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Kotare BandB - Garden gallery

A special place - meet your hosts at Kotare BandB

Energy efficiency
The comfortable 65 sqm new extension housing our homestay, catering kitchen and a study, is a passive-solar architectural design. It has a lime-plastered and sculptured interior wall, designed to store the sun's heat overnight. It is well insulated and double-glazed. PV panels on the roof power a heat pump for hot water and winter underfloor water heating.
The guest room has been added to an already award-winning home design & build: see more detail on our site's sustainability page.
Just before we built the extension in 2020 we filmed this music video 'Unspoilt' at home with young UK musicians Bonnie and Pete (Good Habits) who performed locally. They re-visited us in 2021 to see the extension and are back in 2024. Our YouTube link is below. The second video below is a more recent musical visitor from France, Samuel Austin, who shared Anne's love of music.
Foodies Rhys Taylor & Anne Griffiths - your Kotare hosts, live on site & look forward to meeting and catering for you. Rhys works on sustainability issues with local government and NGOs, whilst Anne is a recently retired secondary school teacher. We both enjoy hosting visitors.
We support the arts locally as volunteers with Geraldine Academy of Performance. Sometimes their performers stay here as house guests, and in 2022 Charles and Emily, who sing in Te Reo Maori as Aro, introduced us to their orginal song Kotare... and performed it for us on the Guest room deck! In Te Reo the word Kotare (with a long 'o') means both the kingfisher and a look out or vantage point - so our guest room deck was ideal. We also met their daughter Olive. YouTube video link below.
Garden and orchard
We manage the orchard and garden with minimal sprays, use organic composts and hand labour. Our fruit is uncertified organic, sold as 'spray free' in the Geraldine summer Farmers Market alomgside Anne's cakes (Sat. morning in Talbot Street, by St.Mary's church) We're creating a hillside landscape garden on former paddocks, with paths, small lawns and different 'rooms' influenced by English garden tradition, using a mix of NZ natives and exotic plants, including many edibles. If you like to be 'hands on', join us to harvest fresh for your breakfast or a picnic meal! Scenes from the flower garden below.
  • Day lillies and Sysyrinchium
  • Magnolia- Yulan denudata
  • Aquilegia - blooms in Summer
  • Snakebark Acer (Maple)
  • Hellebore and Camellia
  • Leucadendron Safari Sunset
  • Pieris japonica - blooms in Spring
  • Phlomis - blooms in Summer
  • Leaf textures & colours in our perennial border

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Like what you see? It's much more fun actually being here at Kotare, exploring the garden, hearing the bird song!
Stay at Kotare
Kotare, 161 Downs Road, RD21 Geraldine 7991 NZ
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