The Alexandra Blossom Festival is one of New Zealand's most beautiful and long-running seasonal celebrations, held each September in the Central Otago town of Alexandra when the region's orchards and gardens burst into bloom after the long, cold winter. For over sixty years, it has welcomed spring with a programme of community events, a spectacular street parade, entertainment, markets and the particular joy of a landscape transformed by blossom into something approaching paradise.
Central Otago's extreme continental climate — the most extreme in New Zealand, with hot dry summers and bitterly cold winters — creates conditions in which the spring blossom is an event of genuine drama. In September, the bare orchards of the region explode into colour almost overnight, and the Alexandra Blossom Festival has grown up around this natural spectacle, creating a community celebration that is deeply tied to the seasonal rhythms of the land.
For visitors to Central Otago in spring, the Blossom Festival is one of the most rewarding regional events in New Zealand. Alexandra is a town of genuine character — historic, proud and surrounded by some of the most striking landscape in the South Island — and the festival gives it a week of colour, warmth and community spirit that makes the drive south from Queenstown or Dunedin thoroughly worthwhile.