THE COMEBACK
After 35 years in the US, a Kiwi with farming in his blood returned to rescue a historic property
Reviving historic gardens on Banks Peninsula
In 2008, a group of English High Court judges deemed the Oxford Dictionary definition of a garden (“an enclosed piece of ground devoted to the cultivation of flowers, fruit or vegetables”) to be inadequate. The essence of a garden, they proclaimed, included “the relationship between the owner and the land and the history and character of the land and space”. Nowhere could this be more true than at Annandale, Mark and Jacqui Palmer’s property in remote Pigeon Bay on Banks Peninsula, which is steeped in history and has been moulded both by the elements and its inhabitants.
In 1843, the beady-eyed kereru who gave their name to the bay would have watched from the treetops with some alarm as Ebenezer and Agnes Hay stepped ashore. The hardy Scottish settlers went on to create what was to be one of the leading cattle farms in the country, build a fine homestead and plant trees never before seen in these parts – oaks, elms, European fruits as well as shrubs and flowering bulbs. At the bottom of the garden overlooking the bay, Ebenezer built a pair of seats in gnarly totara and fashioned the letters A and E in their backs (see page 16).
Fast-forward 172 years, after several generations of Hays and many more of kereru, another migrant with a mission enters. Despite his American accent, Mark is a Kiwi through and through and, after 35 years in the US, the farm boy from Pongakawa turned Texas businessman was pining for the green fields of home.
When Mark headed to the US in the early 1980s to study for an MBA in Utah, he didn’t plan to stay. But he met his Englishborn wife Jacqui over there and, with six children and later nine “grandbabies”, the couple made the US their home.
“I always wanted to come back and have a farm,” says Mark. “It was one of my bucket list items.” Ten years ago, he realised his dream with the purchase of Annandale, a 1600ha farm with 10km of coastline and a garden with its roots in the 19th century. >
Mark set about transforming the property into a haven away from home for his family, and an exclusive retreat for guests (annandale.com). He sought the help of award-winning architect Andrew Patterson to restore the buildings and landscape architect Robert Watson, described by Mark as “a humble genius with terrific vision”, to develop the garden.
“This is a slice of paradise,” says Mark, whose brief to them was broad, if somewhat daunting: “I said, ‘The real Creator is up there. Your job is to do something that doesn’t mess up his work.’”
Mark’s aim was to retain the character of the garden while taking it to a new level. “But I didn’t want it to be grandiose or pretentious in any way.”
Robert and Mark’s vision was of a seamless flow of diverse gardens spilling around the homestead, up the rugged volcanic hillsides and down to the sea, with stables, a tennis court, croquet lawn and infinity swimming pool along the way.
“It’s more a succession of spaces than a series of formal rooms,” says Robert. “It allows you to wander – and your imagination to run.” >
Robert saw from the start that the garden had good bones, but a lot of it had become overgrown and disorderly. “We rolled back the garden to what it had been, then extended it.”
“It’s been a voyage of surprise, delight and discovery,” says Mark. Under the tangle of muehlenbeckia, tree lucerne and blackberry they found original shell paths, an old rockery, even a dilapidated garden cottage. Perhaps the greatest delight was discovering a Victorian stone fernery overgrown and in ruins out in the paddock, built by James Gibson (a protégé of Alfred Buxton, who designed Christchurch’s much-admired Mona Vale fernery).
Existing quince and feijoa became the heart of an orchard of heritage fruit trees; a lily pond in a secluded dell had its concrete cherub replaced with a contemporary water feature; Robert designed a formal rose garden that looks as though it has always been there. Carpenter Ray Hastie rebuilt or repaired glasshouses, pergolas and the fernery.
Another of Mark’s dreams was to make Annandale a selfsufficient, farm-to-table operation. Robert transformed the boulder-strewn paddock behind the house into a huge but orderly edible garden bisected by a flowing rill. >
A mixed shrub and herbaceous border running along the sea side of the lawn had grown high and dense. “There was no longer any connection between the house and sea,” says Robert. The trees were retained but the rest removed to reclaim the view and the sloping lawn was levelled. “The lawn is now essentially a balcony with a clipped lonicera hedge as the balustrade.”
They discovered Ebenezer and Agnes’ broken love seats in the undergrowth, and Ray repaired them with some totara fence posts found on the property. Today Mark and Jacqui’s view from the seats is much the same as it would have been in Agnes and Ebenezer’s day. They, too, would have watched Hector’s dolphins play in the bay and listened to birdsong and the incessant lapping of waves.
The Palmers have added a significant chapter to Annandale’s history, but Mark is philosophical about man’s relationship with the land: “We think we own it, but we don’t. We are just the stewards at this particular point in time.”