KoolKaBloom Facts

The Festival

  • 2018 marks the first year of the Tesselaar KaBloom Festival. Continuing a proud family tradition, the Tesselaar’s have been opening their farm to the public since 1954.
  • The inaugural KaBloom Festival will be a carnival of colour, showcasing over130,000 plants across 140 garden beds.
  • Over 1.2 million flowers will be on colourful sweeping display including cleomes, delphiniums, sunflowers and dahlias.
  • The Festival is set across 25 acres of gardens where visitors are encouraged to roam free, enjoying the wide open spaces.
  • If you put all the flowers end to endit would be over 620,000km – equal to the distance to the moon and back, or 15 times around the world!

FLOWERS/PLANTS

Chillies – some like it hot and these decorative plants deliver.

Cleomes (Spider flowers) – Crazy flowers with sensational petals.

Delphiniums – Glorious towers of breathtaking colour.

Digitalis (Foxgloves) – Spotted sensations on lovely tall stems.

Anthirrhinium (Snap Dragons) – Absolutely jaw dropping massed colour with nifty petals.

Begonias – Colourful flowers and foliage.

Bidens – Sunshine yellow petals in their thousands.

Coreopsis – Tall and floriferous in all the shades of gold.

Dianthus (Pinks/Sweet William) – Old fashioned favourites with all the mod cons, the pinks have to be seen to be believed.

Gomphrena (Baby’s Breath) – Massed plantings to take your breath away.

Alcea (Hollyhock) – Statuesque stems of magnificent colour, your heart will skip a beat!

Petunias – Saturated colour to make you snap happy.

Verbenas – Vivacious Verbenas to put a smile on your dial.

Zinnia – These zingy favourites are blooming marvellous en masse.

Calibrachoa – Sun loving plants in a stunning array of shades.

Cosmos – Some of the most romantic flowers around.

Dahlias – Fabulous, firecracker flowers.

Salvia (Sage) – Enchanting flowers to steal your heart.

Alyssum – Delightful flowers with petals like fresh snow.

Celosia (Cockscomb) – Blazing red feathered flowers.

Senecio (Cineraria) – Soft silver foliage with dancing yellow flowers.

Lobelia–Midnight blue petals to woo you.

Tagates (Marigolds) – Solid gold wonders.

Petunias– Neon colours to dazzle and daze.

Helianthus (Sunflowers) – Head height flowers that reflect the glory of the sun.

Planting

  • The seedlings were planted in early December to ensure flowering late March, early April.
  • Seedlings are raised in plug trays in the nursery prior to planting. A plug tray is a tray made up of individual cells, known as plugs, thatprovide a safe environment for seeds to grow into well established seedlings with independent root systems, ready to be transplanted into the ground or pots.
  • Farmer Laurie carefully prepares the soil, forming ‘beds’ just ahead of planting to keep the soil fluffy and filled with air to allow easy planting and roots good access to grow.
  • Tesselaar has designed a special roller that attaches to the back of a tractor that marks the seedling holes for planting to ensure optimal plant growth.
  • The roller shows where to plant the seedlings, and makes a hole slightly bigger than the plug in the soil. The hole provides room for the roots to grow and a little well for the water so the roots stay moist.
  • Over 130,000 seedlings are planted by hand, lovingly placed into the soilone by one.
  • Farmer Laurie and his team keep on top of pest control, weeding, fertilising and most importantly watering to ensure an amazing display in autumn.