‘Never a blade of grass out of place’
A Life Story
The Tinwald Golf Club gardens are so well maintained as to be almost surprising – every edge perfectly clipped and the shrubs nicely cut back.
And it is largely Pat Bell who deserves the credit. A skilled gardener, the Ashburton woman put her all into maintaining the grounds.
‘‘It’s going to be nigh on impossible to keep it up to the standard that Pat has got it to,’’ her friend Joan Undy said.
Patricia Claire Bell, nee Carruthers, was born on 26 September 1942 in Milton, Otago. She died, aged 75, on November 7 at Ashburton Hospital.
Friends and family have described her as caring, kind and fun to be around – a woman who went out of her way to help others.
And it was at the Tinwald Golf Club she really left her mark. A member since the mid-1970s, Bell became one of only a handful of life members in 2011.
She was Junior Club Champion in 1980, and as Ladies Captain she successfully applied to stage the New Zealand Women’s Under 21s Tournament at the course.
Bell also coached junior members of the club, guiding countless young players into the sport she so dearly loved with patience and a keen eye for technique.
She also took part in a programme visiting schools throughout Mid Canterbury, where she and Undy introduced pupils to golf.
‘‘She was absolutely amazing with the kids. She was able to guide and direct them, and she had a marvellous rapport with them,’’ Undy said.
The two friends both lived on Nursery Drive, in the Ashburton suburb of Tinwald. Undy said Bell always kept her house as if the Queen was coming to visit.
‘‘There was never a weed or blade of grass that was out of place. That was Pat, the job was never done,’’ she said.
And she was always willing to help. One day over coffee, Undy mentioned there was a tree stump in her yard that needed to be removed.
Bell was immediately over, armed with an axe and a shovel to dig out the offending mass and lend a hand, as she did for many others in Tinwald.
Her older sister, Shirley Admiraal, said Bell was one of the first to be called on if someone was sick or in need of assistance in the area.
She used to ferry an elderly Ashburton resident to Christchurch Airport, and would come and visit Admiraal in Dunedin to prune her roses.
Bell was the youngest of a big family. Her parents had 10 children, and she was seven years younger than her closet sibling, Admiraal.
She attended primary school in Moneymore, where the family had a farmlet, before they moved to a new house outside of Winchester and Bell started at Geraldine High School.
Her schooling ended when she took a job at Ashburton Hospital, in the town where she would meet her future husband Len Bell, also a keen golfer.
The couple had three children together, Paul, Chris and Symon. Admiraal said Bell was a wonderful mother and grandmother, who often helped her sons in the garden.
In a eulogy delivered at her funeral, Tinwald Golf Club Ladies Captain Val Prendergast said in later years it was for her work in the gardens that most members remembered Bell.
‘‘In golf you are told to keep your head down and slow down,’’ she said.
‘‘But Pat in the garden was the opposite: head down, bum up and going like the clappers. The work wasn’t finished until the last edge was cut and the rubbish on the trailer.’’
She was humble, too. Despite all her work over the years, when she was made a life member of the club, Bell protested and said others were more deserving of the honour.
‘‘I’m going to miss her like hell. We all will,’’ Undy said.
Bell is survived by her sons, Paul, Chris and Symon, and her grandchildren, Ashleigh, Kieren, Sophie, Marshall, Ryan, Thomas, Zack and Clay.
‘‘She was absolutely amazing with the kids.’’
Friend Joan Undy