Spring Garden Open Days

Explore this award-winning garden, featuring beautiful vistas, New Zealand cultural icons, topiary, bonsai, and well-kept hedges. Find practical ideas for garden design, planting advice, and maintenance tips, with a focus on plants that thrive in Canterbury.

Wander through various plant collections, including beech and kauri forests, a canal, a museum lawn, and an azalea garden. Talk to experienced gardeners for tips on growing native plants. Bring a picnic and enjoy a peaceful day outdoors. 

Entry: $20 adults, children free.

This expansive, meticulously designed garden with flamboyant, wild planting is over 30 years old, features garden rooms with roses, vegetables and pleached hornbeams.  Explore ponds, a stream, perennial borders, new wave planting and a Japanese-inspired cloud-pruned garden.  The garden includes an extensive plant collection, native arboretum and various planting styles.

Visit the on-site nursery open daily at 11am, 1 pm and 3 pm.  Tea and refreshments are available for purchase

To book tickets and receive the address visit www.ortel.nz

*Open Sunday 16 November only

Entry: $20 adults, children free.

Established in 1939, Knockdolian is a classic woodland garden. Visitors can explore a variety of well-established areas including an orchard, vegetable garden, rose garden, rockery, deep borders, and woodland paths through our native area. Each corner of the garden offers something different, from bursts of seasonal colour to peaceful, shaded seats to sit.

Open days are from 13 - 15 November

Entry $10 per person

Visit this 1.25-acre Italianate garden, transformed over 25 years from a former shingle quarry into a masterpiece with a 5-star Garden of National Significance rating from the New Zealand Gardens Trust.

Explore the tapestry beech walk, vibrant maples, elegant roses, striking junipers, and unique artworks throughout the garden. 

Entry: $15 adults, children free.