Happily ever after
This welcoming subtopical paradise in Kerikeri is the romantic backdrop for many magical moments and life-changing vows.
WhenWhen Susi Liddington first visited this Kerikeri property, nothing had been done to the place for a decade, but it didn’t stop her from visualising a house on the hill.
Susi Liddington’s then huband-to-be first took her to see the land he had bought for them near Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands, he had to cut a track in through the gorse and blackberry with a machete.
Nothing had been done to the property for a decade, but it didn’t stop Susi from visualising a house site on the hill. “I looked up from down the bottom and said, ‘We’re going to build a house up there’.
“Mal said, ‘No we’re not, we’re going to plant kiwifruit.’
“I said, ‘No we’re not, we both work seven days and they’re too much work. We’ll plant mandarins’.”
Five hundred mandarins were duly planted and the busy couple started building their house on the site
Susi had designated. “Then we started on the land. We did have a bit of a plan but we didn’t have a budget. And that’s never changed!”
Creating a magical garden which would become a hugely popular wedding venue wasn’t part of the master plan at the outset. Back then, the aim was for a park-like setting with lots of trees.
Susi didn’t want it to look as if a landscaper had come in and done it. And she wasn’t keen on a lot of structure, so most of the built environment on the block exists for a purpose rather than as a design feature, although they now work as both.
Susi, who admits she was never really a gardener, drove the development of the garden with her creative talent. “I’m not a gardening buff and don’t ask me for botanical names. I like to work with colour, form and texture and figure out what works. Back then I couldn’t keep a pot plant alive, and I still can’t.
“I remember planting five oak trees as a representation of five friends from my nursing days, and they all died. But I am artistic, so creating a garden for me was about painting with plants.”
A huge bonus was that there were lots of big rocks on the property, and she acknowledges they wouldn’t have been able to create the garden they now have
without them. Or without Mal’s skill for tractors, diggers and the like. “He turned that swamp into our first pond; it has natural springs. Now we have four ponds and some catchment ponds. One has been turned into a waterfall. Water is so easy, you don’t have to weed it.”
Liddington Garden, as it is now known, covers about 10 acres (Susi says 10, Mal says 11), and over half of it is landscaped with expansive lawns and big trees.
Early on, Susi tried to grow roses because cottage gardens were fashionable and it was a style she loved, but roses are a challenge in the far north environment and it was hugely labour intensive. “I would have loved to grow paeonies, but I realised I had to plant for the location and when cottage style went out and subtropical became popular, we breathed a sigh of relief,” she laughs.
Her love of trees blossomed and she chose many different varieties for their colour and texture. She puts paulownias at the top of her favourites list, describing them as very giving trees. Native to central and western China, Paulownia tomentosa is a deciduous tree whose timber is often used for veneer, furniture, boxes, musical instruments and even clogs.
Susi, however, is more impressed with the tree’s very large leaves and fluffy lavender bracts. “I adore them. In spring, the whole background looks as if Peter Pan has been through here with a purple paintbrush.”
Susi planted the paulownia in granite-like soil, which didn’t bother them at all. They’re one of the fastestgrowing trees on the planet – a one-year-old seedling can be two to three metres high at the end of its first summer and it’ll add another couple of metres in the following year.
Maples are another firm favourite, dotted in amongst the other trees to add some extra vibrancy to the lush green. There are many colours and shapes, and they’re real attention-seekers.
So is Susi’s smoke bush ( Cotinus coggygria ‘Purpurea’), a small tree with standout colouring of intense, reddish-purple shades. It offers up plumes of smoky, bronzy pink flowers in summer and because it’s planted next to one of the wedding ceremony areas, it always has its hand up for a photo opportunity.
You’d have to be fond of something to plant as many of them as Susi has planted Viburnum ‘Lanarth’. She chose them to satisfy a requirement to plant an 82m hedge. “If I’m going to have 82 metres of hedge it better be glorious,” she says. And it will be.
Maples are another firm favourite, dotted in amongst the other trees to add some extra vibrancy to the lush green.
The hedge is still in its infancy but as the trees mature, the tiered layers of branches will be draped with white, lacy florets in late spring. Luckily, it’s quite easy to grow and tolerant of most conditions.
The gardens are spray-free as much as possible, although Mal uses copper and oil every couple of months to get rid of sooty mould. Organic fertiliser is used in the garden and everything is watered regularly.
There are plants here that Susi doesn’t love. She gets grumpy with the ponga – because they look “awful” when they drop their fronds and it’s hard work to keep them looking good. Native flax is another one that’s too labour intensive, and agapanthus, while a useful filler, always need deadheading right in the wedding season. And at the end of the season, the 500 mandarin trees need picking – more often than not in the rain.
“It would be more helpful to the wedding business if we could do snow here, but instead we only do wet,” she says.
One of the reasons for turning Liddington Gardens into a wedding venue was because Susi and Mal have three daughters, and Susi was expecting to have three weddings. “That’s actually why I originally planted roses everywhere.
The gardens are spray-free as much as possible, although Mal uses copper and oil every couple of months to get rid of sooty mould.
“Being involved with wedding styling, I found my niche. I’d tried just about every other art form known to man and got bored with it, but I’ve been doing this for 11 years now and I love it.”
In the past, Susi has done most of the work in the garden, but issues with her knees requiring surgery has changed all that. Mal has had to take over the gardening work and Susi has nothing but praise for the skill and effort he brings to the job.
They recently added a new reception facility to the venue – Shed 109 – and Susi loves it. It is a true shed, clad in corrugated iron with galvanised iron beams inside and a polished concrete floor.
The look is industrial as opposed to rustic, and is very contemporary and elegant. Susi says it has improved the quality of the weddings and has found she can style it to any genre.
“I do quite lavish looks because I want my brides to feel like princesses. Everything I use comes from the garden apart for this secret: I use very high quality faux flowers. I got sick of struggling trying to keep natural blooms alive in this humidity; the minute you take them out of the fridge they hang their heads. So I mix the silk flowers with foliage from the garden!”
She and Mal have many discussions about what will happen in the garden and they rarely disagree. “We sit outside and have a wine and a beer, and an embryonic idea will come to mind and we grow it together until it becomes a massive project.”
Despite the challenges and the work involved, Susi loves her living and working at Liddington. “I’ll never leave here. My ashes are going under a rock. I don’t hanker for any other kind of life.”