Gardeners spoilt for choice

Gillian Vine looks at the array of garden activities coming up in the Wild Dunedin Festival of Nature.

There's a dazzling line-up of garden events in the eighth Wild Dunedin Festival of Nature, which runs from April 14 to 23.

The festival slogan is Whenua: We are earth and earth is us.

"Because this year’s emphasis is on the earth and soil, we’ve more garden events," festival co-ordinator Suzanne Middleton says,

Like festival director Jeannie Hayden, she is a keen gardener and is encouraged by the rise in enthusiasm for gardening.

"The interest in this festival has been huge," Ms Middleton says.

"Everyone we’ve approached [to take part] has been really good."

There are 126 events on the 10-day programme, so it’s no surprise to learn that it has taken them the best part of the past year to pull everything together, especially as the organisers "operate pretty much on a shoestring".

Being timed to coincide with school holidays, the festival has a lot of free things for children.

The programme begins on the Friday morning at 10am with a two-hour family session on making crafts with seeds. Other craft activities include weaving with marram grass, painting with earth pigments and on Earth Day, April 22, Chingford Park will be the scene of Art Play, where participants make a giant collage of "found" items from nature.

The festival’s official opening celebrations are from 5pm on April 14 at Tūhura Otago Museum. The highlight of the evening will be 7x7 at 5.30pm with seven expert speakers.

"Each gets seven minutes to rave about their passion, then people vote for their favourite," Ms Middleton said..

Dunedin was "so lucky" to be able to tap into so much expertise, "all so keen to come along and share".

It has been a coup to get Kath Irvine as a speaker. The Edible Backyard author is touring New Zealand and was happy to fit Dunedin into her schedule. As well as taking part in a "Meet the authors" event on Saturday, April 15, she is speaking at one of the Talking Dirty sessions the following morning at Tūhura Otago Museum.

Talking Dirty is a free, all-day event and people can attend as many talks as they wish.

In the afternoon at Talking Dirty, NZ’s "dirt doctor", Jim O’Gorman, of Kakanui, will discuss gardening with a biological focus rather than by using chemicals. He is also running composting workshops at the Dunedin Botanic Garden.

Sharing seed is a great way to get new plants and ensure surplus is not wasted. This activity, held at the Dunedin City Library, will be a daily feature of the festival, so people are urged to drop off unwanted seed and/or take something for their gardens.

Open gardens include "Tour, talk and tipple" at Larnach Castle, where after the head gardener has led a tour showing the castle’s native plants, participants get canapes and a tipple of Sandymount gin. Other local tipples are also being promoted and foodies will enjoy learning how to use seaweed; check the programme for details.

Other open gardens include Jason Ross’ organic home garden where he will give tips on creating an edible garden; Rory Harding showcases his central Dunedin home orchard; Olveston’s garden is the backdrop for a composting workshop; and at Herewaka, Portobello, tours will feature restored native forest and Gondwana plants.

Three community gardens — Green Island, North East Valley and Puketeraki Marae — will be open during the festival. There will be conducted tours and various activities, with a Puketeraki group demonstrating the growing of organic kai as well as a propagation workshop.

Add birds, bees, butterflies and bugs, the Tūhura photography competition, discounted harbour tours, rock climbing and Town Belt walks, and the challenge is not what to do during the Wild Dunedin Festival of Nature but to work out how many events one can fit in during 10 days.