The Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular 2014 is in full swing - 10 days of fabulous gardens to visit in Taranaki, plus the Fringe Garden Festival is on as well, giving you around 100 gardens to visit.

So what does it take to open your garden to the public? I asked a few of the festival entrants their thoughts...

The up-side

• License to do what you really love - because it has to be done
• It's a fabulous social time
• It motivates you to get a lot of garden jobs done!
• You meet a lot of lovely, like minded people and can share garden tips with them...and many become lifelong friends
• You get a huge sense of pride at seeing your garden look its best
• Huge amounts of praise and compliments are heaped upon you
• It keeps you creatively on your toes - trying new plant combinations, redesigning parts of the garden to keep it looking fresh or more exciting
• Your garden might get photographed for NZ Gardener mag!

The down side

• Its a lot of work, and exhausting!
• Sleepless nights worrying about the work that still needs to be done
• You need to start planning as early as March to open your garden in October/Nov - so it's a big commitment
• Not a lot of time to do any other activities you might be interested in
• You spend a lot of time talking, so by the time you come to the end of a 10 day festival you might be in need of some quiet time!
• If you're part of a festival, you miss out on visiting other people's gardens
• You need to know the names of all the plants in your garden - because someone is bound to ask. Extra kudos if you know all the latin names as well...

Tips if you are opening your garden to the public

• Have a few extra potted plants or maybe a decorative pot or urn handy in case you have a last minute gap to plug
• Get a friend or relative to come around and cast an eye over the garden - they may spot a problem, or heaven forbid a WEED that you might have missed!
• Try and have a few before and after pics in a photo album for visitors to look at.
• It can be really lucrative to pot up a few plants from your garden for sale