Category Archives: Private Gardens

Mirador – Steel, Limestone & Design Panache in Austin

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On my recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Austin, Texas, we saw a variety of private gardens ranging from tiny, crammed-with-blossoms cottage gardens surrounding modest bungalows to expansive gardens framing large, modern homes. One that impressed me for its seamless architectural integration of house and landscape was Mirador. Both the house (designed by Jim Larue) and garden (by landscape architect Curt Arnette of Sitio Design) were finished in 2013 and are a beacon of fresh contemporary style in a neighbourhood of traditional, Mediterranean-style homes. It’s also the best example I’ve seen of using rusty Corten (COR-TEN®) weathering steel in all kinds of inventive ways in the garden. But if you read my blog on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center which we’d visited earlier that morning, you’ll know that a lot (3 inches!) of rain had fallen by the time we trooped down the driveway to Mirador in our dripping ponchos.  My first view was of a soaked wildflower meadow spangled with blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella) arrayed in front of massive Corten planters curved against the edge of the property and filled with agaves and yuccas.

As the rain subsided, the homeowner was able to put away her umbrella and chat with us. Though she grew up on a Nebraska farm, she’s lived in Austin for 35 years and taught herself all about gardening here.  In planning the new garden, she had a wish list, much of it inspired by her travels.  “Curt and I worked really well together, so I would tell him things I wanted incorporated and he magically made it happen.”  Given that the property is downhill from the next-door neighbour, one of the challenges had been poor drainage in heavy rains, thus a deteriorating rock retaining wall built by previous owners of the property……

…… was replaced by tiered, curved Corten steel planters filled with drought-tolerant succulents. This was the view from the end of the planters closest to the house.

Look at those knife-edge steel walls. Corten, of course, is not “just” steel, but created with specific alloys that create the weathered look, while simultaneously slowing the weathering. Historically, the trademark for COR-TEN® steel was granted to the United States Steel Corporation in 1933, but it is now made by many companies.  Note all the gravel here for drainage, and the Texas native silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) making a great groundcover under the agaves and beaked yuccas (Y. rostrata).

To the left of the sloping driveway was a stately, little grove of bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), a Texas native. The meadow-like turf here and throughout the property is native Habiturf lawn (buffalo grass-blue grama-curly mesquite), developed at Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Further down the driveway, a long limestone planter filled with statuesque century plants (Agave americana) lined the wall of the garage.  In front is a geometric planting of muhly grass just emerging in spring from last year’s hummocks.

I’m sure those agaves would have liked a little less moisture than the monsoon that had befallen them that morning.

Fortunately, the rain slowed as we got our bearings, for this was a garden to be explored carefully – even though it felt a little wrong to wander in dark clouds and drizzle through a succulent-rich garden clearly designed for sunshine. The view below is past a guest house/studio on the left with an enclosed courtyard garden, garage on the right, towards the house with all its complex and interesting roof angles.

That Corten is so perfect here, with the pale Texas limestone and stucco palette of the house and other buildings.  The tree is Texas cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia).

Below is an airy gate leading into the courtyard garden.

The gardens are an interesting mix of natural and formal, like this little boxwood allée.  I loved the steel wall doubling as a planter…..

…… with the wood-and-stainless-steel bench in front.  That long flower spike comes from the Texas native giant false yucca (Hesperaloe funifera).

Before we go into the courtyard, let’s walk up to the front door, past this fabulous whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia) and the casacading Palmer’s sedum (S. palmeri), its little yellow flowers nodding their soaked heads after the rain.

Look at those lovely slabs of cream limestone.  Notice that we’re still going downhill, via that small step (and it’s still raining a little). Later, we’ll see that the back of the house descends even further.

Now let’s step into the courtyard and head down the Corten-edged gravel stairs. The plants here are firecracker plants (Russellia equisetiformis), with tiny, tubular red flowers sure to attract the hummingbirds the homeowner wanted to invite into her garden.

Inside the courtyard garden, the Nebraska farm girl seems to have found the perfect marriage of abundant vegetable garden and French potager.  “My garden is mostly for my family and me to enjoy: vegetable picking with grandkids, sharing organic veggies with my daughter,” she says.

In early May, the Swiss chard looked healthy, along with self-seeding larkspur and violas. And probably the prettiest tomato cages I’ve ever seen (more Corten!)…

There are roses in the potager, too. As the homeowner says: “I wanted to have some cutting flowers and vegetables mixed in with roses. I never thought I would enjoy roses, but have fallen in love with antique roses”. She specified many for their fragrance. “Stopping to smell the roses is really a good thing.”  Though we missed the antique roses by about two weeks, there were still a few ‘Knock Out’ roses in bloom, below.

Looking in the other direction, the elegant, concrete water feature here reflects the sky (and I’m sure it brings lots of birds as well.) There’s phlomis and catmint here; the little multi-stemmed tree is Texas persimmon (Diospyros texana).  Beside it is an architectural scrim of horsetails (Equisetum hyemale)…..


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…. cleverly trapped in an enclosed space. (If you’ve grown horsetails, you’ll know why).

The courtyard garden has its own comfy chairs.

As I looked towards the back of the property, I caught a lovely, long rain chain doing exactly what it was meant to do, then directing the rain into appreciative bamboo below.

I hurried out of the potager area past the pineapple guava…..

….. and the pretty glass ornaments……

…..down behind the house to find the swimming pool – a welcome oasis in hot Austin summers – and an appropriate interpretation of an infinity edge…..

….. with its Corten walls.

Isn’t this sweet? Blackeyed susans from the garden.

The hot tub was nearby…..

….. and featured more beaked yuccas (Y. rostrata) against the rough-cut limestone of the house wall here.

The view from the hot tub is all green (there’s a greenbelt adjacent to the neighbourhood here), which is perfect, since Mirador means a viewpoint or vantage point in Spanish.

Alas, as our time here was running out, I missed seeing the al fresco dining area with its fig-topped arbor, but other bloggers like Gerhard Bock of Succulents and More managed to photograph it. (Be sure to have a look at his lovely blog.)  At ground level below the pool area, I found a long limestone planter filled with self-seeding larkspur and corn poppies and the blackberries the homeowner loves picking with her little grandson.

Looking out onto the meadow that she seeded with Habiturf and native wildflowers like Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera)…..

…. I could only imagine what it must have looked like weeks earlier, before the Texas paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) here started setting seed. (A few weeks later, she  said, “And of course now the meadow is abloom with wildflowers!”)

And look! A peach tree in the meadow.

I circled around the other side of the house where a large but friendly-looking gorilla (inspired by the homeowner’s trip to Rwanda) kept watch over the sandbox her grandkids use.

A little further was a small, intimate garden with a pair of lightweight, cement-look, resin chairs, dark cannas and more succulents.

This side of Mirador abuts the high ground next door.. When a storm a few years back dumped 13 inches of rain in one night, “massive amounts of water coming off the neighbor’s yard” necessitated a drainage solution. Thus was the stream bed garden conceived, channeling rainwater safely away from the house.

The rain had stopped and I would gladly have waited for the sky to lighten to capture more images here, but sadly it was time to go. (To appreciate Mirador in its summery glory, be sure to visit Fling co-organizer Pam Penick’s lovely 2014 blog.)  I was so delighted to have had the chance to visit this remarkable Austin garden: a beautiful marriage of modern architecture, skillful landscape design and ecologically-sensitive gardening.

The Giant’s House – A Mosaic Master Class in Akaroa

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Our third Banks Peninsula garden was certainly the most unusual. While Sir Miles Warren’s Ohinetahi was a classical, architectural achievement and Jill Simpson’s Fishermans Bay Garden was rich in a layered horticulture/conservation sense, Josie Martin’s The Giant’s House was the most zany, idiosyncratic, colourful, free-spirited, artistic garden of our entire tour.  After walking up a steep road, Rue Balguerie (yes, it was a small French settlement in the 19th century, though the English had claimed it first) lined with “New Zealand dandelions”, i.e. agapanthus…..

…. we passed a flowery bench and entered a mosaic wonderland that would be right at home in Ravenna.

The Italianate house known as Linton was designed by Christchurch architect A.W. Simpson and built in 1881 from native New Zealand totara and kauri timber for Akaroa’s first bank manager, Arthur Henry Westenra, who, according to his obituary, “had a love of horticulture in all its branches”.  But for 25 years, The Giants House has been the horticultural and artistic playground of painter/sculptor Josie Martin.

It’s a beautiful building, the central mahogany staircase imported from France, the ceilings high, the walls of the bed-and-breakfast bedrooms decorated with Josie’s colourful paintings, the doorway decked in bougainvillea and roses.

There is so much tongue-in-cheek fun and clever allusion in the gardens here, it’s at first difficult to grasp the level of artistry and commitment that was needed to transform this large, hillside property into a master class in mosaics. As I strolled in front of the house on a turquoise tile walkway, I heard the sound of Edith Piaf nearby.

And there, arrayed on a lawn just inside the entranceway, with the rolling hills of Akaroa as background, was Josie Martin’s mosaic orchestra.

The funky quartet went by the name Kitty Catch-me and the Rolling Dice…..

….. and the bench offered a comfy place to listen to the music.

The grand piano, Sweet Patooti…..

…… had keys fashioned from black and white mosaic tiles…..

…… and was filled with echeverias.  As I gazed beyond, the steep grade change behind the house up to the back of the property was evident. But climbing that hill was going to be great fun!

I climbed the flower steps out of the French music room….

……..and began my magical mystery tour, past the curving rainbow bench……

….. and the good ship Isola Bella, passing swimmers circling…. Lake Maggiore?…..

…. while staring awestruck at the hillside behind the house.

That this is all the creation of one determined woman is mind-boggling. So let me get you a glass of mint lemonade….

….. from the Artist’s  Palate cafe….

…..and introduce you to Josie Martin, below. That she is as eccentrically artful and beautiful as her house and garden is not unexpected.  An accomplished painter & sculptor, she has exhibited in 29 solo shows and had residencies and workshops around the world. Many of her paintings feature here in a gallery at the top of the garden, designed incidentally by Ohinetahi’s Sir Miles Warren. Online, she’s been described as “Akaroa’s answer to Salvador Dalí, bringing the don’t-take-it-all-so-seriously message to those who listen and many who won’t” (NatGeo). An Australian visitor described her as “Antoni Gaudi, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and Dr Seuss, with a blast of New Orleans mardi gras.”

She made her first mosaics from some pieces of broken china she found as she was clearing out the overgrown property some 20 years ago.

One thing led to another. She embarked on more complex installations, designing the forms, then having local craftsmen build them from concrete and reinforced steel, before colouring and applying the mosaics herself.  Begun as the engineering remedy for a rain-triggered mudslide and bank collapse,  the “Place des Amis”, below, took her three years to complete…..

….. with Jimmy, Rosa, Henrietta and others sitting around the ballerina tutu table in a fanciful town square.

That’s Ruby Delicious with the bouquet, below.

A little further into the garden were Adam & Eve……

…..and of course, the serpent.

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I walked beside the bird-topped wall,which fulfils a retaining wall function in the most whimsical way possible.

Then I passed the mosaic butterflies……

…… and climbed the blue stairs….

…… to look back down on the house.  Like the vast majority of gardens we’d visited in New Zealand, Josie’s property is on a steep slope. If you recall from my blog on Ohinetahi, the Banks Peninsula is essentially two spent volcanoes – Lyttelton (11-10 million years ago) and Akaroa (8-9 million years).  Akaroa Bay, glimpsed through the trees to the right of the house, is recent (only about 6,000 years ago) and like Lyttelton Bay is the result of the ocean flooding Akaroa’s crater.  But it was the Christchurch-area earthquakes of 2010-11 that seriously damaged the major port at Lyttelton that have indirectly led to a huge increase in cruise ship traffic to Akaroa bay and the little town (population 624 in 2013) – and, of course, to Josie’s garden, where tours arrive regularly when the big ships are in town.  (That succulent-topped column below is called Bluebell).

Along this terrace were flying acrobats — oh, and box-edged parterres with herbs and veggies!  That pale-pink building with the yellow entrance awning is Josie’s art gallery.

Up the stairs to the next terrace between hedges of brilliant breath-of-heaven (Coleonema pulchrum) were the Magician and Angel, with Marcel Marceau looking on.

Check out those ‘Zwartkop’ aeoniums!  Akaroa’s climate is mild which has enabled not just the mosaic artistry, but the planting choices.

What imagination!

The Bonbon Palace is the faux entrance to a playhouse. Well, the entire garden is a playhouse, let’s face it! In fact,The Giant’s House got its name from the words of a child who looked at it looming up the hill and decided a giant must certainly live there.

I walked along this path and spotted those intriguing yellow arms above…….

…. and climbed up to discover a menagerie guarding a peacock throne — but one quite unlike the royal seat of a Mughal emperor.

And yes, the yellow arms seemed very happy.

Look at the beautiful tile work on the floor here…..

….. and on the walls.

I loved all Josie’s insects…….

….. and birds, including the iconic New Zealand kiwi, which…….

…..adorned the wall of the steps leading to…….

….. a magical flower grotto.

I think this was my favourite piece, and I looked at it from a mirrored arch in front.  Spiral aloes, too!!

Nearby were roses and ripening pears. They reminded me that The Giants House is very much the domain of a skilled gardener.

Though I could have spent hours more here, it was time to head down yet another set of mosaic steps…..

….. past a line of whimsical columns, towards the exit.

I’ve seen 1st century BC mosaic floors on the island of Delos in Greece and 12th century mosaica in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice and 15th century çini mosaics in Istanbul’s Topkapi.  But Josie White’s floriferous, fantastical, surrealist mosaic hillside in Akaroa is the most fun I’ve had in a garden in years.

Fishermans Bay Garden

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Looking at a Google Maps satellite view of the Banks Peninsula is one thing, but driving the hilly landscape from garden to garden is quite another.  We were now heading from Sir Miles Warren’s garden at Ohinetahi on Governors Bay (#1 below) to the “eastern bays” of the peninsula to visit Jill & Richard Simpson’s Fishermans Bay Garden (#2) and enjoy lunch there before ending our afternoon at The Giant’s House in Akaraoa (#3).  (Click to enlarge the map.)

The drive to Fishermans Bay took us an hour and forty minutes and encompassed some of the most beautiful scenery we’d seen in New Zealand. A quarter-of-an-hour past Governors Bay, we drove past roadside stock pens and wild phormiums (P. tenax or harakeke).

We passed rocky outcrops at Gebbies Pass, below, that geologists call the “Gebbies Rhyolite”. It’s what’s left of volcanoes that occurred in the Late Cretaceous, around 81 million years ago. (And thank you to Dr. Greg Browne of GNS Science, New Zealand, for identifying the rock type for me.)

We climbed the hillside around Duvauchelle, from which some of the finest New Zealand woolens are exported around the world.

We passed olive groves near Robinsons Bay, home of a tasty, extra-virgin oil.

Then we came to our first sighting of the “eastern bays” — also known as the Wildside —  a series of headlands and inlets jutting out from the peninsula into the Pacific.  And I would be lying if I didn’t admit that this part of the trip was a little white-knuckle in a large bus, but we were soon…..

….. slowing down on a long access road, past the neighbouring farmer’s sheep running away…..

….. and beehives buzzing….

….. to park beside a rustic old shed framed in agapanthus and wildflowers…..

….. and be welcomed with a sign that we’d arrived.

We walked towards a pretty house with a little entrance garden featuring roses, Spanish lavender and an olive tree.

The owners of Fishermans Bay Garden, Jill and Richard Simpson, greeted us and gave a little introduction to the garden, which she later described to me as a “love story”. (You can hear her tell this story in the video at the end of this blog.)  Jill was working as a landscape designer in Christchurch when they met and fell in love. A dairy farmer, Richard already owned the property – all 300 hectares (790 acres) of it, as well as a dairy farm in Springston west of Christchurch. They would bring their family of six children (three each) to the property for holidays. Once Jill’s children were old enough, they renovated the house and moved to the peninsula. That was 12 years ago, and Jill has been making gardens there ever since.

We began in the long double herbaceous border…….

……. with beautiful  combinations of perennials and lots of fragrant lilies…..

….. and this spectacular rose, below, ‘Eyes for You’. It represents a remarkable and complex breeding achievement by Peter James, stemming  from the dark-splotched Persian rose, Rosa persica – or, as some refer to it, Hulthemia persica. (In fact, the latest taxonomy places the parent in the rose Subgenus Hulthemia, so technically it’s correct to refer to the Persian rose as both names.) A straggly, yellow flowered rose native to dry areas in Iran and Afghanistan, it was that attractive blotch that captivated rose breeders. Some 40 years after they started working with it, there is a growing roster of roses with dark eyes and the Middle Eastern hulthemia in their bloodlines.

Jill collects hebes – more than 150 species and cultivars – and in fact has an entire garden of them, on the slope towards the ocean, but these two made attractive companions at the end of the border.

Fruit trees were integrated into the garden, including apples,…..

….. pears…

….. and plums (that were clearly providing nesting material for leaf-cutting bees)….

A vegetable garden was nearby, and this was one was designed for productivity….

…. rather than ornament.

There were some vestiges of the old holiday house that had once been here, like this sweet little patio.

I walked past an informal cottage garden with dahlias and roses towards a small forest of hulking Monterey cypress trees (Cupressus macrocarpa) – that exotic evergreen considered a pest in New Zealand and paradoxically in danger of extinction on California’s Monterey Peninsula, where it’s endemic.

There were interesting succulent plantings at the top of the hill here, with rusty old farm implements as decor……

…..and a fun planting of shaggy Acacia cognata ‘Limelight’.

I started down the path to find that this marked just the beginning of ……

……Jill’s newest garden, an ambitious hillside planted with an ebullient, Piet Oudolf-inspired tapestry of perennials.

Jill terraced this slope with two truckloads of railway ties, carted and placed one at a time. Let’s walk down through the garden together.

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I could have spent hours exploring the plant combinations here. But it wasn’t simply a naturalistic meadow made by throwing all kinds of colourful perennials together; look at the way those carefully-placed canna lilies draw your eye through the planting here.

At the edges near the Monterey cypresses, conditions are favourable for native ferns and other shade-loving plants.

Moving further down, I saw a bench made from those very same cypress trees.

Further down the hill. Such an amazing profusion of flowers and foliage.

I arrived at a little terrace on the hillside, where there was a stunning piece of statuary conceived as an airy steel wire sculpture by Hawarden sculptor Sharon Earl, titled ‘Ecosphere’, from which to appreciate the amazing view.

And what a view it is.


Let’s keep going down this flowery path, because there’s something very different at the bottom. (And I don’t mean the bellowing bull our tour members are photographing.)

This is from the same position, but looking back up the hill.

At the base of the hillside border, I looked back up. That fluffy waving flag of native New Zealand toetoe (Cortaderia richardsonii) on the right, below, represents a frontier on this property, and a shift from the ornamental plants grown all the way up the slope, …..

….. because although there was still a sinuous stream of traditional perennials extending towards the ocean,……

….. which culminated in a bee-friendly planting of Fuller’s teasel (Dipsacum fullonum)

….. and annual opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) adjacent to……

……the paddock with the very noisy bull,…..

…… we had now arrived in Jill Simpson’s next gardening chapter. Here is where her love of plants meets her ecological sensibility. After buying this property two decades ago, the Simpsons protected about one-third of it via covenanting, and much of the native ‘bush’ on their property has regenerated since then. (The Simpsons are founder members of the Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust). But New Zealand natives are also beautiful garden plants (as the international horticultural community has discovered), so Jill has begun to use natives and cultivars of native plants in her designs here near the Pacific, like the brown New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) below.

But there are many pure natives here, like the totoe, below, with Chionochloa in front……

….. and the lovely cotton daisy (Celmisia spectabilis).

As I headed back towards the house along a track mown through meadows…

….. I gazed down at the ocean 150 metres (492 feet) below.  Though I didn’t ask the Simpsons, I imagine that the bay is a popular fishing location. The southeastern bays are known for blue cod, sea perch, tarakihi and trumpeter fish.

I’m not sure what fish this was, adorning the entrance to Jill’s hebe collection. Rockfish?

I passed Herbina, the corrugated cow resting in the meadow grasses. I read that although Richard Simpson has had a long relationship with dairy cattle on his farms, he and Jill now have a sharemilker on their other property near Christchurch. (Sharemilking is often used in New Zealand to provide income to farmers who have given up their herds, while providing an opportunity to younger farmers with cattle, but no land). And their young next-door neighbour and his wife manage this property for them, leaving them free to garden and pursue new opportunities, such as their recent purchase of the old (1907) Madeira Hotel in Akaroa.

It was time to enjoy the lovely lunch, set out on the various patios and decks.

I loved the bouquets that Jill had made…

….. from her abundance of flowers.

Look at this view from my lunch spot! That phormium is ‘Jester’, and beyond are astelias and native cabbage trees (Cordyline australis).

These alfresco lunches in the special gardens on the tour were a chance for us to relax and get to know one another better. And it was fun for my husband, Doug, left, to get to know “my” friends from the gardening world, like North Carolina’s Cyndy Cromwell and Denver Botanic Garden’s Panayoti Kelaidis.

Jill Simpson was sitting with us on the deck, and someone asked her how this all got started. Her answer was candid and interesting — including the direction she hopes to take integrating native plants here at Fishermans Bay.

With less than a half-hour remaining before we had to depart for Akaroa, I finished my lunch and rushed back out to this amazing garden to see what I might have missed. It was then that I heard the mellifluous song of the New Zealand bellbird (Anthornis melanura), and I had an idea. What if I retraced my steps through as much of the property as I could, filming the beautiful garden while the bellbird sang in the background. Could I do it?  Would the little yellow bird sing on cue? Have a listen and see what happened.

 

Ohinetahi – An Architectural Garden Masterpiece

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It was Day 15 of our American Horticultural Society “Gardens, Wine & Wilderness” tour of New Zealand and we had a wonderful day of garden visits ahead of us. We left our hotel in Christchurch early and drove south. As we came to the Port Hills, the view of   Lyttelton Harbour ahead was spectacular.  It would not be until I returned home and did some research that I would learn that we were actually on the rim of the collapsed Lyttelton Volcano, one of two shield volcanoes that make up the Banks Peninsula, the other being Akaroa (both active 11-8 million years ago). If you’ve read my blog on Yellowstone Park, you know how much I love volcanos, and this would be my third visit to one (Ngorngoro in Kenya was my first).  When Lyttelton’s southern volcanic rim eventually eroded, it was flooded by the sea, resulting in the pretty harbour we saw ahead of us.

Though the Māori have been in this area for hundreds of years, it was first seen by Europeans when Captain James Cook sailed past on February 17, 1770, giving the name Banks Island (for onboard botanist Joseph Banks, who featured in my Doubtful Sound blog) to the land along the curved shore, which appeared to his eyes separate from the mainland behind. It would later be renamed Banks Peninsula.  We would be visiting three gardens today, each occupying a scenic spot on the peninsula. Looking at the satellite map below (you can click to make it bigger), you’ll see that I’ve marked them as 1 (this garden), 2 and 3. You’ll also see my two earthquake notations (unrelated to the peninsula’s volcanic past). The one in the upper left shows the rough location of the Greendale-Rolleston Fault, a previously unknown slip-fault which caused the destructive September 3, 2010 earthquake.  That 7.1 magnitude quake, the strongest recorded in New Zealand was followed 5 months later by the deadlier 6.3 aftershock centred just west of Lyttelton, which killed 185 and injured more than 6,000 people in greater Christchurch. Both would have a direct impact on our first garden today and an indirect impact on our third garden in Akaroa.

We circled Lyttelton Harbour to our destination overlooking Governors Bay. It was the Māori Ngāi Tahu chief Manuhiri who called his pā (fortified village) overlooking this bay “Ōhinetahi” – The Place of One Daughter – in honour of his solitary daughter in a family of sons. And that became the name of this garden, now arguably Christchurch’s finest private garden.

We were met at the entrance by Ohinetahi’s principal gardener, Ross Booker, shown below at left, chatting with our tour guide, New Zealand born, Pennsylvania-based landscape architect Richard Lyon.

We walked through the gates and down the drive.

Perhaps if I’d seen this plan of the garden on our arrival, I would have had a better sense of how to approach exploring it in the short time we had. But I hadn’t yet grasped the formal, linear arrangement of the garden rooms on three levels….

….. nor paid attention to the intersecting axes I glimpsed soon after we entered. This was the peony garden, which of course was out of bloom in mid-summer. But what was the enticing glimpse of garden below this? In fact, that is the north-south axis that cuts through the various east-west garden rooms and leads directly to a suspension bridge  over the creek to arrive at a shady bush walk filled with New Zealand natives. But we’ll get there later.

At the bottom of the drive, we turned left to find ourselves gazing at a lovely house, below, whose walls were crafted of soft-peach sandstone block.This is where Sir Miles Warren lives, having retired in 1995 from a long architecture career that began in 1955 when he founded his own practice with the radical Dorset Street Flats, expanded it in 1958 with the formation of Warren and Mahoney with Maurice Mahoney, then spent almost four decades creating hundreds of buildings, including some of New Zealand’s most iconic, modernist structures. Those include College House – University of Canterbury (1966), the Christchurch Town Hall (1972), the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC (1975), the Christchurch Central Library, the Hotel Grand Chancellor (1986) and Clarendon Tower (1986) not to mention housing complexes, apartments and government buildings and airports in Wellington, Auckland and elsewhere. The firm became renowned for its concrete-based “Christhchurch School” style, combining Brutalism with contemporary Scandinavian and Japanese design principles. Sadly, several of those buildings were no match for the earthquakes that would devastate Christchurch in 2010-11, with many sustaining enough structural damage that they were ordered demolished.

Today, Warren and Mahoney Architecture is a 300-employee practice but its original co-founder – retired since 1995 – lives here in this Victorian house.  It was built by British-born naturalist-botanist-entomologist Thomas Potts between 1863-67 and looked like this on New Year’s Eve 1867, in a photo by Daniel Mundy. below. That’s native “cabbage tree” (Cordyline australis) in the foreground.

Potts would go on to plant a number of trees which still stand at Ohinetahi, but the extensive gardens he designed and maintained with the help of six gardeners were completely overgrown in 1977 when Miles Warren, his artist sister Pauline Trengrove and her husband, the late architect John Trengrove, found the property. It consisted of a ramshackle house with a leaking roof (they nicknamed the place Miss Haversham from Great Expectations), a lawn and the small orchard that is still on the site.  But they knew in ten minutes that they would buy it and hired two carpenters who worked for 18 months repairing it, while they came out on weekends to do the “donkey work”.  The garden would take a decade to shape, with Pauline the expert gardener and her brother and husband the designers. As Sir Miles said in one interview, “We were amateurs practising an art rather than having to be professional architects. We could do what we damn well liked and make our own mistakes.”  The garden became a place to escape their desks. In another interview, he recalled, “That period, we were both very busy professionally, so it was great relief, moving bricks and removing trees, fighting our way through the jungle and so on. It was an ideal contrast to the working week.” When Pauline and John moved away in the late 1980s to make another garden, he was left as Ohinetahi’s sole owner and resident designer.

Gardens have always been important to Sir Miles Warren, a passion not always shared by members of the profession. I love this photo of him, below, taken mid-career at his then-Christchurch house by Matt Arnold. That long pool is the epitome of modernism, softened with lots of lovely water plants.

As we set out, I spied the owner, now 89, walking across the lawn. “May I take your photo?” I asked. “Oh, I break cameras,” he replied with a chuckle, but gamely posed for me.

He was very lucky to be standing on his lawn, for his close escape from the 2010 earthquake came in the pre-dawn darkness of September 3rd when the four stone gables toppled onto the tin roofs, the rock falling through into the library where books and grandfather clock crashed to the floor.  As he came down from his bedroom searching for a flashlight, he had no idea of the damage around him.  Friends, family and former tradespeople helped empty the house and begin repairs, removing the stone third storey. stabilizing the walls with concrete and steel bracing and helping the house survive the much closer, more violent February 2011 aftershock. Sir Miles designed further changes to reinforce and strengthen the house. Today Ohinetahi remains a Category 1-listed heritage house – and, personally, I think the scale is much better without all that top-heavy stone.

All that toppled stone would be put to creative use, as with this reinforced folly and observation tower leading to a new waterfront “park” that I’ll show you later.

THE GARDENS

When Sir Miles, Pauline and John Trengrove began planning the garden at Ohinetahi, they did what many serious designers do: they visited famous gardens. Thus the Red Border of Hidcote Manor Gardens in England’s Cotswolds became inspiration for the lovely Red Garden here. But I think this one is even better (having seen Lawrence Johnston’s version some 25 years ago….) because of its intimacy,……

…… formality and smaller scale, which helps visitors understand how to accomplish a “colour garden” themselves.  That centrepiece, below, is a deconsecrated stone baptismal font. The red parterre hedge is barberry; the green is boxwood. And the silver pear (Pyrus salicifolia) adds just the right touch at right.

Plus…. if you know that my great passion is colour in garden design, you’ll know that I think complementary contrasting red-and-green is one of the best ways to bring the drama of that brilliant colour to a garden.

Four Burbank plum trees planted by a previous owner are still producing fruit, and act as the forecourt to Ohinetahi’s spectacular Herbaceous Border.

I loved that someone had placed this fallen plum on the statuary leading into the border.

Isn’t this border enchanting?  Sir Miles designed the airy, octagonal gazebo with its ogee roof and curved arches to match the Victorian trim on the house.

The summer combinations were stunning, like this sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) and Verbena bonariensis….

…. and this dark Teucrium hircanicum with a cranesbill (Geranium) and Japanese hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’).

…. and magenta summer phlox (Phlox paniculata) with agapanthus.

Bumble bees were happy foraging on the single red dahlias in the herbaceous border.

This is what the border looked like facing back to the house.

I went down into the Woodland Garden that runs along the edge of the property beneath mature trees, including oaks that are some 150 years old.. Here were native cabbage trees and tree ferns and a sculpture by Mark Whyte…..

….. and selections of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax)….

…. and traditional shade garden ornamentals such as hosta, hellebore and astrantia….

Climbing back up, I walked past a wall inscribed in Latin by Mark Whyte, Conditor horti felicitatis auctor: “Whoever plants a garden, plants happiness”.

At this end of the garden was a suspended metal globe by Neil Dawson titled Ferns. His large works also adorn downtown Christchurch.

Here’s a closer look at Ferns. Neil Dawson’s work was also featured in the blog I wrote about the Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island near Auckland.


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And I found one of the old trees planted by Thomas Potts, a hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii).

It was comforting to see a handsome, well-used compost bin behind one of the hedges. (Ross Booker: “Four months turnaround from hoe-to-go“.) Maintenance is crucial here; the hedges alone take three months to trim.  At the moment, all the work is done by Ross and one other full-time gardener.

The pleached Hornbeam Walk is also modelled on England’s Hidcote; at its cross-axis is a copy of the urn designed for Alexander Pope’s garden at Twickenham.

I walked back towards the Lawn which is all that remains of Thomas Potts’s original garden.  Looking to my right I saw the pretty pool house and the pool wall hidden by a pyracantha hedge.

But when I climbed up to the pool level, I could look back at the lawn and the perfectly balanced scene opposite….

….of two chartreuse ‘Frisia’ locusts (Robinia pseudoacacia) and a Luytens bench flanked by two shiny granite columns. Behind were precisely-clipped macrocarpa hedges (Cupressus macrocarpa).

I walked to the Suspension Bridge over the creek….

…. with its artfully-adorned bridgehouse.

Here I could see the stream below wending its way south to the ocean through New Zealand “bush”…..

…. including lacy tree ferns.

Suspended elegantly in the lush native bush under Thomas Potts’s five old oaks was a stainless steel sculpture by Auckland artist Virginia King titled “Heart of Oak”, below.  Commissioned by Sir Miles in 2014, the artist – who saw the garden in winter – describes it on her website. “The circular mandala  form alludes to the longevity of trees, to changing seasons and the cycle of life and  to ancient mythologies about Oak trees in Roman, Greek, Celtic, and Teutonic cultures.”

The cycle of life was certainly evoked naturally in this lichen-covered tree trunk.

I loved that the blue base of this woodland sculpture emerged from a clump of New Zealand blueberry or turutu (Dianella nigra) with fruit exactly the same azure hue.

Approaching the outlook to Governors Bay, there was another evocative sculpture, this one by Andrew Drummond.

With our departure time approaching, I made a quick stop in Ohinetahi’s little art gallery, featuring works by renowned New Zealand artists.

Adjacent is a newer gallery containing 3D models and photographs of Warren & Mahoney projects….

…… including many destroyed by the earthquakes.

Back at house level, the Rose Garden beckoned, with its 12 rectangular, boxwood-edged beds marked by topiary spirals and boxwood chess pieces…..

……and filled with white, yellow and apricot roses to match the house.

I loved the ebullient fuchsia at the house entrance, and was intrigued with the number woven into the trim. Thomas Potts’s sandstone walls were quarried at Charteris Bay across Lyttelton Harbour.

The rose garden’s central path was on an axis with the Reflecting Pool across the lawn, its edges adorned with eight Coade stone flowers.

Now there was just enough time to dash around the house and head up past the Doug Neil-carved Oamaru stones “Canyon Suite”…

….. and Andrew Drummond’s “Astrolabe”, below, to visit the newest addition to Ohinetahi, an adjacent .75-hectare (1.85 acres) property overlooking Governors Bay purchased in 2008 and christened “the park”.

There are masses of natives here, like leatherleaf sedge (Carex buchananii)…..

…..and Corokia cotoneaster sheared into wedges, below.  Originally part of the Potts property, the park features the oaks he planted a century-and-a-half ago.

Large-scale modern art commands the hillside……

…… including pieces like ‘Phase’ by Graham Bennett.

And the new amphitheatre overlooking the water is a place where visitors can relax in a spectacular setting atop a turf bench supported by some of the 140 tonnes of sandstone block that fell from Sir Miles’s roof into his library, that terrible night in September 2010.

In 2012, after setting up the Ohinetahi Charitable Trust (the trustees include his sister Pauline and a niece) to oversee the necessary maintenance, insurance costs and continued development of the property, Sir Miles Warren donated it to New Zealand.  As he said to a reporter at the time, “So many gardens are made in New Zealand and the owners become elderly and the grounds fall into disrepair. It would seem a pity to spend 35 years making something and then walking away and letting it fall apart.”

The bus was leaving and I had just enough time to make one last photograph.   The bust, of course, was familiar, but I had to look up the inscription. Firmitas, Utilitas et Venustas.  Coined by the Roman architect Vitruvius, it dates from the 1st century B.C and means “Strength, Utility and Beauty.” It’s an age-old tenet of architecture but it seemed to me it described this garden, as well as the man who is now a tenant here.

We were heading south on the Banks Peninsula to see two other gardens made by brilliant, obsessive gardeners. It would be a garden touring day like no other (and I’ve been on many tours). But as to this part of Canterbury, I will let Sir Miles Warren have the last word. Filmed in 2016, it relates to the city he loves, a city whose architectural heritage owes much to the work of Warren and Mahoney Architects, a city working to recover. Be sure to watch until the end, when he asks the question I would also put to you.  And the answer: “If you haven’t yet, why not?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh8YF5XluCw

The Garden at Akaunui

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Day 14 of our New Zealand tour took us out of Aoraki Mount Cook National Park and down onto the Canterbury Plains with its patchwork of agricultural fields. Here’s a bus window look at the descent.

In late morning we drove into Akaunui Farm Homestead in the countryside near Ashburton. As we walked down the long, hedge-lined driveway, we were greeted politely by the two family dogs.

The brick house was lovely, with its generous verandahs and covered balcony. Built in 1905 for Edward Grigg, a son of one of Canterbury’s pioneering colonial farmers, John Grigg, first president of the New Zealand Agricultural Society and a large-scale sheep and cropping farmer, it was originally part of the Grigg family’s massive Longbeach estate. But it has long been in the family of our host and hostess today, Di and Ian Mackenzie.

Di and Ian, below, share that farming pedigree with their predecessors.  Though their grown son now farms Akaunui’s 600 hectares (1500 acres) in vegetable and grain seed and sheep and dairy cattle, Ian has previously served as the national grain and seed chair of the Federated Farmers of New Zealand.

Di Mackenzie does all the gardening on a property whose landscape was designed originally by Alfred William Buxton (1872-1950). As the New Zealand government historical entry says, “Buxton’s landscape designs were typified by curved entrance drives, perimeter plantings of forest trees, water.…”  We saw that all here at Akaunui, the curved entrance drive and perimeter plantings of forest trees. ……

…… ….. a sinuous pond….

….. and a bog garden……

……with Gunnera manicata, among many other choice plants.

The pond curved around past Di’s vast collection of trees and shrubs, including bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) …..

…..and presented the most spectacular reflective view of the house.

There was a lovely tranquility about this pond, with its little rowboat.

I liked this combination, of a hybrid of native Phormium tenax with Verbena bonariensis.

Many of the specimen trees are very old, like this southern magnolia (M. grandiflora)…..

….. which was still putting out shimmering blossoms in mid-summer.

The lawns alone take Di Mackenzie 15 hours a week on her sitting mower, and clearly they had just been done before our arrival.

The beds around the house feature roses and perennials…..

…. and Di’s exquisite sense of colour is on display here, like this buff peach rose with Phygelius capensis.

There is a sweet parterre along an outbuilding wall.

Rain showers started as I made my way from the lovely swimming pool……

……(Canterbury’s summers can be hot and very dry)…..

…….. to the enclosed garden……..


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….with its espaliered apple allée  and stunning focal point.

Outside, there were pears…..

….. and peaches…..

…..and figs……

……and more apples.

Di’s vegetable garden produces an abundance of produce…..

……which she uses for family meals. What’s left over gets preserved for winter.

I loved this flower border, with its pretty white-and-blue theme including Ammi majus and love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena).

And I liked the way Di mixes perennials with roses, making the roses earn their keep instead of segregating them in a rose garden.

We were walked up to the newest part of the garden: the 4 hectare (10 acre) native-rich designed wetland. Paradoxically, when John Grigg bought his 32,000 acre estate here in 1864, the property was said to be mostly “impassable swamp”. But for Di and Ian, turning part of it back into a designed wetland with a meandering, marshy swale……

….. bordered by native flaxes (and also some colourful Phormium tenax cultivars, below)  and grasses…….

….. like Cortaderia richardsonii, a New Zealand cousin to pampas grass…….

…. and native hebe,below, with a foraging bumble bee,…….

…. offered more than an embrace of modern ecological sensibilities. There are also family golf matches in this area, where the water hazards are clearly abundant.

Perhaps the dog has been trained to retrieve lost balls? Or maybe he just likes a dip.

That bridge above, in fact, was where Ian Mackenzie showed us something he’s very proud of, something that for him seems to have made the return of the wetland all worth it. Have a look at these, below. They’re Canterbury mudfish (Neochanna burrowsius), an amphibious species that can survive long periods without water by burrowing into the mud. And they’ve been making a big comeback here at Akaunui.

We returned to the picnic tables via the previously overgrown woodland, which Di has started to clear in order to plant rhododendrons and lots of shade-loving plants.

We were offered a luscious home-cooked lunch with delicious beets and greens, courtesy of Di’s garden.  Oh, and the best rhubarb cake ever!

And there was a little wine (actually a lot of wine!)

As we made our departure from this beautiful farm, I stopped to watch the dogs’ tails move through a big field of something green. Looking closer, I realized it was another of the Mackenzie family businesses: radishes on their way to ripening seed.  I read later that New Zealand supplies almost 50% of the world’s hybrid radish, carrot and beet seed. Next time you slice a radish for a summer salad, consider for a moment that it might have started its journey in Ian & Di Mackenzie’s pretty field in Canterbury.