Monet’s garden in Giverny has probably given us the most recognisable garden bridges – gently arching in form and painted. While originally Japanese in inspiration, Monet gets all the credit these days.
Around the world, there must be thousands of Monet-inspired bridges adorning private gardens, though I am not 100% sure that starting with a flat bridge structure and adjusting the decking angles in the second bridge above is totally successful. These two at least have a purpose in traversing a ditch and a stream respectively.
These two bridges are pure, unabashed ornamentation. There is no functional need for bridges in either situation. The blue one is in Yorkshire, the green version was in my local town of Waitara. I use the past tense because it has now been removed because it became structurally unsound.
Paloma Garden near Wanganui has a major bridge crossing a large body of water but I do not appear to have photographed it in its full span of glory. In this situation, the bridge not only provides access, but also makes a large visual statement.
And our own bridge in our park, wreathed in wisterias, has been compared by others to Monet’s bridges, though that was not in our minds at the time it was constructed. Its framework was built using an old truck chassis, for those who are interested in engineering details. While we have to replace the odd decking board from time to time, the galvanised, underpinning structure has remained sound over the past 20 years. We have never painted it and never intend to paint it. I couldn’t help but notice the immaculate paintwork on Monet’s bridges but that is in a drier climate and in a garden maintained by a small army of staff. We have so much moss and lichen growth in our conditions that paint is problematic. We prefer the natural look to tatty paintwork.
Away from the domesticity of Monet-style, I photographed this handsome, apparently disused bridge at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. What a handsome landscape feature it is, though I failed to find out the story behind its construction.
Gresgarth Hall, the garden of Arabella Lennox-Boyd, takes a practical, level bridge construction across a stream and gives it flair with curved stone steps and ramparts. There is nothing like stone as a building material to give solidity, permanence and grace to a garden.
We have a small stone bridge in our park, modest in scale though perfectly functional and gently permanent in its visual appeal. 
Some folk face more challenges than others when it comes to bridges. This swing bridge is in Te Popo Garden near Stratford where it spans a deep gorge. This is a situation where safety and functionality are paramount but I also like the unadorned honesty and lack of pretension of this bridge in the large woodland garden.
At the simplest end of the spectrum, we have also used board bridges in our park. That is my photo-bombing Dudley dog on a bridge which exists solely to get the lawnmower from one side of the stream to the other. These crossings are perfectly sound and stable for foot traffic, but they do not pretend to be anything other than utility in purpose.
In the area we call the North Garden, or the wild North Garden, there will eventually be log bridges across the ponds. Maybe. When clearing the area and creating the ponds, Mark had two dead trees relocated to bridge the water. The plan has always been to chainsaw the top of the logs reasonably level to get an easier walking surface and to add side rails. It just hasn’t happened yet because we have not yet opened this area to the public. It is another naturalistic- style of bridging water which is pleasing to our eyes while also being an inexpensive option.
Finally, when it comes to bridges, I would not want this in my own garden but what a beautiful bridge it is on the walkway in New Plymouth. Evoking the breakers of the adjacent ocean, it frames our iconic mountain.
A water meadow! I was delighted at the sight in our park this afternoon. We stopped regular mowing of our park two years ago when we first closed our garden to the public. We were keen to see how far we could push the meadow effect in our climate and also concerned at our heavy dependence on internal combustion engines to maintain the garden. Long grass and flowers are far more ecologically friendly than mown grass.
Mark took note of my request that we mow double width paths through the grass this year. A single mower width looked a bit mean to my eyes. I commented to him earlier this week that my only worry was the abundance of buttercup that we now have. He wryly pointed out that it has always been that way. His childhood memories are of the yellow buttercups and dandelions and white daisies throughout the park. We have just returned to that, though not to grazing with sheep.
Before the thunder storm hit this afternoon, the sheer size of the 
News from Australia that Mark’s new 
I have been meaning to stop and photograph this watsonia growing wild down the road. Mark tells me it is a species but I have yet to put a name on it. The dusky apricot colouring appeals to me. Some may call these weeds but oh, when I compare these roadside plants to the ugliness and environmental unfriendliness of scorched, sprayed earth, all I can say is give me these weeds which make a contribution to the eco-system. It is such folly to think that spraying roadsides is desirable. All it does is to create a vacuum where less desirable weeds will re-colonise the area and, in the interim, all the water flows away, washing residual spray and road residues into our waterways. My column in the January issue of NZ Gardener is on the topic of roadside plantings. We often talk about this as we drive and we despair at the ugliness and the willy nilly use of weed spray in this country of ours. Clean and green New Zealand? Not in reality.
More cheerfully, the so-called Australian frangipani (Hymenosporum flavum) growing by the road halfway to town has been delighting me for several weeks. Many flowering trees are glorious on their day – but you can count their flowering season in days, rather than weeks. Not so this hymenosporum. It is not even a close relative of the frangipani, though it is scented. It needs frost free conditions to get established and good drainage but is worth growing for its late spring, early summer blooming.
I don’t swear on this blog (though I admit I am not so restrained in real life) so you will just have to fill in the missing letters when I describe this as an example of f*** off utility urban design. Clearly nobody wants to even try and grow plants here (and conditions would certainly be difficult to get anything established, let alone looking good), but could nobody come up with a filler idea that was less hostile than this?
I much prefer the old concrete and stone wall, constructed a long time ago in my local town of Waitara. Someone took a lot of care over this.
Pohutukawa! Often called the New Zealand Christmas tree. What a wonderful sight they are at this time of the year. As I looked at all the trees coming into bloom along New Plymouth’s water front, a mere two short blocks down from the main street, I felt a pang at the loss of 28 (or was it 29 in the end?) mature trees beside our Waitara River. I even contemplated making Christmas cards for all our Taranaki Regional Council elected officials and senior staff who were responsible for the casual removal of the trees. I thought it could feature the flowers on the front with a message inside saying “Seasons Greetings from the 29 Waitara pohutukawa chainsawed down this year”. But it is a lot of effort to go to for something they would just throw in the bin. Better instead to admire the beauty of trees still standing.
The public amenity planting in New Plymouth can be delightful and appropriate. On the exposed west coast, there are limited plant options that will grow right beside the sea. That is why the sturdy pohutukawa is so important. But also our native flaxes. They are in flower and how lovely do the flower spikes look silhouetted against the big sky and the big sea we get here?
Finally, coming home, I stopped to record the effective trimming of this Cupressus leylandii down the road. It was just an ordinary shelter belt until the lower canopy was recently lifted, exposing the trunks. The fact the branches have been trimmed reasonably flush helps but it adds a whole new dimension, being able to look through. It has turned an unmemorable shelter belt into something much more graceful and distinctive.
And then there are the tricksy ones, few more so than the Japanese A. sikokianum with its phallic spadix and hooded spathe rising prominently above the foliage. It is a show stopper in spring, though definitely curious rather than beautiful. After many years of growing it, I can tell you that it is difficult. We have never seen it increase from the corm. Growing well, it will set seed but these need to be raised in controlled conditions because it will not seed down naturally here. Even then, the patches tend to get smaller with time, rather than larger. It was for this reason that Mark experimented with hybridising it, to try and get increased vigour. This is known as hybrid vigour, in a similar way that the controlled breeding of designer dogs can make the offspring a stronger genetic strain than the highly refined parentage of pure breds. It has worked for us. The offspring carry all the best characteristics of A. sikokianum but they grow more strongly and are reliable as garden plants. Few would pick the difference to the lead species, but we know they are actually hybrids.
First published in the December issue of NZ Gardener and reprinted here with their permission. 
I have witnessed many aberrations in good taste in containers and ancillary decoration over the years. Garish blue pots continue to infest the country – particularly Taranaki gardens, due to the high volume sold by a local importer some years ago. Having long rid myself of these lapses in good taste (planted up with burgundy plants, as I recall), close friends live in fear of my sniffy derision at their 1990s blue relics. I maintain a discreet silence unless they are good friends. Similarly, cheap pots adorned with glazed pictures of bamboo or sunflowers left these premises many years ago. I had it down to aged terracotta, neutral shades, hypertufa or stone.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 