This week­end sees the Annu­al Rose Prun­ing Demon­stra­tion at the Lady Nor­wood Rose Gar­den in the Botan­ic Gar­dens.

Want to bone up on prop­er gar­den main­te­nance? This is your chance! The Welling­ton City Coun­cil has laid on the ros­es, and the experts. There will be tips on both prun­ing AND grow­ing your ros­es. Danc­ing with the Stars con­tes­tants may or may not be there. The same goes for the sur­viv­ing Bea­t­les & Nas­tass­ja Kin­s­ki, but I remain hope­ful.

I usu­al­ly make wise with the Rose puns at this point, but she emailed this year & asked me to kind­ly stop.

There are two ses­sions:

1.30 — 2.30pm: prun­ing mod­ern ros­es in the Lady Nor­wood Rose Gar­den. Meet at the Bego­nia House.

2.30 — 3.30pm: prun­ing ram­bling and her­itage ros­es at the Bolton Street Memo­r­i­al Park. Meet at the Sed­don Memo­r­i­al.

Grab your blades & go to it!

Adden­dum — Glow Worms:

While I’m on the sub­ject of the Gar­dens, I hap­pened upon an offi­cial per­son tak­ing a bunch of schoolkids on a glow worm tour last week & feel I should pass on the intel­li­gence I gleaned on my way past them. The poor lady was stretched thin by 10 or so bored & rest­less boys. It did­n’t help that there were no worms glow­ing at all.

I’d won­dered for a while, from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, but as the lady snapped at the boys she con­firmed my the­o­ry that glow worms put on their best dis­play after rain or a heavy dew (I do not know why this is).

So should you be plan­ning a vis­it, do so soon after rain & while the worms can be found in most places in the Gar­dens, the eas­i­est to find & arguably best are on the main track between Glen Road & the Duck­pond.