The New Zealand Garden & Art Festival is held every two years in and around Tauranga. The Festival is like one of those large sampler boxes of delicious biscuits – it’s got something to please everyone and for every taste.
The festival’s website and promotional booklet were out there flaunting their hot pink finery for months in advance ensuring no-one could say they didn’t know anything about one of our area’s major attractions. Two years ago a friend bought a ticket for me as a gift and took me around on a garden trail – for a relative newcomer to Tauranga, it was a fabulous way to see the district. This year it was my turn. I remembered to invite my friend and then Prime Minister-like promptly forgot until while “helping with Hairy Maclary at the Tauranga Farmer’s Market” I got a text asking when we were going on the garden trail. There was no room for excuses and no she doesn’t want me to take her to lunch!
Well, other than the garden trail which I didn’t do this year I’ll tell about what I did manage to get along to in an unplanned and I have to say haphazard way. And perhaps that was one of the great things about the Festival – there was stuff to see absolutely everywhere. And, everything I saw was free and accessible to anyone who wanted to see it.
I’ve written my G&A Fest encounters as individual articles so you can read them as you have time. They are comments on fragments only of this huge event. But have a look at
The Lakes Expo/Hub/Exhibition site was a must be repeated first for the Garden and Arts Festival – take a look at The Lakes Expo Pavilion – temporary quarters
Gallery 59 had a beautiful hydrangea themed installation by established Tauranga artist Graham Crow – look at Home Grown.
The Tauranga Art Gallery has a series of environmentally themed exhibitions most continuing to mid-February – look at Tauranga Art Gallery’s Festival Exhibitions
The Creative Tauranga Community Gallery showcased the work of Angela Maritz (there’s also a comment about the Hairy Maclary Sculpture Project and the work of Gallery Curator Millie Newitt) – look at Flowers and gulls at Creative Tauranga Community Gallery
Design on James, rurally based design and décor workshop – take a look at A Fortunate Mistake – Design on James
Rosemary Balu
