A new beginning in Marlborough
Looking for a fresh start, Moira Tolan had her heart set on a home with a view… until she saw one with a garden where she could make her mark.
A private green sanctuary provides an oasis for a post-quake refugee.
“Even if you have never gardened, just start and plant what you like, not what is in fashion. You’ll learn quickly and the reward is huge.”
Moira Tolan walked out onto her terraced hillside garden in Lyttelton with its enviable views of Banks Peninsula, sat on her new lawn and raised a glass of wine to her freshly renovated home. Cheers to all the work on the house and garden, she toasted. “It was worth it,” she thought, with a sigh of satisfaction. The next day, an earthquake shattered the lot.
Some years later, the former Christchurch refugee now starts each day with a spring in her step, cuppa in hand, while she strolls about her Blenheim half acre, 249km to the north. “Then I come in with a list of jobs and it goes from there.”
Strapping on a belt with secateurs in a pouch (and a file to keep the blades keen), trusty wheelbarrow to hand for the clippings, Moira is armed and ready to have fun in her hidden urban plot. “It’s the garden that keeps you sane,” she explains.
This garden in particular which wows people at first sight. Well, she felt the same, despite wanting her next post-quake home to have a view.
When Moira first looked it over, she was instantly smitten. “I thought ‘I could be very happy here’. I don’t need a view. The view is the garden,” she recalls. She encountered mature native and exotic trees that shelter lawn, shrubs, and herbaceous, rose-rich borders from the worst norwesterly wind and bestow a settled peaceful air. It’s all angled for maximum sun, the garden wrapping around the house like a welcoming embrace.
After ages spent agonising about her future, Moira bought the place within days of seeing it, succumbing to the charms of suburban Springlands.
It wasn’t the first time Moira developed a crush on a garden. Her horticultural passion dates from when she was a busy young mum in her 20s, on a garden tour of north Canterbury. “We visited a property tucked away down a long driveway and came to a wonderful garden. I had an epiphany and thought, ‘Wow, so this is what you can do’.”
From that day she was hooked. “I never lost that desire to go home and get planting.” To the extent that in the 1980s she developed rose fever, heritage roses her particular bug. There’s no vaccine for that affliction and she’s still happily adding to her collection.
Looking back to that time, she has some advice for newbies. “Even if you have never gardened, just start
Some years later, the former Christchurch refugee now starts each day with a spring in her step, cuppa in hand, while she strolls about her Blenheim half acre.
Smartly clipped hedges square off individual trees in the crisp green lawn, or curl like ribbons along the borders, to relax the strongly rectangular layout.
and plant what you like, not what is in fashion. You’ll learn quickly and the reward is huge. I find nowadays that it is best to do something most days, keep up the weeding and don’t have bare soil… it’s much easier with denser planting.”
Moira reckons her place was the first to be settled in the once-rural area, before other houses started sprouting. It had trees aplenty. Among venerable survivors in her semi-formal garden are two massive silk trees (Albizia), a tall sculptural t¯i kouka¯ (cabbage tree Cordyline australis), pittosporums to the max, a huge cherry and beech, maples, and standardised camellias on steroids, to name a few. At the entrance to the vege garden, Moira has doubled the number of standard liquidambars from three to six, for drama.
The underplanting consists of rhododendrons, azaleas, “loads of hydrangeas” and viburnums. Smartly clipped hedges square off individual trees in the crisp green lawn, or curl like ribbons along the borders, to relax the strongly rectangular layout.
She took the plunge, undeterred by its size and the bounteous evidence it would be a lot of work on her own. “The previous owners were obviously garden lovers who had done a beautiful job.”
Yet she saw scope for change, interesting ways to make her own mark. “It’s quite traditional but I’m changing that.”
During her first year, she took time to get to know her new patch. “It was so nice to be in a house that wasn’t broken. I thoroughly enjoyed that.” Gradually ideas formed, strengthened by the reassurance of the obviously fertile soil.
A keen cook who likes to grow her own ingredients, Moira got stuck into creating a large edible garden.
“The only thing I don’t grow is potatoes… my son provides me with those,” she adds. “I enjoy cooking. I try to grow everything I need to eat.”
Surplus is given away to friends, once Moira has bottled her preserves: jam from figs and berries, curious chutneys (pear and walnut a successful experiment), pickled olives, limoncello, marmalade, plum and quince paste… you get the picture.
Mulch, mulch, mulch with pea straw is her mantra when it comes to managing the garden. “And I really try not to use chemical sprays, I’m definitely organic.” In the vege garden she uses a baking soda spray for mildew, grows companion plants to deter pesky insects, “and I feed plants often with a seaweed based liquid food”. Roses get a winter copper spray, then it’s milk
Moira is having what she calls an ongoing dialogue with the herbaceous border. “Sometimes I feel it’s a bit dated and I think I’ll improve it.”
and water for black spot, “and they get a good feed of seaweed tonic throughout the flowering season”.
She tweaked fences for privacy and upgraded outbuildings to match the house’s style. She planted climbers to cover the old garage and shed “and now that area near the house is completely transformed”.
She’s having what she calls an ongoing dialogue with the herbaceous border. “Sometimes I feel it’s a bit dated and I think I’ll improve it.”
Moira plans to build more raised beds to make cultivating her veges easier on the back. And a water feature could be just the thing to improve her view from the lounge. “I’m looking forward to doing that,” she says. “Things get old and need replacing.”
Gardens are never static “and you’re never without something to do and something to admire or create”.
To the existing orchard of loquats, limes and enormous lemons, all tricky to grow on her sea-breezy hillside, she has added three mandarins. “I planted a passionfruit and it’s grown like a triffid,” she says happily. She has high hopes for a fledgling pomegranate, which has borne some fruit though they haven’t ripened enough to eat. But it’s early days.
Now retired after a lifetime working with intellectually disabled people, Moira has more time and energy for her garden. People queued at the gate during Garden Marlborough to see the fruits of her labours (she’s not opening her garden this year, but the festival is on from November 4-7, gardenmarlborough.co.nz).
“I’m loving it in Marlborough,” she says. “It’s got such a great climate. By 9am the sun will be shining, and I know I can be in the garden all day, even in winter.” After four years here, Moira is in heaven.