Tag Archives: Taranaki garden festival

Three gardens (not ours)

Three Elms Garden

Despite my intentions, life has got in the way and I have not been out and about visiting gardens and artist’s studios open on various trails this week in Taranaki as much as I thought I would. But I did get to three gardens on Thursday, which is about my limit for a day.

How to completely screen your neighbour’s house from view when it is very close – at Three Elms

First up was Three Elms, in New Plymouth which exceeded my expectations. The owners, Shane and Lisa McNab, have always credited us with inspiring them to garden – albeit several decades ago – and they tell me they made their first plant purchase from us. It was a pot of rhodohypoxis. They have clearly learned a huge amount in the time since.

It takes a lot of skill to manage a very steep section but Three Elms show it can be done in such a way that the changes in level seem effortless

Three Elms is a town garden on a section that is not large but started out as a steep challenge. It is a due to their hard work and thoughtfulness that the gradient is no longer a problem. They have created small terraces with fairly easy transitions between them, belying the original slope and making moving around the area straightforward. Talk to Shane, if you visit, about the lengths he had to go to installing the large boulders and rocks that are used extensively. They are a feat of determination and physical effort.

That is a tropical cordyline, believe it not, with strelitzia, a dwarf maple and a palm.

The hard landscaping provides the framework but it is the plantings that star. As they should, in my opinion. Pretty much every square metre has been carefully thought about and tended with skill and care over many years and it shows in the plant selections, the health of the plants and the harmonious combinations. There are a lot of bromeliads but it is not only bromeliads, by any manner of means.

A nod to Japan makes use of a challenging space between the back of the house and a ponga (tree fern) retaining wall.

Gardens are only work if you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Three Elms has had a lot of time, thought, skill and – yes – love given to it over many years and it shows. If you are out and about garden visiting locally this weekend, go and see it.

Hurworth Country Garden

Hurworth Country Garden also delighted me. I had been to an event there late last year but events distract from looking at a garden and I wanted to have a better look. I was about a third of the way around it when I found myself thinking, “This is a really graceful garden” and that is not a descriptor that I have ever used about a garden before.

It is pretty large for a retirement garden situated just beyond the city limits and immaculately presented, but that high level of maintenance doesn’t interfere with the feeling of relaxed charm and space – and indeed, grace. Again, it reflects the skill, experience and thought of its owners, Jan and Graeme Worthington. I do like a thoughtful garden.

I loved the vibrant colour of the raised beds edging to the house verandahs, contrasting with the more subtle colours of much of the rest of the garden.

Jan’s use of colour is subtle but not monochromatic. When I commented on this, she put it down to her experience in quilt making. I haven’t seen her quilts but I imagine they are as immaculate and harmonious as her garden.

I coveted Hurworth’s garden room

They also have one of the loveliest garden rooms I have seen and I do like a good garden room. I didn’t even think to ask how and when they use it when the garden is not open to the public; it is perhaps a little too far from the house to use for summer meals and entertaining but it is the sort of room I could visualise sitting in myself, just to enjoy the ambience and views. Hurworth is a garden with a particularly lovely ambience.

Kowhai Garden

The third garden I went to was Kowhai Garden which has a remarkable collection of rhododendrons – over 900, I believe. It is not just rhododendrons but they are the stars at this time of the year. I entertained myself identifying those I knew, dredging my memory banks from the days when we had a nursery that specialised in the genus. Again, it is an example of how people cope with gardens that include a very steep slope, as much of this large garden has. What stood out for me were the rhododendrons that are thriving in a low maintenance environment – not only flowering well but also keeping good foliage and good plant form. Some are performing much better than others.

Rhododendron ‘Lemon Lodge’

Near the house is an outstanding plant of ‘Lemon Lodge’ – simply the best specimen I have ever seen.

Rhododendron ‘Floral Fete’

Also looking lovely were plants of R.nuttallii x lindley hybrids – these ones are ‘Floral Fete’, the owner, Neil Tapsell told me. There used to be a number of named forms of this cross around including the likes of ‘Mi Amor’, ‘Stead’s Best’ and ‘White Waves’. I am not sure how many are still available commercially but it remains a beautiful hybrid and ‘Floral Fete’ is as good as any of the forms I have seen and arguably better than ‘Mi Amor’.

Here endeth my summary of Thursday’s garden visits. I am hoping to get to see another couple over the weekend but the arrival today of our most beautiful Jury hybrid, our little baby granddaughter accompanied by her mama, may yet derail my plans.

Finally, I add this photo from Three Elms not because it shows much of the garden but I am always interested in how gardeners manage their behind the scenes workspaces in small town gardens. Tidily and discreetly, in this case, I would say. Our behind the scenes spaces are much more expansive and untidy and I am in awe at anybody who can manage to screen and disguise garden service areas so well.

Out and about but just across the bridge in Lepperton

Rhododendron Lollipop Lace

We have had quite the week here. Although the garden is no longer open to the public, we hosted the NZ Rhododendron Association conference attendees on Friday. They were two years later than originally planned; the 2021 conference was cancelled at the last minute due to Covid dramas. I thought I would get some photos to record the event but there were so many people, so many vehicles to park – including three coaches – and so many staggered departures to catch flights and the like that we were scrambling to keep all the juggling balls in the air. Not a single photo was taken to record this event so all I can do is illustrate with  Rhododendron ‘Lollipop Lace’, a lesser-known Jury hybrid that was looking very pretty on the day. And say that it was a highly successful visit and it is very affirming for us to have so many people really enjoy the garden.

Unexpectedly delightful in the little Lepperton church.

The annual garden festival here opened the same day and we are deeply relieved to have retired from that 10 day event. Despite being a little zombie-like yesterday, I headed over to nearby Lepperton where I found an unexpected delight. Floral art is not an area in which I have any expertise at all; I lack even a framework to understand any of the principles and skills involved. I rarely cut flowers to bring indoors because I feel that as soon as I cut blooms, they start dying and I would rather see them living longer in the garden than commit flowercide. But in Lepperton, I found a floral art display which made me stop and reach for my camera.

The little Lepperton church is, I am told, 123 years old. From the outside, it is a typical white, weatherboard church of that era, inside it is unexpectedly charming and the floral displays were simply spectacular. Immaculate blooms arranged by floral art enthusiasts make a grand display. If you are local or currently visiting the area, it is well worth a visit.

Not your usual orchids on display in the Lepperton church hall

Out the back of the church is a little church hall with an interesting display of lesser-known orchid treasures put on by the Taranaki Orchid Society, which is well worth a look as well. There are a few crafts and local honey on sale, as well as our gardener, Zach, selling plants he has potted up for the season, which was my main reason for visiting.

Out the front of the church, there is a splendid white azalea in bloom. I didn’t ferret around the base to see if there is more than one plant growing or whether this is all just from a single original plant layering along the ground, but it does show the size these plants can reach if not kept clipped to the tight, little mounds that most gardeners seem to favour.

Down the road and round a corner or two, a roadside rhododendron was showy enough to make me turn around and go back for a second look. It appears to be an old house site to me because there were other ornamentals also left edging an empty section. Offhand, I don’t know which one it is but it will be an early cultivar because it is quite old.

The Lepper Garden in Lepperton
Most of the plants I recognised in this garden were of the woody tree and shrub type but I am pretty sure Pauline bought this Farfugium tussilagineum argenteum from us and the pink petals are from Felix Jury’s Camellia Dreamboat

There is quite a cluster of gardens open this week around Lepperton for both the main garden festival and the fringe festival but I only had time to visit one. I chose Lepper’s Garden because we used to know the creator of this garden – the late Pauline Lepper. I was only halfway round the garden when I thought, ‘my goodness, Pauline must have spent a lot of money at our nursery back in the day’. There were so many plants that I recognised as coming from us that it was like meeting old friends. If Pauline is looking down from above, I am sure she will be smiling to see the next generation continuing her garden and watching the plants she chose grow to maturity.

Simple bedding plants but I like the blue haze and the repetition of blue at ground level through the garden

This is the biggest garden visiting week of the year in our area. We plan to visit a few gardens that we haven’t seen before and hopefully there will be many others out appreciating the huge amount of work garden owners put in to preparing their gardens to open for others to enjoy.

Open season

First published in the November issue of Woman magazine. Ironically, two weeks after writing this (which, with magazine deadlines, was in September), I realised that we were done with opening the garden to the public. That was why we then announced that the garden festival just passed would be our last.

The Rimu Avenue

We do great spring gardens in Aotearoa New Zealand. Notwithstanding the usual moaning about the weather, this is a country with a mild, temperate climate, lacking extremes of temperature. We drift so gradually between seasons that our spring season extends to a long period. Magnolias, flowering cherries, daffodils, irises, early roses and much, much more – our springs are a froth of bloom. It is no coincidence that spring is the main season for garden festivals and garden visiting.

Maybe you have been thinking you would like to open your garden, to share the results of your dedicated efforts.    

The summer borders in spring

There are various reasons for opening your garden but making money is not likely to be a viable option, at least not in Aotearoa. We simply don’t have high enough visitor numbers. Most open gardens in this country will get numbers in the low hundreds to the low thousands. To be financially viable, you would need to be in the high tens of thousands and that is a whole different ball game.

Location affects visitor numbers a great deal and gardens on the tourist circuit will get higher numbers but that is also dependent on good access, excellent signage and convenient parking.

Gardens with added attractions appeal to wider cross section of the potential visitor market. Not many of us can manage a castle in a spectacular setting (here’s looking at you, Larnach’s Castle). A café or plant nursery helps but it is rare to find a place where the café or other attraction and the garden are of equally high standard.

Hosting events can be be quite high stress, especially if it is dependent on the rain holding off for long enough. There is nothing like tracking the hourly weather forecast to lift anxiety levels.

There are plenty of gardens that host events in an effort to build visitor numbers and generate income but this is not a track we have chosen to go down. My gardening and life partner, Mark, has never wanted a bar of events. As far as he is concerned, he only welcomes visitors if they want to see the garden, not because it is a venue. I flirted with a few weddings while Mark hid out of sight in his vegetable garden, quietly pretending there was nothing going on. Encountering not one but two Bridezillas put me off for life. I remember thinking of one, “Lady, you are not paying me anywhere near enough to treat me like the hired help in my own garden while you pose for wedding photographs in front of my house.”

Some level of catering, perhaps? Been there, done that. It added extra work and stress but was generally manageable until the rise to prominence of not just vegetarian options but also vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, keto and goodness knows what else. The general public have become awfully picky eaters in recent times.

It only takes one group eating lunch in the garden to turn your formerly well-behaved dog into a shameless beggar. Few are better at working a crowd than our Dudley.

Some people open for charity and that is a laudable position, given how much work it takes to get a garden to opening standard. Some open to support an event or festival. Some may be driven by ego alone but, let’s be honest, we all want visitors to come and enjoy our place, to admire our efforts, maybe to be impressed by what we are doing, certainly to share the pleasure we find in our own garden. It can be a very affirming experience and that is the main reason we still open.

In the summer gardens

We first opened 35 years ago, which seems like an eternity. Initially we kept it to the 10 days of what was then called the Taranaki Rhododendron Festival (now the Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival and currently going stronger than ever). They were different times – simpler, more amateurish and visitor expectations were a lot lower than they are today. Mind you, most garden visitors expected free entry, too.

Bowing to pressure, we gradually extended our open times to eight months of the year.

Festival is the only time of the year when I regret not owning a clothes drier. Washing on the line is a no-no.

It changes the way you look at your garden. You start looking more critically, as though through the eyes of the garden visitor. It also changes the way you manage a garden, trying to keep standards up all the time but without the staff that maintain publicly owned gardens. It even affects when you can peg your washing on the line (never in busy times or when tours are booked – at least not if you have a prominent washing line, as we do). When you are a private garden, it is not just the garden you are opening; there is a certain amount of presentation of a desirable lifestyle that goes with it. I have noticed a growing tendency in recent years to ‘dress’ or stage gardens in the manner of staging real estate.   

It is common now to see a certain level of staging or dressing a garden – best when it is witty as here at Bev McConnell’s garden ‘Ayrlies’.

After 25 years we had had enough and visitor numbers had fallen away, except for the 10 day festival period. We closed the garden entirely for 7 years, using that time to carry out major work and to fall in love with our own place again. We didn’t garden less, we just gardened differently.

Leading a garden tour around the park

Nowadays we only open for the garden festival. That is our half way compromise. It still governs how we garden for maybe half the year but the other half is ours, all ours. As an aside, it takes almost as much work to prepare a garden for a single tour group or a one-day event as it does to open for a more extended period. Do not be lulled into the thought that it will be much easier if the time length is short.

I am not sorry to have left scanning or signing-in behind.

When we re-opened in November 2020, we were not sure how we would feel and we certainly did not anticipate the impact of being in a Covid-free country with closed borders and a population suffering from cabin fever. Visitor numbers were three times higher than we expected.

Last year’s festival threatened to be a huge disappointment as Auckland and large parts of the Waikato went into lockdown and tour groups cancelled left, right and centre but numbers held at a reasonable level, given the extraordinary situation. Opening in Covid times has certainly added layers of challenge.

The day of the poocalypse was certainly a memorable occasion

When we reopened, friends came to help. I joked that for once Mark and I would be able to swan around, being gracious hosts. Ha! Chance would be a fine thing. All I can say is that I seem to spend a lot of my time worrying about carparking and clean toilets and much less time being the gracious host. You haven’t lived until the septic tank servicing the loos fails on a day when you have over 450 visitors on the property. I am hoping not to repeat that experience. A poocalypse, we called it at the time.

Carparking is a challenge. However, we have found that we can park 54 – or was it 57 – vehicles on our property before having to park visitors on the road but it takes careful management by two people and not too much rain beforehand.

Don’t even ask about carparking. I know more about the vagaries of drivers and parking than I need to. We still laugh, however, at the benighted but not de-knighted former Cabinet minister who visited. “It is just like Sissinghurst,” he declared as he entered. Having been to Sissinghurst ourselves, we knew that he was referring to the challenge of finding a carpark at a busy time.

I have often said that 99 out of every 100 garden visitors are perfectly pleasant, courteous and appreciative people. The 100th is not. In discussion here, we agreed that it is more like one in 500 who is not. When garden openers gather after an event, conversation often turns to the 500th visitor. We all remember them. In fact, we sometimes compare notes to see if it is the very same person. Years later, we still remember them – which is probably an indicator of how few unpleasant garden visitors there are. But if you are out and about visiting gardens, don’t be the 500th visitor. Maybe stay home instead of wilfully ruining somebody else’s day. 

The borders, as we refer to them here

It should also go without saying that visitor books are solely there for garden visitors to write something positive, or at least pleasant. Manners matter, m’dear. If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all – at least not in the visitor book and probably not in on-line reviews, unless you have already made your complaint or criticism in person to the garden owner. I am all for keeping standards, decorum and courtesy in the somewhat rarefied world of garden visiting.

The definitive word comes from my Mark who, when we were considering reopening, said, “You don’t garden on this scale without wanting to share it with others”. At least we agree that ten days a year is quite enough for us now.

Counting down to Festival 2022.

The programme for this year’s garden festival was launched this week. It is huge. Not only are there 43 gardens around the province open for the main attraction, now named the Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival, but there are a whole lot of related garden-themed events. And wait there is more. Running alongside that are the 30 gardens opening for the Sustainable Backyards Trail and in addition to that, the Taranaki Arts Trail is also affiliated and there are 79 artists who are opening their studios at this time.

It is going to be a busy 10 days from Friday, October 28 to Sunday, November 10. The full programme is available on line here or you can request or pick up a paper copy.

Naturally, it is our little corner of the programme that interests us most. It is the only time of the year we open our garden to the public these days. Fortunately, given the scale of the programme this year, we are very easy to find, being right at the front as garden number one. The numbering starts from the north and we are lucky to be the northernmost garden.

Jennifer Duval-Smith

I am not offering workshops this year, just a few scheduled garden tours. But we are delighted to have Jennifer Duval-Smith joining us as artist in residence this year. Jennifer is an Auckland botanical artist and she is offering workshops here on Nature Journaling. How to explain Nature Journaling? The full details on her workshops are here but my description of it would be that it is more immediate and therefore probably more rewarding for the beginner than the esoteric rigour required for botanical art. It is certainly less technical and more about combining observation skills with the confidence to capture the delight quickly in colour and form on paper.

Nature journaling

Jennifer is offering four workshops on different topics:

* Meadow and Wildflowers of the Wild North Garden

* Flowers and Plants of the Woodlands

* Rhododendron – the Grandeur and the Glory 

* Flowers of the Early Summer Garden

Jennifer’s own website is here for more information about her approach and her own work. Bookings need to be made through the festival website and with numbers limited to eight per workshop, it may be advisable not to procrastinate too long if you are interested.

La Mer

On an entirely different topic, we are equally delighted to be the venue for a Music in the Garden event on our main lawn on the first Sunday of festival. La Mer is a four-piece group playing music which is a blend of gypsy swing and French Café-style jazz. I can’t post video on this site but for a sample of the music, click through to my Facebook page. It is perfect garden music and we have our fingers crossed for a fine afternoon with people lounging – physically distanced as is the way these days – across our front lawn enjoying the ambience and sound.

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Alas, this event is weather dependent. We can’t move indoors for this one. I will be terribly disappointed if the weather gods fail to cooperate. There is no need to book for this event and there is no additional charge other than entry to the garden.

We have a large main lawn. I mention this for the Covid-cautious. Social distancing should not be a problem. Goodness knows what the state of Covid will be in three months’ time but we fall very much into the Covid-cautious camp here and we will be doing everything we can to keep ourselves and our visitors safe.

The front lawn in autumn – plenty of space for the Covid-cautious

We are now at the point of the year where everything here is geared towards opening for the festival. I will admit there are times when we have doubts about continuing to open but it is a terrific event for our province and very affirming to have visitors who enjoy the fruits of our labour.

In a world dominated by the ongoing impact of Covid, the garden festival this year shines like a bright light of cheer in a relatively safe environment and there is a lot to be said for that.

The summer gardens in late springtime
The meadow in the park during spring

2021 Taranaki Garden Festival in Covid Times

White ixias and Iris sibirica ‘Blue Moon’ in the summer borders

As you read this, we will be on the last day of the 2021 Taranaki Garden Festival. Ten days may not sound long but it is very long when you are meeting and greeting visitors solidly, especially given our lives where we spend long periods of time alone with our own thoughts in the garden. So forgive me if I seem a little tired.

It has been an odd festival. Last year broke all visitor records when the country was Covid-free but nobody could travel overseas. This year was shaping up to be even larger until Delta took hold in Auckland and then Waikato. With internal borders closed to the north of us, we kept our fingers crossed that they would reopen in time for the festival but it became clear that would not be the case. When we had ten coaches cancel in the week before festival, it was a bit… deflating, shall I say? With those northern borders closed, we could see that 40% of the visitor base simply couldn’t travel. Added to that, a fair number of people to the south didn’t want to travel and who can blame them? Preparing the garden for a festival that seemed to be dwindling day by day felt very much like being all dressed up for a party but nobody was coming.

In the end, it has been fine. Yes, visitor numbers are way down on the early indications but overall, we have still been running above our long-term average. Not hugely above but better than expected.

Our friend and helper on the gate during a Covid festival

A Covid festival has been different to manage, especially in this country where we were late to adopt wearing masks. But I can report that the particularly loud – rabid, even – but small number of Covid deniers/anti maskers/anti vaxxers are not garden lovers. We have had 100% cooperation on scanning or signing in and keeping to our masking policy (mask at the entrance and then carry it around the garden to wear if near others). None of us likes masking but nobody wants to spread Covid in areas of this country that are still blessed to be free or largely free from it at this stage*.  The good-natured compliance has been a surprise to us but very welcome. It seems that when expectations are clear, people respect the protocols. I have found managing physical distancing challenging when taking workshops and leading tours around the garden but goodwill goes a long way.

Even we never work beneath these trees in windy times; we were not going to risk visitors’ safety.
Blocking off paths and redirecting visitors around danger areas

Wednesday – oh windy Wednesday. It is a long time since we have experienced a wind such as the one that blew relentlessly all night and day. It was not so much wind as a howling gale. At least we managed to remain open and areas of the garden are so sheltered that all that could be heard was the roaring in the treetops above. A few other gardens were forced to close entirely. For the first time, we closed one section of our garden. Walking the Avenue Gardens beneath our giant old-man pines was a significant safety risk so we redirected the routes to skirt around that area. But brave souls still turned up to visit.

Lloyd ‘vacuuming’ the lawns at 8am
Zach on the motor blower
Mark scooping the pond and sweeping the sunken garden. I don’t do selfies so there is no photo of me but I was equally busy.

On Thursday morning, the place was a mess. Nothing big came down but everything loose, small or dead certainly did. Never have I been so grateful to our small team. By 8am the next morning, we were all out doing a rapid clean-up. Zach was on the motor blower, Lloyd was vacuuming the lawns with the lawnmower, Mark was scooping all the debris out of the freshly cleaned goldfish pond and sweeping the sunken garden and I was reopening the Avenue Gardens. Soon after 9am, there was little evidence left of the storm damage and even I was impressed at the speed and efficiency with which we managed the restoration of order and garden decorum.

Zach and I have already scoped out patches of blue Iris sibirica we can raid to extend the patch in the park that is flowering so prettily

At 5pm today, we will bring in the flag and signs and close the gates. We have no intentions of opening for more than the ten days. Festival is most affirming for us. We are delighted that people come and respond to what we have here and clearly enjoy their visit. The praise is balm to our gardening souls. It will sustain us for the next 355 days. Tomorrow, we will be back out in our gardening clothes (looking more like old tramps, if I am honest), masks put aside for trips off the property only and moving more Sibirican irises down to the meadow by the stream. There is plenty to keep us busy.

Footnote: it appears our Covid-free honeymoon is over. It has been found in wastewater nearby so we now go into a holding pattern as we wait to find how much Covid we have in our area.