Visitors to the Ellerslie International Flower Show have embraced a garden with an emotional environmental message in picking this year's People's Choice award.
The Earth Sharing Life Garden, created by Julie Moore from Plantet Earth and Lynn Cairney from Fusion Landscape Design, is a darkened bush-garden lit with special effects and accompanied by the beating heart of a giant, revolving world. It also features waterfalls, glow worm caves and a shipwreck.
Moore and Cairney spent nine months creating their masterpiece, which calls for environmental action and is situated inside the new Visique Starlight Marquee.
"Our take is that earth and mankind can nurture each other and provide for each other, but we all need to be conscious of our choices and how they will impact on our environment," said Moore.
The garden also won the Supreme Award for Lighting, an important element in all the marquee gardens as they are completely blacked out with hundreds of metres of black silk
Judges' convenor Jan Woodhouse described the garden as a "magical, multi-media experience with a variety of lighting effects and lovely detailing with ambience".
Moore said visitors had commented that they enjoyed the clever use of sound and light, and the surprising ceramic seed pods by Tim Holman that burst into life.
Auckland Vegetable Growers' dancing vegetable garden was the runner-up for People's Choice, missing out by only 24 votes, over the 2000 cast.
This witty illustration of a nursery rhyme "how does your garden grow?" has every edible known in an explosion of colour and form. Even the pests and the farm animals are hand made from produce.
International Judge Claire Whitehouse made special mention of the vegetable patch in the Yates Hort Marquee as a fantastic example of Ellerslie imagination and creativity.
A third highlight this week is the Landscapedesign.co.nz exhibition garden - its bach, which is the biggest building ever built as part of an exhibit, will be auctioned this Sunday at 5pm in an unprecedented move by designer Tim Durrant.
His award-winning design has been well received by visitors and has a contemporary New Zealand feel
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