riding the WAVE
Inspired by their view of Lyttelton harbour, David and Betty Purdue transformed virgin farmland into a stunning hillside garden.
betty Purdue shrugs nonchalantly as she explains the rationale behind the stunning set of undulating hedges jutting into her precipitous Lyttelton garden. “Had we lived somewhere different, we might have planted something else… battlements for example,” she says. “It was a difficult piece of land, steep and very wet with builders’ concrete through it all. We had it in lawn,” she says. The idea to put in hedges was to reduce the amount of mowing. “Less grass! We needed something else down that slope!”
The wave formation was chosen to complement the harbour far below.
With a thoughtfulness that seems to pervade the entire 2000 square metre garden, Betty and her daughter Jane made miniature two-dimensional cardboard models of the waves to ensure the dips and the swells lined up correctly in all four hedges. Then her husband David, a former mechanic and a most handy man, made three-dimensional lifesize forms of reinforcing steel for the escallonia plants to grow up within and around.
With its glossy green foliage and deep-pink scented flowers in spring, Escallonia ‘Field’s Scarlet’ was a choice Betty has never regretted in the hedges’ decade of life. “We clip it in spring, and I pinch off the odd stray shoot if I ever I spot one, and that’s about it,” she says.
She feels, however, she hasn’t been so lucky in her choice of the other main hedging plant. “Pittosporum,” she sighs. “I would never plant pittosporum hedges again. It dies back in the middle and the only way to keep it as a neat hedge is to go through when pruning and cut back really hard bits inside it. These come away again, thickening it up. Otherwise it dies back with constant clipping needed to keep it the right size. That or you would have to let it get enormous.”
The small-leaved pittosporum hedges and massive pittosporum sphere (Betty has long since lost track of the name of their varieties) get a good clip and shape twice a year – in early spring and in late summer or early autumn.
While the escallonia wave hedges are an out-there, all-round triumph, the pittosporum – intensive care notwithstanding – are a quiet delight. These were planted to loop back and forth at right angles between the main lawn and a flight of steps, with their inner sanctums visible to alternating sides. One is home to marble chip copy of an old marine statue; another
to a red maple; and the third to a golden ash. Hostas and hellebores along the bases of these hedges provide year-long interest.
Far be it for me to give the impression that this garden is all about hedges and clipped forms. Yet there are undeniably many of them. There is a corokia hedge, “which keeps it shape really well” and has the bonus of pretty red or orange berries in winter.
A low buxus hedge, punctuated with two buxus topiary balls, almost encases a large garden bed which falls away steeply from the front of the house. Low plants were chosen to carpet the slope – ajuga, pulmonaria and bluebells – so as not to impede harbour views from the living room.
A fine pair of 1.5m high Lonicera nitida spirals stand sentinel at the top of the flight of steps between the herbaceous border and the fernery. The relatively fast-growing lonicera drives Betty a little nutty. “They were a mistake because every time I go past I feel I have to snip them to keep them tidy,” she says, fingers reaching out to stroke them. “Though they look fantastic in the snow.”
Their precise forms are a pleasing contrast to the stand of trees beyond. Snaffled at a local garden centre’s sale bins when the couple first bought the land 18 years ago, they now form a small forest protecting the garden from the bitter easterly – coastal Canterbury’s predominant wind.
In a sunny side garden on the west of the property,
A solitary ngaio was the only tree on the virgin farmland when they arrived; the nearest neighbours were sheep grazing the surrounding slopes.
a couple of large, glowering tˉotara shapes emerge from the host of grasses and flowers, which in summer is a riot in yellows and oranges.
Although tˉotara responds brilliantly to being topiarised, clipping it is a complete pain, Betty declares, and clearing up the clippings even more so. “It is so prickly,” she says.
A solitary ngaio was the only tree on the virgin farmland when they arrived; their nearest neighbours were the sheep grazing the surroundings slopes.
Today, newer houses uphill are encroaching on their rural splendour and the ngaio is nearly dwarfed by all the trees the Purdues have since planted.
What is the same though is the contour of the land, its integrity maintained by judicious landscaping and planting. “The landscaping follows the contours of the land. We haven’t altered it at all,” says David.
“Really, we had no landscaping plan,” agrees Betty. “We just put steps in places where we fell over.”
There is an inherent logic to that and it makes the garden a joy to navigate. The multitude of paths across the slope and steps down them feel they might very much follow the same routes as generations of sheep and cattle before them. Made by David with old wharf
timber from the port and with shingle, they are, however, a great deal more substantial.
The garden runs top to bottom, north to south, with the house sitting at the northern end and looking down over the bustling township and busy working port, and across the harbour to the hills on the far side. It is a glorious view and one the couple were keen not to distract from with their planting. “We chose trees for the bottom of the garden with sombre leaves,” explains Betty.
These include a pˉohutukawa, a purple-leaved hoheria, a Prunus serrula with its polished, red-brown flaking mahogany-like bark, a Cotinus ‘Grace’, a ‘Forest Pansy’ and an unnamed crabapple with orange fruit. Most of these trees also offer splashes of colour in winter when little sun reaches the area. Similarly captivating is a trio of the white-barked Himalayan birches Betula
utilis var. jacquemontii above the wave hedges, and below them a claret ash Fraxinus angustifolia ‘Raywood’.
Artfully placed to the side of the living room’s picture window and pruned with the skill worthy of a craftsman in its native Japan, is the tiny-leaved and elegant red maple, Acer palmatum ‘Seiryu’.
Several more maples in the front garden were brought as seedlings from the family’s previous garden in inner Christchurch, where they lived for more than 30 years.
However much Betty is fond of these – not least for sentimental reasons – she says her all-time favourite is her Amelanchier canadensis. With its starry white flowers in early spring, purple berries and brilliant autumn colour, this hardy small tree is an all-round winner in Betty’s books. She just loves it, as do the birds and the bees, she says.
Betty’s beloved flowers are mainly confined to two
While the lower garden tends towards the reds and blues, the higher and sunnier terraces are a glorious riot of reds and yellows.
areas. David is more a foliage man, she says, but he did make and paint the village of metal obelisk perennial supports in the deep herbaceous border along the base of the garden.
Here, among the clutch of pittosporum balls, lavenders, salvias, roses, paeonies and other usual border suspects, grows a striking allium. The mauve circular flowers about the size of an orange are held aloft stalks up to a metre long. “They’re elephant garlic flowers,” says Betty with obvious delight that such a prosaic vegetable has such an astounding flower. “I don’t think much of the garlic itself but these are something else – and they self-seed everywhere.”
Self-seeders are also the backbone of her upper flower garden. While the lower garden tends towards the reds and blues, these higher and sunnier terraces are a glorious riot of reds and yellows. “I grow tough perennials and grasses here,” says Betty. “It can get very dry in summer and waterlogged in winter as there is an under-runner here which goes from the top of the garden to the bottom.”
Among the crocosmia, alstroemeria, kniphofias, daisies and grasses spring an abundance of dahlias in a multitude of hot shades. The original parents, Betty thinks, were ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ and the scarlet ‘Ellen Huston’. “I just love how they self-seed everywhere,’ she says.
“Yes,” adds her husband, a self-confessed non-gardener. “The garden does its own thing. We just run with it.”