February 23rd, 2015 - Queenstown, New Zealand - Day 191

Back to the gardens!  Today was Stacie's day to visit the gardens of Queenstown.  She had done some research and found a couple of gardens about 20 mins aways towards Arrowtown.  Both gardens were by appointment only and fortunately we were able to schedule the appointments back to back.  

We got in a quick hike as exercise, showered and then headed out for our first appointment.  After a little Google Maps mix up we were able to locate our first stop - Blair Gardens.  We pulled in and were quickly greeted by their charming owner of 41 years - Janet.  Janet told us that she and her husband had bought the property from the original owners and it was basically an open field with a small house on it.  Over the course of the last 4 decades she has worked tirelessly to create a wonderful garden setting on their 12 acres of land.  The amount of work she has put into the place is staggering, especially when you consider she has done it all on her own.

Stacie went on a personal garden tour with Janet while I sat under a nice tree and read a book.

Here are some pictures from the garden (Stacie will put up more in her Gardens section)

We then headed over to Chantecler, which is a much larger and much more eclectic garden.  This time Stacie went on a self guided tour while I did my favorite thing and went grocery shopping.  

Stacie's tour took a little over an hour and I showed up just shortly after that with a car full of groceries.  She told me that while some parts of the garden were really nice, the overall feel was muddled and a bit confused and she preferred the intimate and personal nature of Blair.  She is getting to be so good with all things garden/landscape design related - it is really fun to watch her grow.  

Here are some pictures of Chantecler:

By the time we got home it was 2:00 and we were starved.  We ate a quick lunch and then figured out the Oscars were on.  We flipped it on and settled in for a little mindless entertainment.  However, after about 30 mins I was restless and Peter and I decided to go play frisbee golf again.  This time we actually bought our frisbees, instead of renting them, so we had to learn how to throw our new disks.  We got the hang of it sometime around hole 15 :-) but had a lot of fun learning.  

Fish tacos and a movie wrapped up another wonderful day in NZ.