Tempted though I am to show some of the worst excesses of garden ornamentation I have photographed – and believe me, naff does not begin to describe some – I thought it better to be kind than cruel. This week it is understated decoration which blends into the garden surrounds rather than dominating.
1) These are the work of potters Lynn and Mike Spencer, spotted in their own garden. Mike called the long-necked pieces his “African ladies’ for reasons that are obvious as soon as it is mentioned. The penguins are undoubtedly engaging, all the more so for being hand crafted and not mass produced. I particularly like they way these nestle in the foliage, adding subtle detail and delight, rather than being placed on a plinth or stand to become a lonely focal point.
2) Te Popo Garden also features pottery, this time by Nick Brandon. What I like there is how they have grouped related pieces closely together. Each on their own would be small and likely to get lost or look bitty. I once suggested grouping to a gardener with a large selection of bright, shiny blue glazed pieces from the Warehouse. She followed my advice and they did indeed look much better clustered together in one arrangement, rather than dotted throughout the garden.
3) I admired these rope balls constructed around a metal frame at Winterhome Garden near Kaikoura. Garden owner, Sue Macfarlane, told me she had made them herself because she wanted an avenue entrance for a wedding party. I saw something similar offered for sale recently – though smaller and made from recycled barbed wire, which gives a distinctly rural New Zealand flavour. However, because barbed wire is somewhat hazardous, these balls would need to be placed where nobody is likely to brush against them or hit their heads standing up after tending to any garden below.
4) Personally, I am not a fan of classical-inspired statuary in New Zealand gardens. The cultural reference of such works is usually to Europe and to me it looks out of context here. I might be tempted to make an exception for this piece but it is the studied nonchalance of the setting with its long grass and the artfully casual placement which makes it such a romantic image. I also photographed it in an English garden, Gresgarth, where it looked wonderfully at home.
5) Unable to hold back my didactic tendencies, I include this example as a message. Dear readers, a beautiful pot does not need to have a plant in it. It can exist as a decorative feature in its own right and will often look a great deal better for the absence of a plant. I don’t know the origins of this pot – it looks like a lime-washed oil jar – but I think the phallic trichocereus cactus spoils it, even without the plastic stake which is out of sight in the photo.
6) Finally from our own garden, I offer the inverted plum trees. These were dug up and reburied upside down to make the root systems the feature. We did not treat the trunks to preserve them. Eventually they will rot out and fall over but they have been in place at least a decade now and are still stable. The white stones were a gift from a geologist friend who gathered them from somewhere on the Marlborough coast. I bleach them once a year to remove lichen and discolouring and they just sit casually on a stone table.
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
It is both a blessing and a curse to have a garden with very large trees. The pines (mostly Pinus radiata), native rimu trees (Dacrydium cupressinum) and Australian eucalypts all date back to 1870 to early 1880s when Mark’s great grandfather planted them. The rimus are rock solid with a life expectancy of many hundreds of years but from time to time we lose a pine or gum.
While we can manage most of our tree work ourselves, this one posed a major problem. It broke about 6 metres up where Mark’s grandfather had topped the row in the early 1900s, creating a weak point. But it didn’t break cleanly and the top formed a major swinger. We did the initial cleanup but dealing to the body of the tree required specialist attention.
Enter the arborist crew this morning.
There was a lot of consultation for this was a tricky operation.
And a lot of supervision.
Cuts were made but things did not quite go to plan.
Soon, more equipment was needed. Do not laugh at our baby tractor. It is enormously useful, though not quite equal to this task.
Both ends of the tree were cut through but it remained determinedly in position, defying all attempts to unbalance it.
There was much manly consultation.
And even more consultation. Lots of consultation. A winch was needed, they decided. The crew departed for more gear.
In the end, the crew returned with us not even noticing and both Mark and I missed the final rites when the tree was winched down. We were a little disappointed. It all seemed a bit of an anticlimax but is at least a major problem solved. It is remarkable how a tree some 40 metres high can eventually come down with minimal damage.
1) I want to try and capture the magic of a particular garden in a few words and photos. This is Wildside in North Devon and was quite simply one of the most exciting modern gardens we have seen. It is not that we will try and re-create it at home, but we found it interesting, stimulating and inspirational in many ways. It has been about 10 years in the making to this point.
2) The creator, Keith Wiley (and let us acknowledge the active assistance from his partner, Ros) has taken a 4 acre (1.6ha) flat field and created a landscape. When he started, it looked identical to this neighbouring field. All the top soil was removed and substrata redistributed to create ponds, canyons, shallow valleys and hills. At this stage, it is still possible to see this process in the upper garden which has yet to be planted. Once shaped, Keith returned the top soil in varying depths, depending on what plants he planned to grow in each area.
3) The interaction between the created landforms and the plants are the key components of this garden. When we visited, the upper garden was dominated by oranges, golds, yellows and whites. We would love to have been able to return a few weeks later because we could see that the dominant colour was going to change to blue and it would have looked very different. It takes exceptional plant skill to be able to get that transition and successional planting across seasons, let alone within the same season.
4) These are dierama, commonly called Angel’s fishing rods, one of the few corms and bulbs that were in flower in midsummer but this was a garden which was rich in drifts of bulbs – another layer of plant interest and a means of ensuring colour and detail when most perennials are either dormant or resting. In keeping with the modern perennials movement, there were grasses used but in moderation. Plants were in good sized clumps and often in drifts, but always in combinations, not chunky blocks standing in their own right as seen in many modern gardens.
5) There is very little hard landscaping and very little ornamentation. There may have been one small lawn, from memory, but this is a garden of plants and flowers. Some may consider the lack of formality and structure to be a shortcoming, certainly in a country with a long history of landscaped gardens full of permanent features. We saw a garden that pushed the boundaries of the prairie style and New Perennials movement, combined with the creation of sustainable ecosystems, underpinned by exceptional plantsmanship.
6) We travelled a long way to visit Wildside which is on the edge of Dartmoor, near Yelverton, and we would gladly travel a long way to see it again. However, it is currently closed to the public and it is uncertain when it will reopen. The owner told us that he needed to get the house built. After a decade of living in temporary quarters while giving priority to the garden, they had reached the point where the house had become a priority.
Yes, a prologue. We first became aware of Keith Wiley’s style when we visited The Garden House in 2009 – the garden of the late Lionel Fortescue which Keith managed for many years. True, he had no hand in the first sight to gladden our eyes. As we went to enter the garden, lo and behold there was Mark’s very own Magnolia Felix Jury in prime position. To say we felt proud would be an understatement.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 