Tag Archives: bed and breakfast

A South Island Farewell at Upton Oaks

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Having travelled through the gardens of New Zealand’s North Island for 6 days, followed by 11 days on the South Island, we were about to visit our last South Island garden before taking the inter-island ferry from Picton to Wellington for our final 3 days. After the morning spent at Marlborough’s Barewood Garden followed by Paripuma on the shores of Cook Strait, we pulled up to a welcoming sign that gave a hint at the formal bones of this garden in the village of Rapaura just northwest of Blenheim……

….. and peeked over the fence at a charming 1911 house framed by foliage.

Owner Sue Monahan was waiting to greet us all and explain a little about her garden, which she has designed as a series of hedge-enclosed ‘rooms’,…..

….. then we were free to wander. I walked in front of the house, with its ‘Burgundy Iceberg’ roses and Auratum lilies wafting perfume….

…..near the welcoming front veranda.

Nearby was the first section of Sue’s formal garden where we walked among four hedged parterres…..

…… each segmented into either square or diamond patterns. (As with all our Marlborough gardens on this day, the bright sun created too much contrast for good photography, but I tried my best.)

Sue had organized the sections loosely by colour, including reds….

….. and whites. I like this mid-summer (January in New Zealand) combination of dahlia and phlox.

Sue used loads of dahlias in lovely colours in these beds….

…. and the singles were attracting bees.

Dahlias are such good workhorses when they’re grown well, and Sue had paired this luscious deep-pink…..

….. with thalictrum, one of the best see-through plants.

Adding its own purple punch was cardoon (Cynara cardunculus).

The adjacent garden room featured lawn and four flower beds with a central formal pool.  The shade beds contained hydrangeas and agapanthus….

…. and the circular pool featured water lilies and a fountain.

I loved this impressive spiral topiary.


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It was a hot afternoon, and Sue had set chairs out in the shade.

I could only imagine how welcoming this swimming pool would be in New Zealand’s warm summers…..

….. or the hammocks hanging in the leafy shade of the olive grove.

There was even a dovecote with a flock of white pigeons!

At the back of the property was a lovely little garden…..

….. that belonged to Upton Oak’s guest cottage……

…….named Laurella, after the Monahans’ daughters. There is a wonderful story about how this cottage, which can be rented as a Bed-and-Breakfast with a minimum 2-night stay, came to be moved to Upton Oaks, where Dave Monahan, a well-known woodworker, refurbished it.

This is the wedding gazebo in front of Laurella….

…. and when we were there, Dave was building a new cottage on the site….

…. which will complement Laurella.

On the way to the dining terrace for lunch, I walked through a little orchard and passed a brick wall espaliered with fruit trees.

Nearby was a potager bursting with edibles.

Before sitting down to lunch, I visited the washroom, where Sue had made a lovely bouquet of flowers from her abundant garden.

Then it was time to find a seat on the terrace…..

….. and enjoy our catered lunch. It reminded me that we had been so privileged to dine al fresco in some of the most outstanding gardens in New Zealand during our tour thus far – a great testament to our NZ-born, Pennsylvania-based tour leader Richard Lyon’s expansive network of gardeners.

We bade farewell to Sue and Dave Monahan…….

……then proceeded towards the little town of Picton and the Interislander ferry terminal for our afternoon sail to Wellington and the North Island.

A Grand Vision at Paripuma

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Cloudy Bay.  If you’re a wine-lover, that name calls up a memory of one of the finest vintages of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, a label we all wished we could afford, back in the early 1990s, when the world was discovering the allure of the green-skinned Bordeaux grape that the Kiwis grew and bottled to perfection in the Marlborough Region at the tip of the South Island. We drank our Kim Crawford and Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blancs, yes, but really wished we were sipping a glass of premium Cloudy Bay.  So the only disappointment my wine-collecting husband felt in our entire NZ garden tour was at NOT stopping for a tasting at Cloudy Bay Wines on our way through Marlborough. We certainly saw our share of vineyards in the region, en route to and from our stay in the Marlborough Vintners Hotel, some draped with netting to prevent bird damage…..

…… some newly planted…..

…… and some growing in their verdant, geometric patterns up the hillsides.

But Cloudy Bay is also a place on the map, and our destination this morning following our first stop at Barewood Garden was a spectacular property on the shore of the bay that Captain James Cook first named in English in 1770 for the cloudiness of its water, a result of the constant churning of the waves over the stony soil washed into what became known as Cook Strait, between the North and South Islands.  Cloudy Bay is now called by its Māori name, Te Koko-o-Kupe/Cloudy Bay, and we were about to visit award-winning Paripuma, a remarkable native plant garden on its shores.

We gathered in a courtyard behind a whitewashed house with simple lines…..

…. and listened to the owner and garden designer, Rosa Davison, talk a little about the property’s history and her own. Having grown up on a farm in the Waihopai Valley in a family that came to the region in the 1840s, she was drawn to the coast near the Marlborough Sounds where she’d spent idyllic childhood vacations.   Two decades ago, she and her husband Michael bought the property less than a half-hour south of Blenheim and moved there with three teenagers. Rosa called it Paripuma (Māori for “white cliffs’) for the famous bluffs nearby, and proceeded to plan her garden on barren paddock that ran to the sea.

We walked through the house onto the pergola terrace enclosed in vines….

…..and sheltered from the sun by gauzy, white shade canopies using dowels hooked to slide-wires. I loved this idea.

There were shells that told the story of life at the seashore: spiny murex, ostrich foot shell, starfish and others.

Seen from the bottom of the stairs leading to the garden, there is a simplicity and pleasing geometric balance to the house framed by the enclosing beds of native shrubs and trees, and a lushness to the palette of green and white.

Rosa had set up “before” photos of the property, and they added to the drama of what we were about to see. This celebratory picnic in 1999 (I love the carpet) heralded the beginning of her creative journey….

…and what stretched out before us with Cook Strait in the distance was its spectacular culmination.  It was as if André LeNôtre’s little bosquets at Versailles had drifted gently down onto this beachfront property under the Antipodean sun. But here at Paripuma, the formal placement of the gardens flanking the 300-metre (980-foot) central allée fulfills a rigorous ecological imperative: to grow a fairly restricted roster of native shrubs and small trees in order to encourage and sustain native wildlife. And though LeNôtre had gardeners to plant his bosques, Rosa Davison planted everything here herself.

The Google satellite view below shows how the garden’s formal central axis almost parallels the shore of Cook Strait, rather than approaching it on the perpendicular, as I’d imagined it had.

I made the decision to turn right to see some of Rosa’s small, enclosed gardens en route to the beach, so I could later approach the house via the big garden.  With a view of the Pacific Ocean in the distance, I walked under tree boughs…..

….. into a formal potager overflowing with leafy vegetables, squash, onions, herbs and berries.

Turning towards the sound of the ocean, I walked through a flower garden filled with familiar perennials – all good pollinator plants in my own meadows and grown here to attract monarch butterflies, which arrived naturally in New Zealand in the 1870s and are thus considered native.

Before long, I was standing at the water’s edge, gazing towards those cliffs that inspired the garden’s name, and the crashing waves that inspired Captain Cook to call it Cloudy Bay.  That’s all still South Island in the distance, with the Tasman Sea out of sight behind.
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But gazing the other way, I looked straight out toward the Pacific Ocean.

Looking down at my feet, I saw the smooth, wave-tumbled rocks that give a “shingle beach” its name. Shingles can range from fairly large cobbles to small stones, and are usually a mélange of different types of rocks.

As I looked back over the shore plants towards the house, it was difficult to imagine how barren this was just two decades ago.

Rosa is also planting natives between the garden and the shore, like this young kākābeak (Clianthus puniceus). And though she welcomes all animals into the garden, including rabbits, young plants are protected with sleeves to give them a fair head start.

Then it was time to explore the main garden.

Mown paths guide visitors between the various beds and invite close inspection of the natives, like the tall harakeke or New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) and carex species.

A few New Zealand Christmas trees or pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) were still in flower.

And of course there was native hebe or koromiko (H. salicifolia), among many other plants in the various beds, including ngaio (Myoporum laetum), ake ake (Dodonaea viscosa), puka (Meryta sinclairii), coprosmas, cabbage trees or tī kōuka  (Cordyline australis), Nikau palms (Rhopalostylis sapida) and wire vine (Muehlenbeckia sp.)    She also grows the extremely rare, critically endangered Three Kings Kaikomako (Pennantia baylisiana), which I was able to see the next day at Otari-Wilton’s Bush Native Garden in Wellington.

I came to a small pond surrounded by plants…..

….. with a charming sign that describes its seasonal habitation by one of the many wildlife species that have made Rosa’s garden their own. With all the frogs in the pond, I can only imagine the night music at Paripuma.

Circling the pond, I came to the perfect little dock with one perfect little chair – and only wished we had more time so I could sit here for a moment to take it all in. Notice the view lines right across the central allée to the far side.

Wandering back toward the central path, I took a closer look at the big garden’s simple focal point, set in a small bed of poor knight’s lily (Xeronema callistemon) that had already flowered.

It is an antique whale pot once used at nearby Port Underwood for rendering down whale oil during New Zealand’s notorious whaling era. When the pots were in active use, mostly in the 19th century (including American and Australian whalers), the nation saw its native whales – especially southern rights, humpbacks, sperms – hunted to near decimation. In the years 1911-1964, not far from Paripuma on a headland in the Marlborough Sounds that flows into Cook Strait, 4200 whales were caught at one shore station alone, including the last whale ever killed in the country. Since 1978, whales in New Zealand’s 200-mile offshore waters have been protected under the Marine Mammals Protection Act. As a wildlife-lover and conservationist who supports the New Zealand Whale and Dolphin Trust, Rosa Davison’s whale pot is an evocative and stark reminder of those days, and of the threat that international whaling continues to pose to the country’s whales outside its protective waters.

I headed back up the stairs to the house, taking another look at a photo of Paripuma before the garden was made.

And then I gazed out over this truly amazing landscape once more. New Zealand’s Gardens Trust has named Paripuma a 5-star Garden of National Significance, but it is more than that. It is one woman’s vision fully realized: planned, designed, planted and opened for visitors to explore,  and enjoy.

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Planning a trip to New Zealand? There could be no better way to enjoy the scenery and wines of Marlborough than to return ‘home’ each night to one of the region’s most beautiful gardens. Paripuma is available to rent as a bed-and-breakfast, with varying rates based on the accommodation chosen. If we ever get back to Cloudy Bay to taste our favourite Sauvignon Blanc, staying here would be the first order of business.

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.