Westland
Sue Francis visits the garden that once hosted a penguin in its pumpkin patch.
Dolphins on the beach boundary and a penguin in the pumpkin patch are part of the natural magic of the Manera family’s garden at Neils Beach.
The two-hectare section was untouched rainforest when the family bought it in 2002. Rob and Michele shaped the bush – lush with rimu, miro, kahikatea, ka¯mahi, broadleaf and tree ferns – while the kids played at the beach and swam with the dolphins.
“We cut a track wide enough to get the quad bike and a trailer into the centre of the block, and then started clearing,” Rob recalls.
Later, they hired a digger to remove the stumps, shape the ground and create a big pond fed by the runoff from the hills behind the property.
The developing garden was strictly a holiday project until 2012, when Rob and Michele finally built a house on the property.
“The kids would run wild while I slowly developed the place. They are all good swimmers and so long as they were tied to their surfboards I didn’t mind them spending all day in the sea, swimming around with the Hector’s dolphins.”
Neils Beach, a calm, shallow beach in the Haast area, is protected by the southwest swell by Jackson Head.
Rainfall is at the high end – over 4.5m a year – and Rob and Michele decided to shape their rainforest garden with lawns, hard landscaping of local stone and gravel, and a 300m walkway and boardwalk through the bush.
Rob guesses that some of the trees in here are around 400 years old.
A creek running from the pond is home to eels that enjoy being hand-fed, but
“unfortunately, since Digger the labrador has taken up fishing, there are not as many eels as there used to be!”
Gravel was collected from the slips along the bay road and barrowed around the track. Slip material was trucked in to create a building pad.
Some of the timber was milled and used to make seats and table tops.
The wood-fired pizza oven and bathtub were added as necessities, mainly “because we did not have electricity for a long time”.
The Maneras have a productive kitchen garden with citrus, tomatoes and greens. The garden beds are fertilised with possum carcasses, fish frames, offal and manure.
“The only time the possums caused any damage was when one chewed the skin off a lot of lemons. He left the fruit hanging naked on the tree so we were still able to juice them. As for the possum, he got juiced later that night!”
A row of ko¯whai in the garden had started life as seeds in the roof gutter of a house at Haast. Tapping into an abundant local resource, a possum carcass was put under each one when they were transplanted.
Rob and Michele are philosophical about the weather because, as Coasters know, there’s nothing so beautiful as the clear, sunny days that follow a big storm.
“The vege garden can suffer a bit due to our high rainfall, but cloches, a greenhouse and plenty of mulch, straw and baleage help.
“I wouldn’t say the weather is that much of a challenge. If you want to live in a rainforest you have to expect a bit of rain. It’s all in your head really.”
Tawaki, the Fiordland crested penguins, breed along this coast and come ashore to moult during February and March.
Endemic to New Zealand, tawaki is also found on Stewart Island and its outlying islands, as their nesting habitats range from temperate rainforests to sea caves and under rock boulders. “We often see them and hear them calling in the bush around the house. We get the occasional visit, like the one that camped in our pumpkin patch and swam in the pond for a few days.”
This rainforest garden has only a limited number of flowering ornamentals – a couple of roses that were gifts and some daffodils.
“More flowers just means more work and you can’t eat them,” Rob said. “It’s good having plenty of room to landscape or add the odd feature.
“I enjoy working with stone and like the way it both suits and contrasts with all the green. And with stone being such a forgiving medium, it doesn’t have to be perfect to look good.”
Rob sees and describes the property grounds as an extension of nature. It’s a simple gardening style that shows how to work with the land to open up some space for living. “Just mow to the fringes and hold the bush at bay.” ✤