The festival allows visitors to experience the magic of spring and enjoy entertainment, high tea, and other food. Photo / Supplied
The festival allows visitors to experience the magic of spring and enjoy entertainment, high tea, and other food. Photo / Supplied
The popular Waikato Cherry Tree Festival - a multicultural celebration of spring featuring flowers, food entertainment and activities - is back again this year but now looks likely to be for only three days.
The festival is planned for September 19, 20, and 26 at the 2 hectare country property of Paul Oulton and Anne Cao, English Cherry Tree Manor at Tamahere south of Hamilton.
The festival has grown in popularity with the first two in 2017 and 2018 attracting thousands of visitors to the Waikato.
The property includes a driveway through a canopy of cherry trees .
Visitors are immersed in a vast pink flowering canvas with rhododendrons, camellias, candelabra primulas, tulips, dianthus and lavender setting off the cherry blossoms. Photo / Supplied
Visitors are immersed in a vast pink flowering canvas with rhododendrons, camellias, candelabra primulas, tulips, dianthus and lavender setting off the cherry blossoms.
This year, each day has a different theme featuring music, dance and culture of each nation:
The public are encouraged to dress up for the occasion if they wish. There will be children's activities and food vendors and high tea in the garden may be booked.
"We have been creating this beautiful place for 24 years and love sharing it with others," Paul says.
The 2019 festival had planned for an average of 2000 visitors a day for a 10-day festival. It was cancelled at the 11th hour when Waikato District Council issued an abatement.
The couple - acting on legal advice - put the festival organising company NZ Pure Tour into liquidation and immediately stopped selling tickets.
Despite this, the couple were accused and heavily criticised on social media for allegedly continuing to sell tickets.
"They said the festival was cancelled because we failed to get resource consent, but the reason was the abatement notice received just hours before the festival was due to start.
"We stopped selling tickets that day," says Anne.
This week, Waikato District Council told Waikato News it had not received a resource consent application from Mr Oulton as he planned to run this year's event under the Permitted Activity standards contained in the District Plan.
WDC communications & engagement manager Jacob Quinn said: "Council confirmed with the event organiser on July 10 that he would need to submit a new consent application for this event, as he had withdrawn his previous application."
The Permitted Activity standards (ie. what he can do without consent), would allow 1000 people per day for each day of the three days of the event.
Paul and Anne say they made a commitment last year to fix the pain the cancellation caused and to reimburse everyone left out of pocket.
"Friends and family came forward and offered to loan us money to repay everyone," Anne said.
Last week Anne said they had repaid all suppliers to the event and all ticketholders, with the exception of a $2800 amount billed by the WDC, as the invoice was in dispute.
The amount was paid to the council this week, with the bank transfer shown to Waikato News by Anne.
However, Hamilton East company X-Site Group Ltd says it was not correct that all suppliers have been paid.
Company chief Hamish Lamb told Waikato News: "We are still out of pocket by $3725, we supplied the marquees that went into their festival in 2019."
Asked about this debt, Mr Oulton said: "We have asked the liquidator and the X-Site company if there is an agreed signed contract and, if so, what the cancellation terms are, but they have provided none.
"I have no record of any such contract. A deposit was paid, which was 30 per cent, I think. They had erected the marquee but took it away the next day. We haven't asked for the deposit back. I think that is fair," he said.
On Monday, Anne sent a text to Mr Lamb saying they had not received any information from the liquidator about this claim.
"We will get this sorted when we get the information," Anne said in the text.
You can stroll down the manor's avenues, through enchanted bluebell woods and along tranquil walks past its drystone walls, ponds, stream and waterfalls. Photo / Supplied
There is also a question about what Covid-19 restrictions may still be in place on the festival days.
For Covid level 2, people will be given two-hour time slots to visit. A group of 100 visits one area for an hour while another 100 visits another area for a while and then they switch without intermingling.
To further allay any concerns after last year's cancellations, Anne says: "All money is held by the ticketing company TryBooking New Zealand until the event has run and in the event of a cancellation, you will be refunded in full except for a 30 cents booking fee charged by the ticketing company."
