The Future of New Zealand Gardens

Our travels around New Zealand from January through May of 2006 showed us that the influences from the islands' British past are still much in evidence. However, as in Canada and the US, there are increasing signs of the emergence of a unique gardening identity that embraces the local climate, conditions, culture, and plants.

Young landscape architects are selecting from this rich heritage, and many are blending both European and American influences into their work again, while remaining sensitive to native ecological issues.

A recent (May 2006) issue of New Zealand's Next magazine profiled a number of young students, graduates, and a lecturer from the landscape architecture program at Unitec, a polytechnic in Auckland. Snippets from their interviews provide an insight into the scope of New Zealand gardening today:

Debbie Upton (graduate) "It's the social implications that excite me. I visited gardens in Europe before doing my degree. Now I wish I could return to look at all the public spaces."

Nicky Treadwell (lecturer) "We look at spatial design, the boundary between architecture and the environment. It's as much about people as the environment--the spaces where people live their lives...I guess it comes from the 1950s California ethic of inside/outside living."

Rachel Potter (student) "I see it as part of a green network of parks and reserves...it's a great place to teach people about ecological systems."

Heidi Monks "There's something that's urging her on...she calls it 'the interconnectivity of everything' and it underpins all her design work..."

Michael Cassidy (graduate) "He sees...enough wide-open space to swallow thousands of people without pressure. A place to rescue and rehabilitate local plants and wildlife."

I have no doubt that the benign climate and plant diversity of New Zealand will continue to nurture generations of both professional and amateur gardeners. While there will probably always be beautiful, traditional gardens like Maple Glen on the South Island, pictured below, where the English country garden seems to live on (albeit with the tropical touch of free-flying parrots!), there will also, increasingly, be contemporary, subtropical and urban gardens to fulfill the needs and dreams of New Zealand's cultural mix.

Certainly the beautiful Hamilton Gardens represents the wealth of influences available to New Zealand gardeners.

I look forward to seeing evidence of new and traditional influences on my next visit to this wonderful country where even their garden art reflects their sense of humour!

Native Plant Use in NZ Gardens

Resources:
"Gardens of the 1920s and 1930s," L. Beaumont, A History of the Garden in New Zealand, Ed. M. Bradbury, Viking 1995; Fernglen: The Muriel Fisher Story, Fisher & Forde, David Bateman Pub. 2005; New Zealand Gardener, October 1999; Footprints, Department of Conservation newsletter, Nov 2005.

As with other British colonies, the 20th century saw the gradual separation of New Zealand from England. As the children of the first colonists grew up and had children of their own, a unique Kiwi identity increasingly developed.

During the Depression era of the 1930's, the New Zealand school curriculum included gardening so that young New Zealanders could learn about vegetable production and plant propagation. Most of these school gardens included a 'native corner' and "some, following the advice of Leonard Cockayne, a New Zealand botanist of international repute, planted predominantly native species that reflected the original flora of their locality" (Beaumont p. 139). Cockayne was a strong proponent of building 'love of country' via exposure to natural surroundings. In his 1934 publication The Cultivation of New Zealand Plants, he wrote: "By far the most receptive period of life is the school days. To be brought up under beautiful healthy surroundings is assuredly of immense importance in the evolution of a citizen..." (in Beaumont p. 139).

While many of the NZ suburban and corporate landscapes of the twentieth century mimicked the trends and styles of Europe and even the Americas over the years, a small contingent continued to champion the protection and use of native New Zealand vegetation. One such champion was Bill Fisher, original creator of Fernglen, a native plant garden now surrounded by suburbs just north of the city of Auckland.

Fernglen, named after the family home in England, was purchased by the Fisher family in 1888 and consisted of 9 acres of native bush and scrubland. Although the scrubland was cleared for grazing, the native bush was retained and interplanted with more native species. The current garden includes about a 1/2 acre under cultivation, accessed by well-maintained walking paths. The garden at Fernglen, now owned by the Birkenhead City Council, is used for public education and is open to the public. Muriel Fisher, Bill's wife, now in her 90's, and her son Malcolm, still live on the property and assist in both the garden maintenance and the public education programs. We were very fortunate to meet Muriel and Malcolm, and view a video about the creation and importance of Fernglen, as well as tour the garden. As well, I purchased a recently-published book about Muriel's life as a botanist throughout the twentieth century, Fernglen: The Muriel Fisher Story (Fisher & Forde, 2005). The garden is a wonderland of native vegetation and birdlife, and is well worth a visit. Below are some photos taken there in April, 2006.


A protege of the Fishers is NZ landscape architect Nev Arbury, who has landscaped his cottage at Mangawhai Heads in NZ's Northland entirely with native plants. I visited Nev at his cottage and admired his clever use of natives to provide privacy while maintaining his spectacular viewpoint over the ocean. The cottage's hilltop location, exposed site, and only intermittent maintenance (no summer watering) provide many challenges for plants, but the natives have fared far better than more traditional neighbouring plantings. Nev's enthusiasm for and vast knowledge about New Zealand native plants was admirable and most enjoyable. His determination to provide a model for other homeowners, an oasis for migratory birds, and a protected site for endangered plant species is an inspiration. The creation of this garden is chronicled in Appendix V of Muriel Fisher's book.



Another NZ couple who deserve accolades as native plant champions are Arnold and Ruth Dench, of Wellington, NZ. On a mere 1/5 of a steeply rolling acre just east of the Ngauranga Gorge, Arnold and Ruth have created an intensively planted botanical garden of mainly NZ alpine plants. Despite its tiny size, it took us two whole afternoons to tour this complex garden while enjoying Arnold's many fascinating anecdotes. This now elderly couple, also very active in the NZ Alpine Society, have laboured for almost 50 years to establish a multitude of rare and endangered alpine species here. It is daunting to imagine anyone taking it over when they are no longer able to care for it, and I feel especially lucky to have had the opportunity to see it while they are still there. The Denches garden is described in Appendix IV of the book by Muriel Fisher.


The Denches were also kind enough to arrange a special guide for us to the Otari-Wilton's Bush Native Botanic Garden and Forest Reserve, also just outside of Wellington. Olaf, who has been involved with the garden for decades, provided us with an almost overwhelming wealth of information as he walked us briskly through the extensive forest gardens, into the new rock garden and over the new skywalk above the treetops. Alongside the naturally vegetated areas, showier display areas at Otari are designed to show homeowners how natives can be used in residential landscapes. The new flax and cordyline cultivars are astonishing--I wonder how long it will be before they reach North American markets!


Currently, the native plant movement in New Zealand is gathering momentum. As in Canada and the US, where 'the new American garden' celebrates the use of North American natives, New Zealanders are increasingly encouraged to use native plants in order to save water, reduce pesticide and herbicide use, protect the local ecology, and preserve endangered species. National gardening magazines such as New Zealand Gardener frequently feature native plant gardens; books such as Plant Me Instead, a publication by the Department of Conservation that "steers gardeners away from the more than 70 invasive plants that could escape and threaten native flora and encourages them to plant native and non weedy exotics instead" (DOC newsletter, Nov 2005, p.1) are readily available. New Zealanders are learning anew to appreciate their native habitat, and designing gardens to echo them.

Near Waikenae, an hour north of Wellington, we visited the front garden of Maggie Smith, where beach-gathered pumice replaces stones in a rock garden featuring almost all native plants, a low maintenance and beautiful alternative to high-maintenance lawn in an often dry area.

As well, there are more and more subtropical plant nurseries, especially in the warmer far north regions, specializing in unique and unusual subtropicals, including proteas and bromeliads. Near the small town of Matakana, for example, there are at least four such specialty nurseries, which seem to be doing a thriving trade. New Zealanders are recognizing the value of their clear, bright light and warm climate, and beginning to favour a more indigenous look for their gardens, moving further away from the British pastel herbaceous border tradition.


However, as in North America, the 'native nazis' can also be found in New Zealand. While we were in Auckland, a public debate raged in the local newspapers about the city council's decision to cut down Queen Street's historic, healthy liquidambars in favour of native replacements. The uproar that this decision generated brought the native plant movement to the public forum, with some charging that natives were always preferable to exotics, and others just as loudly proclaiming that New Zealand's European heritage was also worth preserving. Emotions ran high and both sides published heated pieces for several weeks. More than 180 people emailed or faxed the newspaper in protest of the plan to chop the trees (New Zealand Herald). In the end, the decision was made to retain the Queen Street liquidambars and even to plant more. In other city locations, however, London plane trees, yellow poplars, claret ashes and liquidambars were to be replaced with native Nikau palms, southern rata and cabbage trees.

As well, we visited one nurserywoman who was quite hostile to the native plant movement. She had spent her career building up her family's alpine plant import business, and feared that an overemphasis on native plants would mean the demise of the exotic plant trade in New Zealand, putting small import nurseries such as her own out of business. While we certainly didn't detect any shortage of traditional gardens in New Zealand during our stay, this businesswoman had experienced a steady decline in her sales as the native plant trend increased. It seems that the native plant movement in New Zealand has its challenges still, on both sides of this trend!

Edwardian Garden Style

Resources:
"Early 20th century gardens" (Katherine Raine, in The History of the Garden in NZ, Ed. Matthew Bradbury; Viking, 1995)
"Towards a Modern Garden" (Paul Walker, in The History of the Garden in NZ, Ed. Matthew Bradbury; Viking, 1995)
Cultivating Myths: Fiction, Fact, and Fashion in Garden History (Helen Leach, Godwit, 2000)
New Zealand Town and Country Gardens (Julian Matthews and Gil Hanly, David Bateman, 1993).

The New Zealand garden in Edwardian times "mirrored the affluence and optimism of those 'golden years'" (Raine 113). New Zealand had progressed to nationhood, and was no longer simply a British colony. New Zealanders were beginning to develop a sense of national identity based on the riches of their adopted land. Nevertheless, they were still closely tied to the motherland, and the debates about garden style there had repercussions in the Southern Hemisphere. As Raine points out, "these long-ago British gardens are the source of much of the ideas of beauty we are still re-creating all over New Zealand" (Raine 114).

In England, the debate raged between the formalist and the naturalistic philosophies, and spilled into gardening from other fields of aesthetics, where the Arts and Crafts movement arose in rejection of the loss of uniqueness and beauty associated with the industrial revolution. Likewise in gardening, the formalists, led by Reginald Blomfield, maintained that the classical elements of form and line must be sustained for true beauty; in the other camp, William Robinson enthused about a naturalistic effect (although NZ anthropologist Helen Leach concludes from her intensive research that Robinson's wilderness was not, as is often believed, a return to native habitat; rather, Robinson believed in "placing plants of other countries, as hardy as our hardiest wild flowers, in places where they will flourish without further care or cost" 102). The working partnership of architect Edward Lutyens and artist-gardener Gertrude Jekyll helped to bring the two camps together, with Lutyens' geometric garden layouts softened by Jekyll's abundant plantings.

In New Zealand, some wealthy landowners scrapped their unpretentious cottage gardens in favour of the dictates of formalism. One garden in Dunedin, at the turn of the century, boasted "geometrical terracing and a grand river-rock staircase leading down through plantations of rhododendrons and other choice exotics, to a lawn, summerhouse and pool enclosed with tree ferns" (Raine 115). There were those, however, who heeded Robinson's call for naturalism.

Raine suggests that "one of the most profound changes in New Zealand gardenening in the early 1900's was the shift in approach towards a more natural disposition of features and a desire to conserve and enhance the character of the site" (119). David Tannock, then Supervisor of the Dunedin Botanic Garden, advised against many popular Victorian garden practices in his 1914 Manual of Gardening in New Zealand, including levelling and terracing the landscape, island beds cut into lawns, and parterres edged with box and filled with gravel, saying instead that "when deciding on the position of a new house due consideration should be given to all natural features, and no bush or tree of a suitable kind should be removed without a reason...banks and terraces are better formed into rock gardens...a hollow will provide a suitable site for a water or bog garden, and if there is a stream or creek some fine effects can be obtained" (in Raine 120).

Indeed, the relatively low cost and availability of land meant that middle class New Zealanders had large tracts to landscape, and many extensive gardens were carved out of cleared paddocks over the years. As on English estates, "no longer was the conventional middle-class garden simply green walls with a colourful carpet and specimen plant 'furnishings' dotted about. Under the influence of arts and crafts design, the spaces within the garden were subdivided and became more complex. Passageways and arches often linked a series of enclosures and led to garden buildings such as tea houses, arbours, and ferneries" (Raine 121). The flavour of pioneering New Zealand was, however, still observable in the rustic style of most garden structures: "fieldstone edgings for paths and raised beds; bridges, seats and arches made of rough branches; trellis fences, panels, and frames, and--the ultimate in vernacular building with materials at hand--whalebone pillars" (Raine 121).

The other factor affecting New Zealand gardens of this time was the increasing availability of plants from all over the world. New Zealanders enthusisatically adopted Jekyll's immense herbaceous borders, and, as Raine comments, "it could well be asserted that the real reason the border has gained in popularity as a garden feature here...is because so many New Zealanders continue to garden out of a true love of plants" (124). Emily Marshall-White, the "Suffolk lady" profiled in a previous posting, is a good example of a New Zealand gardener whose gardens throughout her lifetime show the slow change from Victorian formalism through a more naturalistic approach, and whose deep love of plants from all over the world sustained her gardening efforts into her nineties.

As the twentieth century limped through two World Wars, and into an age of modernism, New Zealander gardeners tended to remain traditional. Paul Walker, writing of the 1940's, comments that "even when Massey [an Auckland architect of the time] contrived his houses in an apparently modern style, his garden designs featured axial arrangements, raised or sunken areas with fountains and shrub and flower borders, pergolas, pavilions and stone-paved terraces that were derived from the traditions of Gertrude Jekyll and Edward Lutyens rather than anything contemporary" (155). Allegiance to England continued to be in evidence, in the 'coronation collection' and the 'crown jewel collection' offered by a Kiwi nursery in 1953, and in a series of articles run in the Home and Building magazine by Alfred Cole, 'the Royal Gardener.' Minor forays into modernism, such as the articles by Odo Strewe, an immigrant to New Zealand from Germany, and a modernist architect, were short-lived and largely ignored by the gardening public.

Two New Zealand gardens of Edwardian vintage that remain are both near Dunedin, in NZ's South Island. Larnach Castle's current gardens, although dating only from 1967, respect the castle's original formal garden layout from the castle's building date of 1871, including features such as a marble fountain from Pisa, a topiary knave and duchess from Alice in Wonderland, a petanque court, and a laburnum pergola.


At the other end of the Edwardian spectrum, nearby Glenfalloch Woodland Gardens retain the layout and many original plantings dating from its 120 years of conservation efforts by successive owners.

(image from Glenfalloch Gardens website)

To this day, many well-respected New Zealand gardens still follow the tenets of the Edwardian style, and current issues of the popular New Zealand Gardener magazine regularly reference artist Gertrude Jekyll's lessons on colour harmonies.

One example of such a garden is that of Bev McConnell, the doyenne of Kiwi gardening circles (Bev and garden journalist Gordon Collier are co-judges of the New Zealand 'Gardens of Regional Significance' scheme). Bev's garden, 'Ayrlies' just south of Auckland, is a wonderland of beautiful garden features. It is regularly included in books about special New Zealand gardens, and one such, New Zealand Town and Country Gardens (Matthews & Hanly, 1993) describes it this way: "It's a tribute to Bev's gardening skills that the lakes, waterfalls, and woodlands at 'Ayrlies' look like naturally occurring features. She and Malcolm started in 1964 with an exposed, undulating paddock. The ups and downs of the land provided the opportunity for drama, with vistas from the high spots and intimate areas in the hollows, linked by curving steps and meandering paths which create a feeling of anticipation: what lovely surprise will be encountered around the next bend? The finishing touch is Bev's skillful plantings, tying the design together. She can be likened to a landscape painter, the garden her vast canvas..." (52). A present-day Gertrude Jekyll--the garden even boasts a set of Lutyens-style circular steps!

The McConnells have heeded Tannock's 1914 advice to make the most of the natural geography of the site, and applied Jekyll's colour theories artistically and imaginatively, while showing a lick of Kiwi ingenuity in the many and varied garden buildings. The following photos provide a glimpse into the Edwardian-style beauty of Ayrlies.

Emily's Garden

Emily’s Garden: The Colonial New Zealand Garden of a Suffolk Lady, edited and illustrated by Kerry Carman; Random Century NZ Ltd. 1990

This book is a new edition of a book originally published in 1902 in New Zealand, by an English immigrant lady by the name of Emily Marshall-White, the “Suffolk Lady” of the title. It is the chronicle of the various gardens created in the colony by this lady and her daughter Jessie over a period of 25 years (between 1876 and 1901). The text, sprinkled with Emily’s many religious references, makes for fascinating reading. Her tales reveal that the members of New Zealand society in its pioneer days struggled to create an environment as close as possible to upper class England, despite having to cope with rather more hands-on contact with the elements than they had been accustomed to.

Emily and John Marshall moved to NZ in 1876, leaving behind substantial family lands and wealth, in an attempt to cure John of his illnesses through the warmer climate and fresher air of NZ. In the midst of the traumas inherent in hacking out a homestead in a new and untried environment, with a husband whose continuing ill health made him almost an invalid, Emily successfully raised five children and quickly established a successful garden at her first home site. Although “the Suffolk Lady, like many other aristocratic English women before her, expected to be able to hire a full complement of servants on her arrival—great must have been her dismay to discover she would be obliged to manage alone” (17). The family’s plight was alleviated by a neighbouring pioneer, a Mr. Blanco White, who assisted them so much that, when Emily’s husband died several years later, she eventually married Mr. White.

Emily’s first NZ garden was in Nelson, in the north of the South Island, and the warm climate and fertile soil soon rewarded her efforts. A photo taken only two years on shows a thriving passionfruit vine against the house and abundant growth in the surrounding vegetable and fruit gardens, critical to maintaining her family's health (Carman 18).

After her husband’s death in 1879, Emily took her children back to England where they could be properly educated to prepare them to someday take up the lands they were heir to in England through her own and their father’s families. However, she returned to NZ in 1882 after marrying Mr. White in 1881. Kerry Carmen reports that Emily “found it difficult to settle back into the English lifestyle after becoming so self-sufficient in New Zealand" (20). Upon her return, the family settled on the North Island, at Grove House in Wanganui, and Emily soon established another lush English-style garden, including courts laid out for the family's passions, croquet and tennis. However, Emily's new garden also incorporated a full range of both exotic and NZ native plants as she became more knowledgeable through her participation in the local Horticultural Society. Emily imported exotic tree and shrub seeds from all over the world via the many thriving mail-order nurseries of the day, and not only had success in raising plants from the seed for her own garden, but became something of a distributor of certain species such as the scarlet-flowering gum from Australia. (Carman 22)

Photos of Emily working in her Wanganui garden show her attired as a proper English Victorian lady in long skirt and wide-brimmed hat, but the garden boasts twenty-year-old cabbage trees (or 'palm lilies' as Emily knew them), blooming lilium giganteum, and a flourishing paulownia. She writes of 'ferning' expeditions into the native bush, and one photo shows several huge 'ferns' (actually palms, I believe) being brought home with the aid of a cart and horse. Emily had great success transplanting these large specimens, but wrote scathing comments on those who "denuded the bush to decorate ballrooms with fern fronds and whole nikau palms" (Carman 28).

These gardens were to last longer than her second marriage, which ended after three years when Mr. White became frustrated with his inability to access Emily's familial wealth, due to the new Married Women's Property Act of 1882.

Emily's flowers constantly won awards at the local shows, and her success with chrysanthemums may have spurred her founding of the local Chrysanthemum Society. Her garden style was, for all its exotic additions, still very English, with a forecourt laid out in a formal parterre, and straight-edged beds for her many floral gems. Her violets and other tussie-mussie flowers were so abundant that she and her daughter used to sell posies to travellers at the local train station, as a fund-raising venture for the Horticultural Society.

Her large Wanganui garden was eventually subdivided and she limited her efforts to a smaller but still lush garden around a newly-built, smaller house named 'The Bungalow'. (Carman 35)

As her children grew and inherited estates in England, and following the death of one of her sons, Emily returned to England for a brief time, and while there published the first edition of her little book by 'a Suffolk lady,' but eventually re-established herself in NZ at Greenbank, her son George's house near Marton, a few hours north of Wellington on the North Island. After George's marriage, she and her daughter Jessie moved to nearby Marton Junction and Emily began again with a new garden, named 'Elmswell' as a play on her initials (Emily Louise Marshall) and as a celebration of the return of her good health after some years of decline following her son's death.

Emily continued to be active in horticultural activities, despite being now in her seventies, but her grandchildren recall that she was very strict in her observance of the Sabbath, and never gardened on Sunday, "not even to pull one weed!" (39). After WWI, Emily admitted that the steep slope of Elmswell was beyond her declining abilities, and moved to her final garden back in Wanganui. She and Jessie established a vegetable garden, croquet lawn, and a flower garden, and Emily ended her days there at the age of ninety-seven, in 1936. Even in her final years she continued to be active in the garden and wrote to one of her grandsons: "I am glad you like gardening--it is the most wholesome occupation given, so what with tidiness and gardening I trust you will one day become a true man" (41). (Carman 40)

Kerry Carman's thorough introduction, accompanied by old photographs, provides an excellent context for the text of Emily's own writings which follow, pleasantly illustrated by Carman's paintings of the old-fashioned, native, and exotic flowers of Emily's gardens. Emily's writings could be mistaken for those of a true 'Suffolk lady,' as they are full of references to traditional English garden plants and practices; however, the references to NZ natives reveal her curiosity and eagerness to expand her plant repertoire by any means, echoing the craze for the exotic that gripped all of England's horticulture in Victorian and Edwardian times.
This book reinforces the image of NZ as a 'little England' for much of its history of European settlement. However, it is obvious that, from the beginning, settlers included NZ natives in their traditionally laid-out gardens.

Kemp Mission House

Kemp House, in Kerikeri (Northland, North Island, NZ) is the oldest wooden building in NZ, having been built in 1821 as a mission house.

Nearby is the Stone Store, NZ's oldest stone building from 1832. The garden surrounding Kemp House was established in 1822 by the Reverend Samuel Butler who lived here for ten years. The garden is "unique in that it has been in continuous cultivation for [now] 184 years and still reflects the balanced formality of the Georgian period" (19, New Zealand Gardens Open to Visit, J. and D. Friar, 1996). The flower beds are filled "in the cottage style, proudly displaying the industriousness of the resident missionaries. This is still evident today, even to the well-stocked vegetable garden and orchard" (19). The plants include a large wisteria on the front porch, heritage roses, and many favourites from the turn of the last century, including candytuft, larkspur, nigella, poppies, violas, and alyssum, bloom in summer in beds arranged in the style of the early 19th c.. As well, old-fashioned perennials including alstromerias, lambs-ears, phlox, cannas, irises, and japanese anemones bloom beside the two more subtropical notes, a jacaranda and a Magnolia grandiflora.

This very early garden provides graphic evidence of the adherence to English garden styles and plants among NZ's earliest European settlers.