Julia Burbury tends the loose, lovely garden of her historic home “with Kate Sheppard at my shoulder”.

The owner of a historic Christchurch garden has often felt suffragist Kate Sheppard is urging her on

For eight years, Julia Burbury toiled in Kate Sheppard’s garden without any idea of its provenance. No one did, until 1993 when Christchurch was planning celebrations to mark the centenary of the suffragist’s successful petition to win New Zealand women the right to vote.

When it was discovered that the four-bedroom Ilam villa had been home to Kate and her husband Walter from 1888 to 1902, the house became the toast of the town. Centenary celebrations included a council-organised garden party complete with horse and carriage and period costumes. “It was absolutely brilliant,” says Julia, who was thrilled with the discovery. “I started looking at things differently and felt she was following me round the garden.”

Set back from the road behind a thick macrocarpa hedge, the house would have been rural in Kate’s day and it still has the feel of a country homestead.

When Julia and her former husband first saw the property in 1985, she only had eyes for the garden. “When we got home, I said we hadn’t looked upstairs. There actually is no upstairs but I hadn’t really been interested in the house. All I wanted was the land.”

With their two children at primary school, she was ready to take on a major project and this property, at 4321sqm with a tennis court and swimming pool, fitted the bill in every way.

“The garden had lovely established trees but it was quite plain,” she remembers. “The first thing I did was drag a hose around to mark out the shape of the garden edge, bringing it out from under the existing trees.” She packed the deep borders with shrubs and perennials, softening and fleshing out the garden, then draped the verandahs with wisteria and dressed the villa with wide floral skirts, extending the effect of the sloping slate roof and blending the house into its landscape. >

Three of four protected trees still grace the garden. A pin oak has fallen but the Lisbon cypress, London plane and golden ash have flourished to the point they have burst out of their protection order bands. Five dying walnuts were felled, making way for an exotic forest along the drive. “I got a truckload of sawdust and spread it on top of the lawn, then dug holes and planted rhododendrons,” says Julia, her farming background equipping her well.

“I’ve got my Yorkshire mother on one shoulder and Kate Sheppard on the other. They give me strength. When I took on this place myself after my separation in 2004, I felt Kate was with me, telling me that I could do this on my own,” she says. “I’m absolutely sure she would love the garden.” (But not so sure the champion of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union would condone her and partner Derek Smail’s evening tipple on the verandah.)

Julia spends “hours and hours” in the garden. “I have to be out there. If I’m having a bad day, it gives me an enormous feeling of peace. On Sundays, Derek heads to church and I head into the vegetable garden for an hour in the morning sun with the birds.”

Her favourite birds are (appropriately) heritage hens Nigella, Lavender, Poppy and Sesame who range the garden cleaning up slugs, snails and rampant violets, producing fertiliser as they go. “They are my best helpers,” says Julia, who sprays for neither bugs nor weeds and maintains composting is the secret of a garden’s success. >

Julia has planted three Camellia japonica ‘Kate Sheppard’ bushes, but says the garden already had a bush whose blooms she likes to think were picked by Kate and her fellow suffragists as symbols of their cause. “It’s a very old white camellia, which we just call ‘Kate Sheppard’s camellia’.” It certainly sounds like Kate: an energetic bloomer with a rebellious bent, throwing all sorts of colours including the occasional red or striped flower.

Julia’s gardening attitudes have become less conventional as the garden has evolved. “At first everything was pale pink and white, but these days I’m sneaking in a bit of claret and the odd orange azalea. I think I’m maturing.”

Over the years, Julia has shared her New Zealand Garden of Significance with the public, opening it for weddings, corporate functions and cocktail parties. But now she has decided that the time is right for a quieter life, so has put the house on the market and is preparing for the last of 33 Christmases in Kate Sheppard’s house. She and Derek plan to pack up and head to a little seaside house and small native garden at Kaiteriteri in Golden Bay.

She’s resigned to leaving it all behind, not tempted to take so much as a trillium with her. “I will grieve, but I feel proud of what I’ve created here.” And so she should, because it may be Kate Sheppard’s house but it’s Julia Burbury’s garden.

THIS PAGE The summer house beside the tennis court is draped with ‘Adélaïde d’Orléans’ and ‘Paul Transon’ roses, star jasmine and honeysuckle; Julia designed the summer house to complement the house with its Welsh slate roof; it’s a favourite spot for wedding photographs. OPPOSITE (clockwise from top left) Red may not be welcome in the garden but it is celebrated on the entrance verandah where a strident geranium sits with cane chairs painted Resene ‘Hot Chile’ to match the front door: “I repaint my chairs regularly. These ones were black, then white and now red.” Julia Burbury and Derek Smail with Sesame the hen. ‘Clair Matin’, a free-flowering and repeating David Austin rose, grows vigorously above Japanese anemones: “Later in summer a bright red dahlia pops up uninvited. I was avoiding reds but it looked so cheerful I left it,” says Julia.

THIS PAGE (from top) Huge fanned boughs of the 120-year-old golden ash make a sculptural backdrop to a “cup and saucer” of trimmed buxus and silver pear (Pyrus salicifolia). Blues of salvia and ‘Johnson’s Blue’ geraniums are repeated in a metal table setting on the north-west verandah, Julia’s favourite spot in summer with its curtain of Wisteria sinensis ‘Alba’ that she grew from seed.OPPOSITE (from top) Excavated soil from the swimming pool was used to make a little island in the stream in the 1960s; Julia put in the brick wall and steps and planted sentinels of Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’. Self-seeded mignonette grows among perennials and the faded ivory blooms of ‘Dimples’ roses.