A fundraising garden tour’s about to go to the next level.
After 10 years, Wakatipu Plunket’s partnered with the Arrowtown Creative Arts Society (ACAS) to increase the scale of its hugely successful Wakatipu Garden Tour weekend, being held from February 9 to 11.
It’s resulted in ‘Gardens + Galleries’, which next year will showcase a whopping 26 venues, including some of the region’s most stunning private gardens.
Wakatipu Plunket manager Elessa Impey says some of the gardens are ‘‘simply jaw-dropping’’ and is indebted to ACAS.
‘‘They have a very large supporter base, plus considerable event management expertise, so they’ve taken on a big chunk of the expansion workload.
‘‘We hope that together we can build this up from the local gardens attraction we’ve had over the last 10 years to a more nationally-recognised event which attracts many special-interest visitors to the Basin.’’
She’s particularly grateful for the support of garden and gallery owners, who understand money raised in the resort stays here to help local
mums, carers and children.
ACAS’s participation’s gratis and led by Margot Robinson, while highly regarded landscape designer Paddy Baxter’s adding technical expertise and helping with the sometimes delicate arrangements of access to the gardens.
Robinson says visitors will enjoy access to larger ‘‘parkland-style’’ and more compact gardens, while on the arts side, as well as including the area’s top galleries, they have arranged artist talks, a landscaping workshop, screening of a new documentary on Frances Hodgkins
and a garden sculpture tour.
It will be bookended by a grand opening at Arrowtown’s Lakes District Museum on February 8 and the Twilight Opera at Springpointer
Garden — details of which will be released next year — on February 11.
ACAS chair Paul Rea says they’ve had to restrict numbers at several of the spaces for the Gardens + Galleries, so recommends people
book one- or two-day tickets early.
For more information, or to buy tickets, visit acas.nz
