Ellerslie gardens go green style
05 Feb 2010
Ellerslie International Flower Show, Christchurch
10 - 14 March 2010
Sustainability will be on show at New Zealand’s premier garden festival, the 2010 Ellerslie International Flower Show in Christchurch.
Organic fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers will nestle alongside beautiful, sophisticated landscape and garden designs. And for those still conscious of the recession, there will be plenty of smart wallet-friendly ideas to tame the inner thrift.
Gardening enthusiasts will be thrilled with a line-up of top international and New Zealand exhibitors and judges, and a choice of more than 100 horticultural exhibits including 30 gardens.
The garden festival will be headlined by two multi award-winning names - UK Chelsea Flower Show veteran and BBC television presenter Chris Beardshaw, and Japanese designer Koji Ninomiya.
Head judge Robert Hillier is chairman of Britain’s Hillier Nurseries - winners of 64 consecutive gold medals at London’s Chelsea Flower Show. Panellists will include Ninomiya, and Australians Jim Fogarty, Brian Rankin and Marc Worner.
Winning designs
UK designer Chris Beardshaw has built Ellerslie's largest-ever exhibition garden.
‘An Englishman’s Retreat’ stretches 12 metres along the shores of Victoria Lake and, with wrought iron gates, grand poplar trees and 10,000 plants, is inspired by a formal English garden.
Koji Ninomiya will take a more minimalist approach with his traditional Japanese garden, which is sure to win fans - his last exhibition in Melbourne won the Best in Show award in 2008.
Juxtaposed against these two will be a uniquely New Zealand entry - the ‘Māori Tohunga Garden’ is a spiritual place that grows plants with medicinal properties.
All Black half-back Andy Ellis and his landscape architect mate Danny Kamo will contribute for the second time. Their 2010 garden will make a serious statement about the impact humans are having on the environment and the planet's natural resources.
Childhood memories
Four third-year landscape architecture students from Lincoln University are paving the way to the future, with a playful, whimsical garden designed to evoke childhood memories.
‘Four Play’ has a central design inspired by board game Connect Four, with red and yellow foam cushions in the garden representing the game’s counters. Embedded into the garden’s landscape are designs based on old-fashioned video games with clever twists such as bench seats resembling Tetris blocks and a barbecue doubling as a large Pacman.
Icy paradise
Christchurch landscape designer Dan Rutherford has produced ‘An Icy Oasis’ - an ice garden lovingly modeled after the Antarctic landscape.
Visitors will be greeted by a two-metre high towering iceberg, a developing ice sheet and an "ocean" of plants, representing the marine life of Antarctica. Flowering plants, sculpture and lighting cleverly mimic the look of algae and sea organisms.
"For people who can’t travel to Antarctica, this ice garden at Ellerslie pays homage to the forces and materials of nature that exist there," Rutherford says.
Background: Ellerslie International Flower Show
Although named after the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie - where New Zealand's first international garden shows were held - the Ellerslie International Flower Show has been held in Christchurch since 2007.
The annual gardening, lifestyle and horticultural extravaganza runs for five days every March, and has built a strong reputation as New Zealand’s foremost annual flower show.
Visitors have a chance to glimpse the best new gardening trends, colours and looks by both local and international landscape architects and garden designers.
Christchurch is known as New Zealand's 'garden city'.
More information:
Rongoa Māori - traditional Māori medicine
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