptors will face the challenge to create a work of art in public in one week as participants in the Craigs Investment Partners Sculpture Symposium. The artists include well known Bay of Plenty talents plus Pita Rua Lagan a wood carver from Picton, Anna Korver, Steve Molloy and Clair Sadler from Taranaki, and Trends magazine’s 2011 Sculptor of the Year’ Andrew Deadman from Auckland, all working in public on Tauranga’s recently redeveloped waterfront, the symposium culminating with an auction of work.

Jade Temepara, NZ Gardener magazine’s Gardener of the Year, will appear as part of the festival’s urban rooftop garden attraction, speaking of her project to encourage families to grown their own food, a subject she is so passionate about converted the front lawn of her Ashburton cottage into vegetable garden to show how it could be done.

While the wide selection of events will, according to Festival Director, John Beech, “Round out the festival and increase its connection to the community,” the main focus is on the week long Garden Trail which opens up over 60 private gardens, many with local artists work on display, to festival goers.

“Ticket sales are satisfyingly steady, “reports John, “and, based on past patterns, we expect a huge surge in sales in the immediate lead up to the festival’s commencement.”

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