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Chic and Sleek in Austin

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We visited all kinds of gardens in Texas during our May Bloggers’ Fling, but one stood out for its sophisticated, yet restrained, palette of plants; its geometric division of a relatively small property, making it seem much larger; its bold use of colour; and its functionality, featuring well-designed spaces for outdoor living while offering a sense of leafy enclosure and sanctuary.  That garden, in Austin’s Brentwood neighbourhood, belonged to the eponymous designer behind B. Jane Gardens. The sun was hot and the light was harsh for photography by the time we arrived, but I took note of the drought-tolerant plants in her front garden, including myriad succulents and desert species.

I loved seeing silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea) – a plant I’m familiar with in Toronto as a pricey trailer in containers of succulents – deployed as a groundcover with asparagus fern (Asparagus densiflorus ‘Sprengeri’) around whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia), a wonderful species and so popular here, we would see it in virtually every garden on tour. The bowl fountain in the background splashed gently, adding to the street appeal.

A small sign in the front garden acted as business card.

The limestone walk led to generously-proportioned steps leading to the gray house with a pretty orange front door…..

….. and a comfy turquoise glider with orange accents to match the door. I’m a big fan of turquoise-and-orange, and this garden would be a great illustration of that combo.

Heading around the house, the back garden’s prominent feature was a rectangular swimming pool overlooked by a dining alcove, outdoor kitchen….

…. and grill area, with wood stacked nearby for the fire pit in a far corner of the garden.

A grouping of planters arrayed against the walls of one of the poolside home offices added a splash of green (and basil for cooking). One very cool detail is the line of accent tile beneath the pool coping in shades of orange, peach, blue, turquoise and gray, picking up the house colour and hues used elsewhere in the garden.  Speaking of hues…. those floating beachballs in the perfect colours!  What a fun accessory!

Sometimes (especially on a busy tour like the Bloggers’ Fling, and particularly if I’m waiting for people to clear a scene), I focus on the small details and forget the big ones – like a wide angle shot of the back garden. So you’ll have to imagine that the lawn this blogger is crouching on formed a large rectangle beside the pool that is a welcome play area for the family’s two dogs.

And all along the lawn at the property line was this pretty raised planter, perfect for sitting, filled with Knockout roses and a privacy wall of bamboo

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…. under a flowering ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense).

At the far end of the swimming pool was a raised deck with chaise lounges, and accent tables in orange.  I love the inner wall here, not something many gardeners consider, but it can be effective for hiding mechanics (of swimming pools, for example) and creating a dramatic background for a feature.

Here’s the side view, showing the raised planter around the lawn and the very edge of the fire pit.

Is it any wonder that B. Jane’s garden is in the Summer 2018 issue of Garden Design magazine?  (Click here to subscribe to beautiful Garden Design, one of the generous sponsors of our Bloggers Flings.)

Moving around the house to exit the garden after a much-too-short visit, we came to the spa off the master bedroom. What a great privacy screen that bamboo makes.

One of the two family dogs dropped by to bid farewell…..

…. as I took in the succulent design on the table…..

…. and a cool collection of cacti. Note the way all the colours are chosen for that brilliant palette.

The Texas heat was rising as I passed the lovely outdoor shower with the tropical ipe wood floor, and I imagined how welcome this would be after a few hours of gardening.    But for now, it was time to bid farewell to this chic little Austin garden and head back to the bus.

Birds, Bling and Beguiling Brown

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Colleen Jamison has two gardens in the Highland Park area of Austin, Texas. There’s the one she tends around her home, which is lovely and full of intimate spaces and sweet decorative touches. Then there’s the one she shares with the street. Literally, with the street! In fact, it’s part of the street. During our May tour of Austin gardens during the Garden Bloggers Fling, we were treated to a stroll through this remarkable, leafy community space, which Colleen began designing years ago to disguise her view of a neighbour’s parked trucks through a neglected median strip which had become a messy, wild place where deer browsed. This is what it looked like on a (too) sunny morning in early May, as the emerging Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) tickled the legs of a variety of beautiful garden benches.

An allée of crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia) created shade at one end; they would be full of blossoms later in the season. At the other end was a retama allée (Parkinsonia aculeata). A crushed stone path wends its way down the centre, and small solar lights create ambiance after dark. It is one of the most generous gestures I’ve seen, and quite remarkable in a world where neighbours tend to get out of their cars, unlock their front doors, then close them on the outside world.  When I asked Colleen if she’d had any trouble with city bylaws, she replied: “The city has had a ton of chances to complain, but not one peep from them.  In fact, they seem to appreciate it!”

Imagine taking your breakfast coffee and the newspaper and sitting here as the wind blows through the leaves.  Colleen tells me that there hasn’t been any theft through the years, but someone, likely kids, spray-painted the cushions once.

The garden is accessible to both sides of the street.  Says Colleen: “The neighbors do use it a lot!  Parents walking their kids to school, runners, and folks walking around the neighborhood mostly.”

(Alas, the sun was shining brightly when I was there and created difficult shadows for photography. Pam Penick has done a very informative blog on Colleen’s street median garden, photographed in much kinder light, which I certainly can’t improve on. Have a read.”

Let’s start at the front of the house, where a pretty verandah is the perfect place to sit. And what I loved was the colour scheme, which is quite uniform for the upholstered pieces throughout the garden. Since I’m a big fan of red, I was entranced with how beautifully it plays with the rich brown woodwork everywhere.  And I always say that a painted front door is one of the easiest ways to add sex appeal to a house facade and enhance a front garden colour scheme.

It was on their verandah that I photographed Colleen Jamison, a retired executive and now garden designer, and her husband Bruce Baldwin, whose creative carpentry is on display throughout the garden.

The understated browns and reds even play a role in the scheme of this lovely window box.

Bruce turned a former door into the gate into the back garden….

….. and transformed garden tools into the gate handles.

There was a busy bird-feeding station in the side yard and I loved that this blue jay posed beside Colleen’s garden sign. “Everybirdy, maybe, but ME in particular!”

I liked how Bruce designed these shadow boxes for the fence, which Colleen planted up with white pots and crockery.

And here was the first of a few frogs in the garden, in an eternal yoga pose…..

…. while this one seemed ‘stumped’ about something.

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The lizard was just happy to be there, gazing at Colleen’s bling.

The back garden patio and vine-wreathed pergola continued the lovely red-and-brown scheme of the front porch – even the candles are red!

And I’ve seen lots of bottle trees, but this kind of ‘bottle tree’ makes a lot more sense to me…. Bottoms up!

There was a splashing stone water feature surrounded by Salvia greggii – and what a fun idea, to mount a pretty plate in the foliage.

The back of the house was planted with roses and vines and featured….

….. a protected alcove with a comfy chaise lounge, all in red-and-brown. And yes, that’s red bougainvillea in the pot.

But it’s not red-and-brown everywhere. I love a purple pop in the garden, and this little painted metal bench fits the bill perfectly. (In fact this photo made me realize that I want a small metal bench like this in my own urban prairie garden, for those times when I get tired standing on the flagstone path to weed and water.)

And Colleen had blue on her mind with this lovely gathering of deck containers.

A wooden box planter with an ingenious steel rod trellis featured tomatoes. And bling, of course.

Speaking of bling, I’m going to finish this blog with a look at a few of Colleen’s pretty little suncatcher flourishes.  Because a garden is more than its plants and its hardscape and its four-season stucture, it’s also a place to let your personality shine through, whether in sophisticated pearls…..

….. or faux aquamarine…..

….. or all the jewel colours of the rainbow.

Texas Rhapsody in Blue

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After getting to know Pam Penick during previous Garden Bloggers’ Flings, it was fun to visit her Austin, Texas garden in early May when bloggers from that lovely city who had hosted the very first fling in 2008 celebrated by hosting another 10 years later. Pam, a long-time blogger and author whose work can be seen in Garden Design magazine and other publications, was the one who had the idea for that first fling and organized it along with three other bloggers, including Diana Kirby (whose lovely garden was essentially rained out the previous day).  We got out in a pretty neighbourhood and walked under the multi-stemmed Texas live oaks (Quercus fusiformis) in her front garden.

Let’s move a little closer to the house, past the raised bed….

….. that holds a lovely ‘Green Goblet agave and beautiful blue, ceramic spheres.  Blue, as you’ll see when you finish this blog and scan the photos, is a favourite colour of Pam’s, and she does it well.

There is no front lawn here, just gravel mulch and fabulous, minimalist containers of succulents and generously-proportioned, poured concrete slabs leading to the front door.  It’s not surprising that Pam wrote two books that are illustrated so well in her garden. The first on conserving water is titled The Water Saving Garden:  How to Grow a Gorgeous Garden with a Lot Less Water (2016). The other is Lawn Gone: Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard (2013).

I liked this little garage wall planter with its Buddha reposing amidst cacti and succulents.

Sticks on fire (Euphorbia tirucallii) from South Africa makes a great container subject.

Pam is on hand to answer questions about her garden and plant choices, about which she has said: “I enjoy growing plants native to central Texas, supplemented by well-adapted and drought-tolerant non-natives, many from northern Mexico.  Mixing it up with architectural agaves and colorful salvias, feathery ornamental grasses and golden yuccas, I’m striving for a garden with four-season interest and cat-like tendencies—meaning it doesn’t need my attention every single day. I like to play and relax in the garden, not just tend to it.”

A long border softens space between the Penicks’ house and the neighbour’s driveway.

At the end of the border is a dramatic arrangement of dark-leaved dyckias with an heartful metal heart.

This is a beautiful combination, whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) and  Salvia greggii…..

…. and behind it, a perfect little vignette in a galvanized trough.

Pam’s love of blue is certainly on display in this sitting area just outside the house door….

…. including a little blue bird in a blue dish with succulents.

Like the walls of any indoor dining room, Pam’s house wall gets the outdoor dining decorative treatment, too.

I do a lot of photography of colour in plant design, but people often forget that a spray can or a gallon of stain can be their best friend when wanting to inject colour in the garden, as with this fun perforated table and its blue and green accessories.

The property descends in the back quite steeply towards a greenbelt, so the deck has container-laden stairs leading up from ground level.

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I’m willing to bet these vintage metal lawn chairs didn’t start out this colour, but met Pam’s clear love of all things blue!

Another Agave ovatifolia, with the small yellow flowers of hesperaloe and the reflections of the sky in a green gazing globe. The deer are so fond of “antlering” the hesperaloes and agaves that Pam surrounds them with black wire fencing from autumn until early spring.

There aren’t many colours here, just the cool blues of the pots and the myriad greens of the variegated yucca, Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) and other plants.

At the bottom level of the garden is a swimming pool (sorry about the harsh light but we definitely preferred the sun to the previous day’s rain torrents)….

….. with a fun focal point.

A poolside Adirondack chair sports just the right colour of cushion.

Pam has a great fondness for galvanized stock tanks and troughs that she buys at farm supply stores. They add sophisticated lines and a unity of colour that looks great with all her greens and blues. I loved this simple row of pail planters.

And this is the mother of all stock tanks! With lovely aquatic plants.

If I was building a water feature to replace the labour-intensive, in-ground lily pond I already have, I’d create a simple fountain like the one below. Just enough water splash to create a little music in the garden.

No southern garden is complete without a bottle tree, and Pam’s unsurprisingly is blue!

And of course, of Pam’s collection of ornamental sages, blue Salvia guaranitica strikes just the right colour note.

It was time to head on to the next garden and I returned to the front via the sloping, gravel path on the other side of Pam’s house.

What could have been a blank, uninteresting garage wall along this path had been turned into something quite special with the addition of four trellised mirrors that reflected back sunlight and the greens of foliage.

Even here, there was a spot to sit and enjoy a moment of quiet. The light also reflected from the mirrored globes in the basket…..

….. and above my head, I caught sight of myself in yet another mirror, standing under those Texas live oaks, pointing my camera up at a final image in Pam Penick’s lovely Austin garden garden.

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.

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