Botanist and writer Maggy Wassilieff takes a wander through the New Zealand Gardens Trust and their Gardens of significance scheme, in this NZlive.com feature article.

Summer may have finally arrived and I’m impatient for my wind-blasted garden to transform itself into a fabulous horticultural show-piece. But who am I fooling? For in truth, my slack habits preclude me from ever having a show garden. However, I can indulge my garden desires vicariously by visiting open gardens.

With around 1000 gardens in New Zealand open to the public for part or all of the year, I’m spoiled for choice for seeing what our hard-working, master gardeners have been up to.

I can narrow down this choice by just viewing the nation’s most significant gardens. These are open gardens, public and privately-owned, that are considered by the New Zealand Gardens Trust to be the best in the country.

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We’ve spent a bit of time lately talking about wine – we got Toasted in Martinborough and had Adventures in Terroir along the Classic New Zealand Wine Trail. But it is a subject of which we are particularly fond. And given the plethora of grape-effused events happening over the next couple of days, it’s time to be thinking about such delightful things again.

Pinot Noir 2010 hits the capital for the next couple of days. As I’m not there, I’ll have to console myself with a friends and family tasting of my top five favourite NZ pinots – Martinborough Vineyard, Dog Point, Ata Rangi, Milltons and Rabbit Ranch. It may take me a number of nights to do this and several weeks of hard work to fund it. But so worth it.

Saturday sees a great selection of staggeringly good events with the Nelson Aromatics Symposium (Yum!), Taranaki Wine and Food Festival and the Waiheke Wine and Food Festival.  This is the opening volley of indulgence events for February with The Marlborough Wine Festival following suit on the 13th, Nelson’s Brightwater Wine and Food Festival on the 21st and the Waikato Times Food and Wine Festival on the 27th.

For those more interested in liquids from the grain, watch out for the Liquorland NZ Beer Festival in Auckland on the 13 Feb and Wellington 6 March.

More gourmet delights are available at the Maketu Rotary Kaimoana Festival. Also check out what the NZ Cheese School is up to with a tasty platter of cheese-making courses this year. Get in early if you want to get some practice in for CheeseFest ‘10 in March.

Be ready to impress! Te Ara has some excellent background reading to help the conversation flow freely. There are expansive articles on Wine and Viticulture and information on Hops.

Have a happy and safe Waitangi Day tomorrow folks!

NZLive has a selection of great Kiwi Books to give away to 5 lucky visitors.

Be in to win a copy of Janne Drayton’s Edith Collier: Her Life and Work; or Te Ara Tapu: Sacred Journeys; or Ans Westra’s The Crescent Moon: The Asian face of Islam in New Zealand; or one of two copies of Sam Hunt’s Backroads: Charting a Poets Life.

Entries closes midnight 1 March 2010.

Click here to enter online!

Or email us at competitions@nzlive.com. Remember to include:

• Your name
• Your daytime phone number and your address (so we can send you the goods!)
• ‘New Zealand Books Giveaway’ in the subject line
• The name of the book you would like to win

Giveaway terms and conditions.

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An occasional, randomised look at highlights from the RSS feeds.

For an endearing and cultural end to a week dominated by AC/DC and iPad, NZOnScreen have pulled together a nice little trio of clips. First up, a very rare interview with the reclusive Janet Frame. Then Vincent Ward explores one of Frame’s short stories in a chilling State of Siege. And Frame-biographer Michael King takes us through the life of literary great Frank Sargeson, also a friend of Frame.

Paul Reynolds has introduced us to the Chrystie Hill’s talk Community: its the new content.

In case you haven’t heard…

Kiwi short film The Six Dollar Fifty Man has won the top prize – the Jury Prize in International Short Film-making – at the Sundance International Film Festival in Utah. Another NZ movie has had sell-out audiences buzzing at Sundance – Boy the second feature film by director Taika Waititi is apparently the talk of the event.

The DOCNZ Documentary Film Festival has now been officially rebranded as the Documentary Edge Festival.

Sadly, Auckland’s Cross St Studios close tomorrow – We say goodbye with love.

Have a great weekend out there. And Wellingtonians – remember to cover up in the sun, you haven’t seen much of it lately.

Summer music festivals, they’re as Kiwi as sunburn. From the dust and sweat of The Big Day Out, to the grass-stains and melted ice cream of the Grey Lynn Park Festival, there’s something for everybody. Caleb Starrenburg checks out the sounds of summer in this NZLive feature article.

Of course we love the outdoors here in New Zealand, and we’re quite fond of our music, which is no doubt why, after another grim winter, we enthusiastically embrace the swathe of festivals on offer. And this summer is shaping up to be a scorcher – the music festivals that is, the weather remains as unpredictable as ever.

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