Our Gardens and Playground

 

The Café is embedded in a beautiful and child friendly garden setting, which features a bonsai garden and a cactus enclosure.

 

The fenced cactus garden is a memorial to Garnet Drummond who started the garden decades ago in Motueka. After his passing, the plants were moved - prickle by prickle - to their current location. The two oldest cacti were seeded in 1958 and 1961 and could well be some of New Zealand's oldest.

 

Both, the bonsai and cactus garden as well as the other landscaping are maintained by their creator, local artist and community member Che Vincent, whose art gallery invites Café guests to have a little stroll while waiting for their lunch order.

 

Playgrounds

 

Our younger guests will find themselves in a safe surrounding with tame dinosaurs along the little creek and a fenced playground, which features Tom the Turtle, a magnificent spinning mushroom as well as a sandpit.

​

Bush Walk

 

Guests in need of a little after-lunch-or-dinner walk can wonder up the hill and through a little native forest called the bush walk, initially planted by late Riverside Founder Jean Palmer many years ago to ensure these natives a spot. Since then, many people have been adding plants and trees to this little plant sanctuary and today visitors are welcome to stroll through Jean's forest to breath in the manuka oils and find some peace and quite under green treetops.