Auckland beach off to London

Xanthe White

About 1500 New Zealand native plants, including rare ones, will be shipped to England for New Zealand's garden entry in this year's Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Tourism New Zealand's garden won a gold medal at the prestigious show in 2004.

This year the design of the garden will be modelled on Karekare Beach on Auckland's rugged west coast.

Auckland designer Xanthe White, who is visiting England to prepare for the May event, which is dubbed the "catwalk of the gardening world," said the garden will follow the movement of water through the hills of the west coast out to the black sand beaches and horizon beyond.

"It explores the relationship between the natural landscape and our place within it," she said.

The garden would have a simple black and green colour scheme and include sculptures, glass water features, mirrors, local pebbles and detailed insets of paua.

Ms White, an enthusiast for Karekare, designed the "Kiwi Garden" at last year's Ellerslie Flower Show.

Plants used in the Chelsea entry will be unique to this country's coast, said sponsor Tourism New Zealand.

They include 15 rare Apium white denticles and 25 seedlings of the nationally endangered Pittosporum obcordatum.

Tourism New Zealand spokeswoman Cass Carter said the plants would spend nine weeks in quarantine before being repotted and sent in late March in five airfreight containers.

On arrival in England they will be grown in a greenhouse and shadehouse at the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden.

An additional 1500 plants are being obtained from specialist nurseries in Europe.

Auckland sculptor Virginia Kin is making 10 laser-cut stainless steel dragon fly sculptures for the garden.

In order to create the garden's foreshore, 5 cu m of Auckland's west coast black iron sand, 4 cu m of pebbles and a tonne of volcanic rock is being shipped to Chelsea, along with 10kg of polished paua shell chips.

It will take 12,000 cubic litres of water to keep the garden's recirculating water features active.

Tourism New Zealand said the "100 per cent New Zealand Garden" would be the focus of a significant marketing campaign .

Media coverage of the 2004 entry reached 47 million people in Britain.

The Waitakere City Council has been briefed about the entry by tourism officials.

Council arts and events chairman Judy Lawley said the council felt it was an honour but was unsure whether the attention would benefit the city's fledgling tourism industry any more than the country's tourism.

Karekare is included in the National Heritage Area proposed in the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Protection Bill, which is expected to be introduced to Parliament early this year.