Garden festival expands to attract more visitors

The Spring Garden Trail will include three Guyra gardens, which will be revealed at a later date.
30th Jul 2024

The New England Garden Festival will return in 2024 following the success of the inaugural event held last year.
It will run for seven days from October 31st to November 6th and will expand to include a Spring Garden Trail to attract visitors to outlying towns.
The New England Garden Festival Inc. is a not-for-profit organisation hosting a feature event for the New England region to showcase the beautiful gardening potential plentiful in our area, whilst supporting Can Assist by raising funds for local patients, and their families, suffering from a cancer diagnosis.
The aim of the festival is to bring together gardeners, experts and the community for fun and educational activities, along with a great range of market stalls selling garden-related products. A number of inspirational gardens will be open, along with winning gardens in the Armidale Garden Competition.
This year’s festival will kick off with a Spring Garden Trail, travelling across six country towns in the beautiful New England region in seven days, showcasing 18+ cold climate gardens to visitors.
Three gardens in each town will open, starting in Walcha on October 31st, and then heading to Uralla on November 1st, Armidale on November 2nd-3rd, Guyra November 4th, Glen Innes November 5th and concluding in Tenterfield on November 6th.
Visitors are encouraged to stay in each town the night before to make most use of the gardens' opening hours. When the gardens close, visitors are encouraged to visit the locally recommended 'hot spots' from each town before moving on to the next town. Specific garden details will be published closer to the event.
The main festival event will be once again held at the Armidale Racecourse on Saturday and Sunday November 2nd to 3rd. There has already been an incredible response from stallholders, with the same number from last year already locked in and more applications to be a part of the festival still coming. As well as the stalls, there will also be workshops, including new additions to the schedule.
Last year television personality Brendan Moar took to the stage as the festivals’ special guest and organisers promise an excellent special guest is once again in the works for this year.
The festival is still run entirely by a crew of very dedicated volunteers, with some additional help from the volunteer garden clubs in all the towns except Walcha, where the Quota club is taking the reins and assisting with organisation.
The event will be raising funds for Can Assist branches in Armidale, Glen Innes, Guyra and Uralla. Tenterfield and Walcha will each name a charity in their town that they will donate to.
Much more detail, including final schedules, open garden details, ticket purchasing and competitions will become available via the event website https://negf.com.au/ as the festival nears.