5 minute read
Garden & Arts Festival
Heidi Borchardt
Advertisement
GROW UP
Live music, food, garden-related trade stores, tiny houses, guest speakers and art displays are all part of the fun at Bloom in the Bay.
WORDS MONIQUE BALVERT-O’CONNOR / PHOTOS SUPPLIED
Rosemary & Mark Pettit ’s Gar den
Dubbed a little like a festival within a festival, the Craigs Investment Partners’ Bloom in the Bay event has become a vibrant part of the biennial Bay of Plenty Garden and Art Festival. And there will certainly be plenty to enthral this year at the 17-20 November family-friendly event, assures festival director Marc Anderson.
Bloom in the Bay will be held at Tauranga Racecourse, where there’s room aplenty for the array of planned activities and stalls. New to the event this year is, for example, the inclusion of 30 gardenrelated trade stores offering their wares for sale – this exhibition space will be called Bloom Plaza. Also a first, will be an array of tiny houses and cabins that will form a charming wee art village, Marc explains, as there will be an artist set up in each.
Gilly Brodie APSNZ
Anne Bailey
Entry to Bloom in the Bay is free to BOP Garden and Art Festival attendees and to children under 14, and will cost adults without festival tickets only $5. The idea is to drop in whenever it suits on the four festival days and enjoy the many wonders of this colourful event, Marc says. It will run from 9.30am to 6pm on the first three festival days, and from 9.30am until 3pm on the Sunday.
The food options will be many, the bar will be open, and the live music lineup will include Kokomo Blues and Caitriona Fallon, for example, as well as emerging talent. There will be a “Make Art Not Waste” Envirohub catwalk event on the Saturday, and a scintillating mix of environment-focused speakers. Discover more about living predator-free, growing microgreens and making seed bombs, find out what endangered species we have living on our beaches, and hear from an award-winning photographer who has been cuddled by a whale and attacked by an octopus.
Check the gardenandartfestival.co.nz website in the lead-up to the festival for the timing of the different Bloom in the Bay events and performances.
Artist Coral Noel Yang paints in the garden.
Meanwhile, tickets are selling fast for the festival’s Long Lunch, with gardening guru (and former NZ Gardener editor) Lynda Hallinan as guest speaker. A three-course meal, glass of bubbles on arrival, live music and entertainment will all be on offer.
And art lovers, rejoice: The festival includes more artists than ever and an Art Studio Trail, within the main trail, is being introduced. The festival map is marked with these 22 purpose-built art studios (see photos of some of the art to be found in these studios).
Festival tickets are $40 for one day, and $65 for multiple days, and are available at Palmers Bethlehem (the festival’s trail sponsors), Décor Garden World, Pacifica Home & Garden Store, i-SITE Tauranga, Te Puke Florist, Katch Katikati information centre, online at Eventfinda (service fees may apply) and on the festival website.
The Bay of Plenty Garden and Art Festival is sponsored by Bayleys.
GARDENANDARTFESTIVAL.CO.NZ
HATS OFF
Tauranga has its very own milliner, and she’ll be opening her new studio to the public for the first time during the BOP Garden and Art Festival.
WORDS MONIQUE BALVERT-O’CONNOR PHOTOS NICOLE MAY
Those calling in to Bejo, the Te Puna studio of talented milliner and exhibiting artist at Bloom in the Bay, Jo-anne Halls, can expect to be wowed by what’s created there. The woman who used to supply hats to shops such as Smith & Caughey's, House of Brides, Ballantynes and Kirkcaldie & Stains, was once told that Dame Sylvia Cartwright wore one of her hats to King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla’s 2005 wedding. And it was her creation that won Melbourne Cup Best Hat in 1997, and plenty of other such placings at New Zealand and Australian racing events. She’s made them for theatrical performances too.
These days, Jo-anne's hats are made for private clients (no more wholesale).
“Customers bring in shoes, outfits and jewellery and we set about planning something spectacular. I look at their hair and what complements their face and body shape, and then I start playing until I see the light in their eyes,” says Jo-anne, who comes from generations of women handy at hatmaking. In fact, her studio name is a nod to her late mum, Betty, who taught her millinery. Betty’s mother, Dorothy, was also a milliner.
Jo-anne recalls being in her mother’s haberdashery in Tauranga’s Piccadilly Arcade many moons ago when a sales rep came in with hat bases.
“I thought, ‘This is interesting.’ I saw it as a free art form – not constrained by a pattern. So, Mum started teaching me. I made my first hat in 1984 and I’m still excited by it all.”
Ladies’ dress hats are Jo-anne's main thing, but she’ll tackle casual too, and she loves pushing the boundaries with different fibres – “seeing what the materials will let me do.”
Her hats are predominantly made of sinamay – a sustainable plant fibre that is woven (a kind of straw) – but also fabric, and often involving wire. Embellishment can include veiling, crinoline, diamantes…
Jo-anne, who is one of only a handful of milliners in New Zealand, says she still has fun with this form of creativity.
Those visiting her studio will be rewarded by other examples of her creativity too – during lockdown, Jo-anne began creating baskets, bags, aprons, slippers, booties, masks and even handmade soaps. Creativity abounds at Bejo Studio.
