HOBBITS, HOBBITON AND HORICULTURE

In his antipodean peregrinations Martin Fish may not have stumbled on any hobbits, but he did discover their very English cottage gardens and plenty of fruit and veg

- Martin Fish

Back in 2017 I was delighted to be invited as one of the international judges at the New Zealand Flower &Garden Show in Auckland. On the morning of judging we were put into panels of three and allocated the gardens we were judging and to my surprise one of them was a hobbit’s garden. As a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and the subsequent Lord of the Rings and hobbit films, I couldn’t wait to see what they had created. The recreation of the hobbit hole and surrounding garden was amazing, and all three judges agreed on a well-deserved Gold. The attention to detail was some of the best I’ve ever seen and when I had the pleasure of presenting the team with their award, they said that if ever I was passing by the Hobbiton movie set, I should feel free to pop in!

Twelve months later while visiting family in New Zealand, I decided to take them up on their offer and Jill and I spent a wonderful day in the beautiful countryside, exploring Hobbiton, home of the hobbits.

LOCATION LOCATION

It all started in 1998 when film director Sir Peter Jackson was searching for a location and found the Alexander family’s 1,250-acre sheep farm in the heart of the Waikota region of New Zealand’s North Island. The green, rolling hills, lush pastures and lakes, bore a striking resemblance to how the Shire was described in J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 classic book. Twelve acres in the middle of the farm were transformed into Hobbiton with the help of the New Zealand army who built temporary hobbit holes with polystyrene and plywood facades. Filming took place in 1999 and afterwards the set was partly dismantled, although in 2002, what remained opened as a visitor attraction. Sir Peter returned in 2009 to film the Hobbit