Rotary Cambridge Garden Festival 2026 Gardens
14 & 15 NOVEMBER 2026
Saturday Gardens - 14 November
A Joyful Garden Full of Roses and Colour
Described as a true happy place, this joyful garden is a therapeutic retreat filled with colour and more than 600 roses, including a spectacular rose-lined driveway. Beautiful planting is thoughtfully balanced with family life, featuring vibrant garden beds alongside a large purpose-built play area for children. It is a warm, welcoming space where colour, fragrance, and happiness come together.
A Plantsman’s Paradise of Diversity and Discovery
This expansive garden offers something for everyone, with more than 1,600 different trees, shrubs, roses, and perennials creating a rich tapestry of colour and form. Described as a "plant person's garden", it unfolds through several distinct yet seamlessly connected spaces, each offering its own character and outlook. Every specimen has been carefully recorded by its botanical name, reflecting a true passion for plants and meticulous attention to detail. The result is a beautifully curated, ever-changing landscape that invites visitors to explore and delight in its remarkable diversity.
A Country Garden with Timeless Character
Set on an expansive property, this garden reveals itself gradually as you move up the drive, opening into sweeping lawns framed by varied, free-flowing plantings. In the distance stands a grand character home, originally built in 1916 and relocated from Palmerston North 11 years ago, looking as though it has always belonged on the site. Behind the house, a grape-covered courtyard adds charm, while a small cottage at the entrance is also open for visitors to explore. With its rambling style, generous lawns, and welcoming atmosphere, this garden is a relaxing stop on the Festival trail, where visitors can enjoy Devonshire teas in the grounds and browse an antiques and brocante market stall.
A Small‑Site Masterpiece of Craft and Creativity
This striking garden is a wonderful example of what can be achieved on a small site. Developed over six years, it showcases clever design and craftsmanship, with pebble inlays, lime-fine pathways for permeability, and a multitude of thoughtful features that reflect the owner's professional landscaping expertise. Every inch of space has been carefully used to create a visually engaging, beautifully detailed garden that offers both interest and a tranquil place to relax and enjoy its peaceful ambience.
A Restored Oasis of Native Beauty and Serenity
This peaceful town oasis is alive with birds, animals, and abundant plant life, shaped through years of dedicated restoration. Majestic natives including tōtara, kauri, mānuka, and pūriri anchor a garden where decades-old plantings blend seamlessly with new growth. Once overwhelmed by ivy, jasmine, and privet, the property has been lovingly rehabilitated, with recycled and upcycled materials woven throughout, including brick flooring salvaged from the old police house. By honouring the land's original character, this serene and sustainable garden has become a timeless haven that feels deeply cared for.
A Rambling Country Garden Full of Charm and Discovery
A much-loved regular in the Festival, this enchanting one-acre country garden welcomes visitors into a peaceful and ever-evolving landscape. Shaded by mature trees, it is a hydrangea lover's dream, featuring 190 individually named varieties and more than 400 hydrangeas planted throughout. Hostas and Japanese maples add texture and colour, creating a rambling garden that is a pleasure to wander. Visitors can chat with the owner, who is always happy to share extensive gardening knowledge, particularly about hydrangeas, and a selection of plants will also be available for purchase. This is a garden where you'll notice something new every time you visit.
A Tranquil Country Retreat Two Decades in the Making
Over the past two decades, this one-acre country garden has been transformed into a tranquil, colour-filled retreat. A kaleidoscope of seasonal blooms is complemented by mature trees that frame the borders and provide welcome summer shade. Beautifully maintained lawns create a crisp backdrop, enhancing the rambling garden beds and ever-changing plant combinations. Instantly relaxing and a pleasure to wander, this is a garden where the peaceful ambience reflects years of care, creativity, and a genuine love for the land.
A Designer’s Garden of Style and Precision
Creative flair extends beautifully beyond the home and into this stylish country garden. A sweeping curved driveway leads to a home framed by flowing grasses, sculpted shrubs, and elegant topiaries. Around the house, immaculate potager gardens, manicured trees, and abundant vegetables and flowers create a series of refined outdoor rooms. Every detail has been thoughtfully considered, making this pristine and beautifully presented garden a delight to explore.
A Garden of Abundance Designed for All Who Live Above and Below the Soil
Once a blank paddock with only a few small trees around the edges, this garden has evolved into a series of interconnected outdoor "rooms" filled with native plantings, food gardens, flower borders, open spaces, and practical areas for seed raising and composting. Created with a focus on nurturing both people and wildlife, it provides food for the family, pollinators, and the rich life above and below the soil. Brimming with growth, character, and productivity, this is a garden that continues to evolve with each passing season.
Sunday Gardens - 15 November
A Lakeside Country Garden of Beauty and Year‑Round Interest
Set on the edge of Lake Karāpiro, this expansive 3ha country garden features sweeping English borders, roses, fruit and vegetable beds, newly developed ponds with native plantings, and a hidden lakeside bay offering plenty to discover. Designed with a love of structure and softened by beautiful blooms, the garden has been thoughtfully planned with the future in mind. Trees have been carefully positioned to allow room for growth, ensuring there is always something in flower. It is a peaceful, beautifully tended landscape that invites visitors to wander and linger.
A Hillside Haven Crafted with Vision and Heart
Perched above Lake Karāpiro with views to Maungatautari, this once-bare hillside has been transformed into a vibrant, structured garden. Formal buxus hedging and white roses lead to colourful borders of perennials, flowering shrubs, and cool, shaded pockets of hostas and hydrangeas. A steep former paddock has become a resilient, drought-tolerant landscape featuring arctotis, grevillea, and a dry riverbed created from rocks collected on the farm. With hardy planting, generous mulching, and newer additions including a potager and young orchard, this garden reflects a lifelong passion for gardening and a deep connection to the land.
A Peaceful Paradise Revealed Beyond the Trees
Coralie and Chris describe their garden as a delightful surprise: after driving through the tree‑lined entrance, the space opens into what they call their own little piece of paradise. When they bought the property in 2019, a well‑established, structured garden was already in place, but they have since opened up the vistas and shaped it to reflect their style. The result is a peaceful, beautifully manicured haven that feels both welcoming and serene.
A Joyful Wildlife Haven in Soft Pink and White
Once a bare horse paddock in 2020, this property has been transformed into a flourishing haven for birds, bees and butterflies. Designed around the edges of the section for year-round interest and privacy, the garden is filled with soft pink and white blooms, abundant seasonal colour, and thoughtful plant choices that support wildlife. Inspired by generations of family gardeners and shaped with help from friends in the early days, the garden now has layered structure, maturing trees, and constant movement from busy pollinators. It’s a joyful, generous space where flowers fill the home, food is shared, and nature thrives.
A Hilltop Homestead Garden with Timeless Charm
A beautifully maintained lifestyle retirement village set on Cambridge's highest point, this garden offers sweeping views across Pirongia and the Te Miro hills. At its heart sits an iconic Victorian homestead surrounded by elegant gardens that will be open for visitors to explore. Festival-goers can also enjoy refreshments available for purchase inside the homestead, making this a charming and distinctive stop on the trail.
A Rambling Country Garden Full of Charm and Discovery
A much-loved regular in the Festival, this enchanting one-acre country garden welcomes visitors into a peaceful and ever-evolving landscape. Shaded by mature trees, it is a hydrangea lover's dream, featuring 190 individually named varieties and more than 400 hydrangeas planted throughout. Hostas and Japanese maples add texture and colour, creating a rambling garden that is a pleasure to wander. Visitors can chat with the owner, who is always happy to share extensive gardening knowledge, particularly about hydrangeas, and a selection of plants will also be available for purchase. This is a garden where you'll notice something new every time you visit.
A Historic Princes Street Garden Poised for Renewal
This recently purchased, heritage-listed property is set for an exciting transformation. Already well known to Festival visitors for a beautifully crafted garden featured in the 2024 Festival, the owner has begun shaping a new vision for this historic site. With a proven talent for creating elegant, high-standard gardens, visitors will be among the first to see the results of this redevelopment when the Festival opens in November.
A Whimsical Small‑Site Garden Full of Creativity and Charm
Since moving into their new-build home in May 2025, this charming and whimsical garden has quickly developed into a space full of character. Despite its modest size, it is cleverly divided into a productive vegetable area, a peaceful place to sit and relax, and a dry riverbed accented with impressive boulders craned in before the house was built. Handcrafted garden art adds personality throughout, creating a delightful, creative garden that proves you can pack a lot of beauty into a small site.
A Wildlife Sanctuary Where Nature Truly Thrives
Designed first and foremost to support wildlife, this garden offers height, shelter, layered planting, and year-round food for birds, butterflies, and insects. It even provides a resting place for migrating birds, while bumblebees tuck themselves into the foxgloves at night. A pond at the back adds colour and movement, attracting tūī, swallows, and dragonflies, with surrounding rocks sourced from a Pūtāruru farm. The vegetable garden feeds both the household and the many creatures that visit. Guided by the principle that a garden should nurture wildlife while offering visitors a soothing, beautiful space to enjoy, this is a sanctuary where nature truly thrives.
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