GENTLE on the eye

NATURE GETS AWAY WITH QUITE A BIT IN THIS OTHERWISE FORMAL COUNTRY GARDEN

P HOTOGRAPHS

“THERE WAS A LITTLE green china frog in the middle of my grandmother’s garden,” says Lynne Atkins, recalling a long-ago garden in Ōtaki. “Pansies, snapdragons and violets circled the frog, and there were tiny dianthuses around the edge.”

Lynne’s recall of this garden is precise. She remembers her grandfather’s half-acre of flower gardens and the carnations, named ‘Ōtaki Pinks’, that he grew and sold at the local market. She also vividly recalls her maternal grandmother’s garden in Christchurch, with its birdbath proudly centre stage, the air heavily scented by blooms. “I remember the exact layouts and all the plants in them even though I was only six or eight years old at the time.”

This little girl, reared in Levin, read The Secret Garden many times and went about with a head full of daffodils, dreaming of gardens just like the ones in her illustrated storybooks. “I always knew that one day I was going to have a beautiful garden.”

Life was initially a bit busy for the pursuit of gardening as marriage and motherhood demanded her full attention. She had, as an English and anthropology student, met Les Atkins - a law student - in 1969 on her first day at Victoria University.

“I was 17, and he was 20. We caught each other’s eye walking opposite directions in Cable Car Lane. And that was that. He hunted me down. We were married in January 1971 - the end of my second year at university. I finished my degrees [double majors] at the end of 1971 and worked in the Law Library in 1972. We had our first baby in 1973.”

Les’ parents lived in a historic house in Ashhurst, a few kilometres outside of Palmerston North. When Les’ father became unwell and needed to be nearer the hospital, the younger Atkins swapped their then-townhouse in Palmerston North with that of Atkins, the Elders. Thus Lynne found herself living in the large house called Greenhaugh, built in 1874 for Elizabeth Waugh, the young bride of early settler Kenneth McKenzie, and of which she (Lynne) is today the longest resident to call home. Forty-two years and counting.

She also found herself custodian of her mother-in-law’s garden. Seldom have our country’s most celebrated gardens grown from a daughter-in-law’s slavish attention to a departed mother-in-law’s grounds. However, Lynne initially enjoyed the garden as it was.

“I came here as a young mother with two small children and another on the way, and I was cautious about changing too much. It was a lovely garden of its time, with the usual things of the day such as conifers, gladiolus, spiky cactus dahlias and a lot of camellias.”

When Lynne and Les visited England, and she was able to visit the famous gardens at Sissinghurst and Hidcote, everything changed. “Of course I’d already read all the books I could on Sissinghurst and Hidcote, so I walked in there knowing precisely what it was going to be. But I was still completely overwhelmed, so much so that at Hidcote I stood and cried. It was early summer and so astoundingly beautiful.”

Lynne’s keen memory stored a visual record of every vista, every plant and every beautiful swathe of colour and texture and her excitement grew. She and Les arrived home enthused about redesigning Greenhaugh’s garden and dreaming of how it might look.

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Greenhaugh’s original inhabitants named the house and garden after their home village in Northumberland. A second pond, with a fountain, was installed 30 years ago but the concrete steps leading down to it were recently remodeled with a softer brick and shell rock finish. Trees, from the original orchard, shelter the garden from westerly winds and the occasional frost. Owner Lynne Atkins says she is lucky to have only a handful of frosts a year. BELOW: Bore water allows Lynne to irrigate some areas during late summer droughts, though the garden is well mulched for moisture retention and weed control. The roses in these beds — mostly Austins and Heritage — flower through a sea of perennials and bulbs. OPPOSITE: Lynne, her sister Katie and friend Jane head to the Giraffe House with afternoon tea to share with Greenhaugh staff. The rose ‘ Wedding Day’ festoons the front verandah.

The golden coreopsis is a rewarding long-flowering border plant that Lynne likes to see flowing in cheerful swathes beyond the formality of the buxus hedging. This way, her garden is a journey for visitors and they can be led by their senses; the Cornus took many years to flower, but each year since it has provided a magnificent spectacle; the rose, ‘ Pat Austin’, is repeated along chains at the back of the terrace below the Giraffe House; a light touch with spray keeps the garden full of bees, butterflies, frogs and birds.