Flower power to tempt British visitors

This year's entry at Chelsea includes glass water features representing glaciers.

Tourism New Zealand is hoping this year's entry into the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show will once again entice British tourists to the country.

The last time New Zealand entered the United Kingdom competition with its gold medal garden titled the Garden of Well-Being was in 2004 and an estimated $500,000 worth of travel to New Zealand was sold at that show.

Tourism New Zealand, the industry's marketing agency, estimates media coverage featuring the locally made garden drew in 47 million television viewers, while 160,000 people visited the garden show.

This year's entry was inspired by the west coast of Auckland and includes sculptures, detailed insets of paua, even glass water features representing glaciers. It is the work of top young New Zealand designer Xanthe White.

Tourism New Zealand is also running a UK marketing campaign around the flower show featuring New Zealand in media, on billboards and buses and in train stations.

The United Kingdom tourist market is the country's second-largest only to Australia. January visitor figures show roughly 42,400 Britons visited in that month, an increase of roughly 1 per cent from 2004. The Statistics New Zealand figures also show there were about 307,000 British visitors in the last 12 months, up 7 per cent on the year before.