Aplace to play, sit and enjoy
‘‘On those really hot, busy January days, in the evening I will come and sit here with the dogs. No one can see me, I don’t have my phone, and I’ll just have 10 minutes. It is a meditative life experience.’’ Wendy Palmer
then matching a boggy area at the base of the hill with plants that would thrive in the wet.
That garden was completed just before a 2013 earthquake ruptured the septic tank, spilling its contents over her hard-won wetland. ‘‘If I wasn’t hysterical before that, I was after,’’ she says with a laugh.
However, the shake proved fortuitous and Ross leapt at the opportunity, designing a built-up lawn as an entrance to the home. At its edge, he devised layers of slab macrocarpa steps and terracing, dropping past a beautiful old Lawson cypress ( Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) to the sprawling wetland below.
There he used a mature copper beech as his reference, planting rich reds and coppers, foiled by bright green grasses, flashes of pink roses and the tangerine gleam of canna lilies. It’s an extraordinary space of colour, texture and movement that reveals the whimsical nature of the property.
The Thai spirit house that links the lower gardens with the Victorian villa should be jarring, but is somehow a perfect fit. It was a 50th birthday present for Wendy, who visited Ross often when he lived in Thailand and loved the simple wooden or glitteringly adorned spirit houses that adjoined every home.
When a courier rang about a very large birdcage she thought, ‘‘Well, if anyone is going to get an unexpected birdcage, it would be me.’’
From there the trail leads to a glade of trees, hellebores and ferns, then via the extreme climbing rose and Seuss-like kanuka, to corridors of cabbage trees that ‘‘volunteered’’ for the role, having grown wild over the years.
Wendy laments the loss of an old elm tree, but celebrates the new plants that have thrived in its stead, described by Ross as phoenix from the flames.
‘‘It’s just so peaceful down here. So serene and restorative,’’ says Wendy of the cooler lower climes of the garden. ‘‘On those really hot, busy January days, in the evening I will come and sit here with the dogs. No one can see me, I don’t have my phone, and I’ll just have 10 minutes. It is a meditative life experience.’’
Beyond the native retreat, the paths climb the dune until they’re in full light, on the northern side of the house.
Here, waves of corokia surround the pool, providing shelter from wind and an antidote to the straight lines of everyday hedges.
Although Wendy had intended them to be square, the soil was so variable that some parts thrived while others struggled, leading to the decision to carve the foliage into a curvaceous reflection of the nearby peaks.
‘‘We made random a virtue,’’ says Ross, who celebrates whimsy in the garden. ‘‘There is such a thing as being too tasteful,’’ agrees Wendy, with a nod to the 15 pink plastic flamingos that sometimes float in her pool and the silversuited, red-haired Leucospermum reflexum shimmering for attention at the edge of the verandah.
‘‘This is our play area and neither of us are afraid to do silly things and playful things,’’ she says. ‘‘We do it for an audience of one.’’