He said the rooftop will feature about six vignettes of garden designs, including the Green Wall, a garden display by urban planners Boffa Miskell, and a native garden created by Mangatawa Nursery working in collaboration with Maori artist Linda Munn.
Other displays will include bonsai, topiary, palms and cycads, and Ashburton gardener Jade Temepara will give talks on her project to get families to grow their own food. The Environment Centre will have a stand featuring community gardens, composting and worm farming.
Continuous loop DVDs of the Ellerslie, Melbourne and Chelsea flower shows will be shown inside a marquee.
A series of workshops on Sunday November 4 will give people the inside story on growing to seed (Gerard Martin), topiary (Claudia Gorringe), urban beekeeping (Marcia Meehan), the medicinal uses of native plants (Robert McGowan), planting a good food supply (Melody Williams and Antoinette van der Weerden) and four 'agony uncles' who will answer questions on gardening problems. Admittance to each workshop was $9.90 and the event was sponsored by the Bay of Plenty Times.
Natural Habitats' Bay of Plenty manager Jason Muir said the Green Wall would be the backdrop to the rooftop garden's stage. They had patented the concept in partnership with an Australian company.
Another inaugural event for the festival was the Craigs Investment Partners Sculpture Symposium in which 15 sculptors would each create a work on Tauranga's waterfront.
The eighth Garden & Artsfest is unique to New Zealandand the garden and art trail, with 89 different attractions, stretches across the Western Bay of Plenty.
