Auckland Garden DesignFest

We used to enjoy the Heroic Gardens Festival each February when Auckland’s LGBT community opened their gardens to the public. But we were latecomers — the festival had already been going for almost 20 years before we found out about it. 

Even so, we saw some truly stunning gardens and could chat with the garden owners. All the while, we were getting ideas for what to include in our own garden.

Sadly, the festival finished up in 2019, and there’s not been anything like it since.

Today we saw some of the 18 gardens featured in the Auckland Garden DesignFest, which is organised by the Garden Design Society of New Zealand along with Rotary Newmarket. 

Due largely to today’s inclement weather, we stuck to the gardens in Kohimarama and Remuera. The highlight was this garden with its view out over Orakei Basin.

This weekend’s festival was more about hardscaping than gardens. The landscape designers were on hand to talk about their projects (but there were no owners to talk about their gardens).

Sometimes you don’t realise just how good things are until they’re gone.