I’m finally back from my trip to New Zealand, and I’m happy to announce that it was simply perfect in every way. I’m so glad I managed to scrounge together enough money to afford the trip. I was especially excited for the ‘Bored of the Rings’ tour as it’s one of my favourite films. I even got a chance to spend some time in the places where they filmed the Mire scenes. And the place where the Snark Lord dropped his ring because it was terribly heavy and he got sad when he carried it. Oh, oh, and when we went to the site where the wizard Pan-Golf told No-Go that he, also, was a wizard, and that he needed to go the School for Detergent Maze Running. So many classic memories!
Of course, I wanted to bring a small piece of the magic home with me. They had some overpriced souvenirs that were much less impressive than the premium collectables I already owned. Cheap souvenirs didn’t excite, although they had the most amazing daffodil display out the front of the main characters house that caught my eye.
The best I can do is hop online and buy some premium mixed daffodils, just like they had in the movie. The guy taking the tour said that, while they’re fairly easy to grow in Australia and New Zealand’s climate, the true task was getting them to line the pathways in the very specific formation like they did in the movie. Apparently they brought in professional landscape garden designers and botanists to make them appear that way. Ah, therein lies the magic of movies, which is another way of saying you can get something to look really wonderful if you have a budget large enough to buy a small mountain. Also an army of experts to do the hard work for you. Alas.
Best I can do is make up for the quality with quantity, so I’ve done a comprehensive search for every single type of daffodil and daffodil variety seen in the movies. Fortunately there’s a handy site called ‘what’s that flower’, where they tell you every single flower sighting in the history of cinema. It looks like I’ll need to purchase some agapanthus, some Butterfly Mixed, and the ones around the entrance were Red Devons. It might not be elegant, but I’ll have my perfect, movie accurate botanical experience right here at home!