Tag Archives: farm

A Visit to Barewood Garden

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It’s a year since we did our New Zealand garden tour with the American Horticultural Society, and though I almost completed blogging about the beautiful gardens last winter, I didn’t quite finish before spring gardening began and more travel to Denver and Texas interrupted my focus. So today’s blog takes us back to the Marlborough region on the South Island. Pretend you just finished reading my last NZ blog, mosaic artist Josie Martin’s fabulous Giant’s House Garden at Akaroa, on the tip of the Banks Peninsula south of Christchurch.  Now we’re going to head north via an overnight in Christchurch into Marlborough’s Awatere Valley south of Blenheim to Joe and Carolyn Ferraby’s beautiful Barewood Garden Farm, their 690 hectare (1705 acre) property.  We gathered together at the bottom of a hill to watch a shepherd…..

….. guide his sheep dogs as they herded a large flock.

Then we went inside the shearing shed, where we watched the shepherd shear a big ewe……

….. after which the wool from this Merino cross…..

…. was heaped upon a table, where it would be braided and taken to auction.  Ten percent of the farm’s production is wool; the remainder is from lamb export sales.

I made a short video that shows the shepherd’s skill at herding the sheep and also shearing them. As Joe says in the video, the farm has a number of shearers who would normally do this work, leaving the shepherd to handle the flock outdoors.

Then it was time to see the garden. Alas, sometimes it’s necessary to visit beautiful gardens in brilliant midday sun, which creates very difficult light conditions and extreme contrast, so I didn’t do a lot of photography in Carolyn’s beautiful, colour-themed borders. (Added to which, I somehow had my new phone stuck on square format…..)  But let’s take a little tour anyway. In this climate, one of the best defences from the heat is a shady pergola, and this was a lovely one, wreathed in white roses.

It’s where Carolyn served us lemonade……

….. and a delicious cake with cherries from the garden. We were so lucky to dine and snack in most of the gardens on this fantastic tour.

I noticed that the garden featured lovely summerhouses and patios for lounging with a book ……

….. or al fresco dining……

….. or simply sitting in a kiwi-green chair to relax.

But it was time to leave the shade of the wrap-around verandah, where Carolyn’s background as a florist is in beautiful evidence……

….. and walk down the sunny lawn…..

…. where we found a long, cool allée, the hawthorn walk………

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…. and hedge-enclosed borders, which featured perennials and perfumed roses….

…. and tall, fragrant lilies.

There was a blue, yellow and white border. Oh, what I would have given to be there in early morning or on an overcast day to see all these treasures…..

…. like the azure agapanathus.

Speaking of agapanthus, Carolyn grew a paler variety overlooking the pond…..

…. and beside the fenced orchard….

…. where apples and peaches were ripening in mid-summer.  This fruitful part of the country, after all, is where most of New Zealand’s wine industry is located.

A cobble path led through the enclosed potager, which featured Tuscan kale……

…. and lavender, and lots of unusual edibles….

…. like New Zealand cranberries (Ugni molinae).

Beside the wall of the house was a pretty blue-and-purple garden, with cranesbills (Geranium ‘Rozanne’), plumbago and more agapanthus. You can see below what a difference a little shade makes in photography.

Then we had just enough time to greet Joe and Carolyn Ferraby outside their….

….little gift shop, where we shopped for souvenirs. Among the many lovely items, we found sheep-themed tea-towels and…..

….. bars of fragrant New Zealand floral soap.   Then it was time to say farewell, and head out on the road in Marlborough.

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.