When the Graham-Driscoll family welcome people into their garden this month it will mark a total turnaround in their home lives since moving to Tauranga nearly two years ago.

Blair Graham and Aimee Driscoll have entered their piece of paradise into the Bay of Plenty Garden & Art Festival's Garden and Art Trail from November 17-20. But they claim they are not gardeners.

'I didn't call myself a gardener until my name tag [for the festival] came in the mail the other day,” jokes Blair. 'And we definitely weren't gardeners when we arrived in Tauranga.”

The family moved to the city – and their Selwyn Street property – in February 2015. The 1950s Art Deco Villa's garden had been established by the previous owners.

'We've been very busy settling in – and last year we had this brilliant idea we'd enter our garden into the festival,” says Blair.

'I used to go bed reading ‘Dirt Bike' magazines and now I read gardening books.”

'It's an urban garden and we are right on the edge of the city,” says Aimee.

Their garden festival description says the compact inner-city garden fits snuggly around the villa – with indoor-outdoor urban living mixing formal, edible and tropical garden elements with function and fun. And includes an open fire and pizza oven, and water features.

How big is this urban garden? 'Tiny,” says Blair. With formal, edible and tropical garden elements – a pizza oven and water feature? 'Yeah,” laugh the couple.

'Basically, we're on about 430m2 here – and the house is about 154m2.”

'So the house takes a large chunk of the site,” says Blair. 'And the house is an L-shape and the garden works around it,” says Aimee.

The family say the previous owners had taken plants and water features with them – so they've added quite a lot.

'We added the pizza oven – and a lot of a plants.”

'The front part of the garden is formal – it's a mixture of roses and little box hedges and a miniature Japanese maple.

'Down the side of the house needed some TLC– we had let it get overgrown and the fence was looking pretty tired.

'So we've fixed all that up and added a whole row of berries that run right down one side of the section. And we've added a few other bits and pieces including espaliering a crabapple tree,” says Blair.

Espalier is a technique used to train plants to grow flat against vertical surfaces. It is an excellent space saving technique for those with small gardens.

'In the vegie garden we also espaliered a fig tree – the garden has got high walls all around and we have covered all of the walls in plants.”

There were two pears and a couple of grapes – they've added fig and crab apple trees.

'And we've had a crash-course on espalier as it is relatively new – how they grow and tie them down. So it's certainly been a big learning curve,” says Blair.

Aimee says there were also nine confiner trees that were looking very sad. 'So we pulled those out.”

Who does the gardening? 'Blair is the gardener – and I am the labourer,” says Aimee.

'Aimee is the designer – she goes and buys most of the plants and colour coordinates and all of that stuff – and I carry wheelbarrow-loads of dirt,” claims Blair. So it depends who you ask.

Do they count themselves as gardeners now? 'No, not really.”

'We'll see how the festival goes,” says Blair.

'I've learnt a lot but I've had to go around with a gardening book and put tags with names of the plants on each – otherwise if people asked ‘what plant do you think that is' I wouldn't know,” admits Aimee.

And from a family perspective the garden has seen them spend more quality time together. 'We've got three girls – and in the berry garden we planted 20-odd strawberries, raspberries, blackberries etc – they've been out there doing that with me in the garden,” says Aimee.

Blair says the family moved to Tauranga mainly because of the 50-minute trek for both of them to work. 'We'd go in the same car – so about two hours five days a week. It was a lot.

'So we've gained a total of 20 hours a week to spend with our kids. That's where this time for gardening has come from.”

Blair says a few times in preparation of the festival he's said, off the cuff, this will be the end of his gardening career. But he didn't mean it.

'You do the work through winter then you get to sit back and enjoy it through summer –that's amazing. It's great place to hang out.

'We literally chop stuff from the vegetable garden and it's going straight onto food to be cooked in the pizza oven. We eat it outdoors and it's beautiful weather.”

Is the small area easier to manage? 'No, it's more fiddly,” says Blair.

'There's no place for the weeds to hide – you see everything – and with the hedging, if it doesn't look smart it doesn't look good,” says Aimee.

Blair says the plants are boxed up inside hedges, raised up about one foot naturally. 'There's a lot of upkeep in the hedges.”

'But it's really productive. We live on preserves during winter. We've got more than 18 jars of grape jelly, 20 jars of crab apple jelly, relish, pickles – I'm amazed what we generate.

'We're a family of five and we eat pretty well from this garden.”

'And these make great gifts as well,” says Aimee.

For more information of the BOP Garden & Art Festival from November 17-20, see: www.gardenandartfest.co.nz