Garden and Art Festival launches in the Bay

Garden and Arts Festival Party at the Adams residence. John Beech and Cheryl Adams. PHOTO/GEORGE NOVAK

The ninth biennial New Zealand Garden and Art festival launched tonight in Tauranga.

More than forty people gathered tonight to launch the festival.

If you can't see the guide clearly in your browser, head here.

The festival celebrates the beauty and diversity of the Western Bay of Plenty region's gardens and the variety and creativity of local artists.

This year the festival activity starts at the festival hub, The Lakes Expo Pavilion, and will include displays and exhibitions, speakers, workshops and a café, as well as information needed to embrace everything the festival has to offer.

The Sculpture Symposium this year will be at Mount Maunganui waterfront.

Garden trail
Monday, November 17- Sunday, November 23

The garden trail will start at Katikati and wind its way though country communities and local villages, through urban Tauranga, with diverse gardens, and into the hills before covering the coast, taking in Te Puke and making it as far as Maketu.

More than fifty percent of the gardens on the Garden Trail are new to the festival, providing an excellent mix with former favourites back for another showing.

Flowers are back in favour, but the overall impression will be to confirm yet again what gardeners have always known; no two gardens are the same and no two days are the same in one garden.