Our Top 10 Reasons to go to Ellerslie

1. The new light house in Hagley Park
The hotly contested National Flower Bed Competition was taken out by Akaroa and the Bays who recreated the iconic Banks Peninsula’s landmark Akaroa Lighthouse.

2.    Gardens you can eat!
Fresh Cuisine is the Countdown exhibit, here you will find a cauliflower pavlova, kumara prawns and an almond turkey  – and that’s just at the entrance of their Marquee…

3.    Trend spotting
Gold, silver and bronze medals have been awarded to the gardens which display innovation and excellence in design  – these are the guys who set the trends for garden design in 2011.

4.    Eco All Blacks
Halfback Andy Ellis and his mate Danny Kamo have created a “grown up” garden, making a statement about the impact we as humans are having on the environment and the planet’s natural resources.

5.    Up-and-comers
New Zealand’s tertiary students competing for the coveted Student Designer of the Year.

6.    Flashbacks
Lincoln University students using imagery from traditional board games and even ‘80s video games to evoke childhood memories in their garden; creating New Zealand’s 21st Century quarter-acre paradise –  in the sky!

7.    Top guns
Gardens by international designers Chris Beardshaw from England and Japan’s Koji Ninomiya.

8.    Uniquely New Zealand
Te Waipounamu Garden – a traditional Maori garden dispels myths and answers the question: What is a traditional New Zealand garden?

9.    A great Kiwi ‘build off’
Some of New Zealand’s best landscape artists are put through their paces in The Great North and South Landscape Build-off, competing to build a mirror image garden at Ellerslie with the emphasis on using “local materials for local projects.”

10.    Ice Garden
This features a two-metre high towering iceberg and evolves over the five days to give Show visitors a full sensory experience of being in the Antarctic.