Michael Mansvelt from Jungle Nurseries. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Visitors to the Taranaki Garden Festival this year are being encouraged to go a bit tropical.
Long famed for its rhododendrons and magnolias, it's taking a step closer to the equator and embracing bromeliads, palms, orchids and even the humble banana.
Landscape designer and former TV presenter Michael Mansvelt is throwing open the doors of his latest venture - Jungle Nurseries - to festival-goers for the first time.
He is transforming the sprawling Waiwhakaiho site, a former garden centre on the New Plymouth outskirts, into a tropical wonderland.
He said Taranaki and tropical plants are more synonymous than one might think.
"So, if you go for a walk down by the Waiwhakaiho River particularly closer to the water where basically it's a damp rainforest environment.
"Everything here has a shiny, big glossy leaf, right. So, we have native puka, we have ferns.
"We have very tropical, sub-tropical plants that grow and thrive here from the coast to the mountain."
A highlight of Jungle Nursery was the main glasshouse.
"Round the edges I've planted some rare sort of plants that come from rainforest areas, tropical sort of closer to the equator I guess you could say.
"So, we've got lots of philodendrons and sort of those I guess they're kind of 'it' plants at the moment and they're going to grow up the walls, I've got them growing up poles. We've got bromeliads and I'm collecting lots of orchids."
Amelia de Ridder's garden. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
It was also home to a banana palm.
"People grow them all over Taranaki, the secret is to have them in the most sheltered warmest spot in your garden, but they fruit well here so long as you don't get a heavy frost.
"Obviously in the glass house it's now a problem. We can grow mangoes in here, we've got plenty of pineapples. We're feeding basically my family, which isn't small, and all of our staff."
Tropics on Mangati is also a first time exhibitor.
Amelia de Ridder's suburban Bell Block garden is a bromeliads paradise.
It began when she returned to Taranaki with 400 of the plants in her car boot.
"I had a very good friend here, Michelle McGrath, and she started me on them - as she does - and I think it became a bit of a race to see who could get the most and the best. Yes, we were a little bit naughty I think."
Ameila De Ridder's garden Tropics on Mangati is a bromeliads paradise Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
She was smitten with the plants and their distinctive sword-like leaves.
"I love them. They start off as little green pups, or you know, little things. By the time they're finished they're something quite different.
"Every brom has got its own form, its own shape, its own size and I've tried here to incorporate them with palms rather than in a structure."
A pensioner, she had future-proofed the garden.
"I've tried to make the garden easy care, so all I do is mostly walk around. My dream is a cup of coffee in the morning and to prune as I walk around or pick a weed and in the evening I walk around with a glass of wine."
Festival manger Jessica Parker said with 42 gardens in total there was plenty for visitors to see.
"Obviously, there's the rhododendrons where it all started, but just the seasonality and the time of year that we have the festival is when Taranaki is really at its best and it's blooming.
"We've got beautiful colours, we've got rhodos, azaleas all sorts of different coloured flowers that are coming right at the time of the festival, everything is out and looking beautiful."
Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival manager Jessica Parker. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Parker said beyond garden visits, the festival also offered workshops and speakers on specialist topic areas.
"So, we have permaculture with Dee Turner at Korito. That's an amazing garden and she does some amazing talks.
"We've got a couple of new ones this year with Yahoo Bamboo at Tropical Treasures, which is another tropical feel obviously, and we've also got what we've called Go Bananas with Vance Hooper out at Magnolia Grove. I mean, who knew we could grow bananas in Taranaki."
The Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival - which is a finalist for Lifestyle Event of the year - attracted more than 7000 visitors to Taranaki last year and contributed more than $5 million to the region's economy.
Its 36th edition runs from 27 October until 5 November, simultaneously with the Taranaki Arts Trail, Taranaki Sustainable Backyards Trail and the Taranaki Fringe Garden Festival.
