tui in the kowhai (again)Once again, the Coun­cil has put togeth­er a great pro­gram of events for its annu­al spring fest­iv­al. Although there’s no spe­cif­ic web­site for it, you can down­load the PDF pro­gram here (2.1 Mb, unfor­tu­nately). Today (Sat­urday) is the first day, and it runs through the school hol­i­days to Octo­ber 9.

We like the look of quite a few things on the go: Fairy Trina (for the kids, right!); night-time Glow­worm tours; storytelling; guided forest walks; poetry read­ings; a naughty nat­ive bird show with Har­old the kaka; and much much more. Some events are at the nat­ive botan­ic gar­dens at Otari-Wilton’s Bush, and so there is (very thought­fully) a gold-coin fare bus run­ning between the Wel­ling­ton Botan­ic Garden and gar­dens and Otari-Wilton’s Bush.

And don’t for­get to take your cam­era with you: there’s a photo com­pet­i­tion as well. Pho­tos must be taken in one of Wel­ling­ton’s botan­ic gar­dens. There are three cat­egor­ies: “Garden Life”, “Cel­eb­ra­tion of Spring”, and “Garden Icons”; and the prize for each cat­egory is:

A suite at the Bolton Hotel for a night, din­ner at Bisque on Bolton, tick­ets to Little Shop of Hor­rors at Down­stage Theatre, lunch at the Botan­ic Gar­dens Cafe and a beau­ti­ful flor­al pho­to­graphy book.

Entries close Thursday Octo­ber 6; obtain your entry form and full T&C; here (600k PDF).

So get out of the house, go fest­iv­alling, and get snap­ping then.