INDEPENDENT NEWS

Award Caps Off Fine First Year

Published: Sat 9 Dec 2006 01:12 PM
Media release
For immediate release
Award Caps Off Fine First Year For National Landscaping Website
Hawke’s Bay landscape designer turned Internet entrepreneur Tim Durrant celebrated his website's first birthday by presenting an award-winning exhibition garden at the Ellerslie Flower Show this year. Durrant, the CEO and founder of Landscapedesign.co.nz, New Zealand's premier website for landscaping and outdoor living, won a coveted Merit Award for his Exhibition Garden at Ellerslie. The show, held in November, is the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest garden event with more than 66,000 people attending the Show this year.
Durrant decided that an Exhibition Garden would be a fitting way to mark the website's first year in business: “I am passionate about New Zealanders’ ideas and innovative spirit,” Durrant said. “The New Zealand gardening public, as well as landscaping and garden suppliers, have been so supportive since we started a year ago, that we felt an exhibition garden was the ideal way to promote local products from some of the outstanding, innovative local companies that are often overlooked”.
The centerpiece of the exhibition garden was an outdoor room made from macrocarpa beams, with a macrocarpa deck. This massive structure had a welcoming solidity and provided the shade and shelter from the elements that a New Zealand outdoor space needs. Macrocarpa is an often undervalued timber and has traditionally been used for firewood. Durrant said “I used macrocarpa to demonstrate how this timber with a ‘bad rap’ can be used to create a durable structure. It was so great to hear people say ‘I love the smell’, and tell stories of their own building exploits.”
Based in Havelock North, Hawke’s Bay, Landscapedesign.co.nz has quickly become an essential resource offering free information, articles, discussion forums and advice on landscaping in New Zealand. It already lists over 2,000 New Zealand garden-related businesses in its directory.
It attracts more than 8,700 unique visits per month and this figure continues to climb.
Nielsen NetRatings show the site already biting at the heels of New Zealand’s established online information and resource websites. In November the site ranked third in the country for session duration in the online information category, ahead of both yellowpages.co.nz and whitepages.co.nz.
Ends

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