GRAND VISION
NEW ZEALAND GARDEN DESIGNER SUZANNE TURLEY REVEALS A PROJECT FROM HER BOOK, PRIVATE GARDENS OF AOTEAROA.
Leading garden designer Suzanne Turley has created a majestic garden on top of a hill in New Zealand’s beautiful Hawke’s Bay area.
LEADING NEW ZEALAND garden designer Suzanne Turley had an early introduction to gardening. As a child, she helped her grandfather Walter Gladwin on his quarter-acre plot. “A day at Grandad’s was picking fruit, feeding the chooks and digging up potatoes,” she recalls. “That’s where it started; my love of being in the garden.”
During her teens, Suzanne considered a career in floristry but decided on fashion instead and later opened the iconic Blanche Maude clothing boutique in Auckland. But it was the beautiful English-style perennial garden she created at her first home that changed her career path.
“The garden became quite well known and eventually it was featured in magazines and gardening books. Clients that came to my shop asked me if I would help them with their gardens so I started part-time trying to wear two hats, eventually taking the leap into landscape design full-time,” Suzanne says.
Since establishing Suzanne Turley Landscapes in 1995, she has worked on many projects throughout New Zealand including the beautiful garden you see here, which Suzanne created on a country property at Hawke’s Bay. The garden is featured in her book Suzanne Turley: Private Gardens of Aotearoa and the following is an extract:
LOMBARDY POPLARS are a distinct part of Havelock North in Hawke’s Bay. These columnar forms, planted in New Zealand as far back as the 1830s, march along ridges and define riverbeds, turning on a golden show in autumn.
This property on a hill near the Tukituki River has an iconic view of distant Te Mata Peak, and the design of the home was a contemporary response to the area’s colonial history. Architect Christian Anderson crafted a country homestead on a scale befitting the grandeur of the landscape. Clad in band-sawn weatherboards, with a timber-shingle roof, the building has a U-shaped plan and pleasing symmetry. The cloaking verandah faces north to provide shelter and a perch from which to enjoy the vista both in the immediate vicinity and back into history, with its view beyond the property of Lombardy poplars planted over 100 years ago.
Close working relationships between client, architect and interior designer Jen Pack mean that the garden has an intrinsic connection with the home, but it also takes its cues from the wider environment.
The landscape plan that surrounds the residence reflects the symmetry of the built design. Repetitive plantings of a limited plant palette contain this area and retain the structure year-round. A choreographed response of clipped hedges and topiary shapes is punctuated by the tall elegance of an Italian cypress — a shape that references those emblematic poplars.
This response can be seen in the entry court, where four London plane trees mark the corners and an avenue of European limestone leads through evergreen orbs to the double front doors. It’s also evident in the hedge-trimmed formal lawn and pool area, where the corners of two white >
pavilions are marked by slender totems as well as at sunrise in the east-facing gravel courtyard. Here, cubes and globes of box topiary are set against the backstop of a bay laurel and pleached hornbeam hedge. And it can again be appreciated at sunset from the west-facing evening room, where the architect has dissolved the boundaries ensuring that the homeowners can enjoy the slice-through view of two gardens — the entry courtyard and an enclosed, intimate alfresco space where a pair of olives link to the kitchen potager.
But beyond this, where steep banks drop down from the retained land, the strict rhythms are abandoned in favour of a less formal look. Existing agapanthus that clung defiantly to the slopes were augmented with mass plantings of French lavender and hydrangeas, their frothy blue and white heads so redolent of an earlier era. These flow away from the house to meet the poplars, blending the garden with the countryside, the present with the past.
GARDENER’S NOTEBOOK
Landscape designer Suzanne Turley gives an insight into her design approach and passion for country gardens.
Do you have a country garden of your own? I worked on the design of a large country garden in Hawke’s Bay for a dear friend. We designed it together for many years in a very rewarding client-designer relationship. He was a designer and, on many aspects, he had been a mentor. Since his passing a few years ago, I’ve been asked by his partner to become the custodian of this beautiful garden. I’m fortunate to be able to say that I love and nurture this garden as my own.
What do you enjoy about working on country gardens?
The feeling of being so close to nature. Designing without the tight and challenging restrictions we faced in the city can be refreshing. However, country properties do not come without their own challenges — wildlife, mainly rabbits, and often extreme climate conditions all play a part.
What are your tips for gardening during the drought?
Mulching and nurturing plants is key, ensuring any water that is available is getting to the roots and not over-spraying. Starting a new garden in a dry environment requires careful plant selection — planting young plants preferably when they can expect some moisture and not letting them rely on an irrigation system from day one. Any watering should be deep and less often than a little every day.
What are your favourite topiary plants? Olea europaea
‘El Greco’, Laurus nobilis ‘Pride of Provence’, and
Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Stephens Island’ for large topiary. We also use the Australian shrub Westringia fruticosa, which does well in our coastal and drier gardens.
This is an edited extract from Suzanne Turley: Private Gardens of Aotearoa edited by Thomas Cannings, published by Thames & Hudson, $80, and is available where all good books are sold.