Warm climes and skilful attention allow a Kerikeri garden to flourish.

A surprisingly young Kerikeri garden flourishes due to temperate climes and skilful attention

As a teen, Terry Kilmister struggled to understand his parents’ obsession with gardening. His mother had a flourishing, colourful flower garden; his father tended the vegetable patch, priding himself on growing kingsize tomatoes and colossal carrots.

Terry would have rather been at the beach and vowed he’d never have a garden of his own. “The garden just ate up the weekend time… it got in the way of a good life.”

What a difference a couple of decades makes. Terry married Susan, a Canadian with a gardening pedigree of her own (her mother still gardens in Canada at 88 and her father was a grower too, of hundreds of acres of barley) and the pair have enjoyed gardening in every home they’ve owned.

Now they have planned, planted and finessed a new subtropical garden in Kerikeri – a step-up from anything they’ve created before.

The couple were living in Titirangi, Auckland and pondering retirement. “I said to Susan, ‘If we were to move, where would you want to move to?’ and without taking a breath she said, ‘Nowhere colder than Auckland,’” recalls Terry, noting with a grin that in her home province of Alberta the mercury can fall to minus 40 degrees Celsius.

That’s how they landed up in Kerikeri, where they bought a 3000sqm section with excellent volcanic soil. Importantly it was flat, so gardening would be easier for Terry, who has artificial knees after a lifetime of cricket wicket-keeping and skiing.

Thoughts first turned to the house they’d build. “I’m very keen on mid-century American modernism,” says Terry. “One architect I really like is Richard Neutra, who followed on from the previous great architects of the day like Frank Lloyd Wright.” Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs captivated Terry. “I drew what I thought would be our version of that kind of house and showed it to Box [an Auckland architecture company] who took it from there.”

While the house was being built, the couple worked with local landscape architect Christine Hawthorn on the garden plan. Terry says they wanted a “garden as a piece of art – it’s about design, and how it suits the house and adds to the house and how the house adds to the garden”.

Their single-level home has wide sliding doors to let in the breeze and abundant glass that offers

generous views of the garden in all directions, with paths and boardwalks leading from the house, inviting visitors to explore.

The couple restricted themselves to a consistent subtropical plant palette – and they’ve come to love the drama, variety and fragrance of subtropical flowers. “From December, we have an abundance of hibiscus flowers. Our deck is surrounded by gardenias. There are alstroemerias and cannas. We’ve got lots of flowers but just not the traditional English-style flowers,” says Susan.

Terry’s happy place is under the brugmansias, with their enormous, drooping trumpet-shaped blooms. “We’ve got a yellow one and two pink ones. If you stand in the midst of those in the evening when it’s been a warm day with no wind, the fragrance is just wonderful. It’s like bubble gum.”

The brugmansias, like many other subtropicals, grow at a triffid-like pace, which means the garden looks quite established after just three years. The Kilmisters have given nature a helping hand, however. The day they moved into the house, half a dozen mature bangalow palms were lifted in by a hiab, giving the garden instant structure.

Mowing, watering, weeding and trimming the edges keeps Susan and Terry busy. They estimate that in spring they’d spend about three hours a day between them in the garden.

Susan battles the kikuyu. Says Terry: “I can’t get down on my knees because of my artificial knees,

‘I ALWAYS THINK OF THIS GARDEN AS A TRIBUTE TO MY MUM AND DAD. I JUST WISH THAT THEY WERE AROUND TO SEE IT’

it’s just too painful. Susan’s on her knees with her special little digger, making sure that the kikuyu doesn’t invade the gardens. It’s a really big job. I admire her tenacity.” The flip side of kikuyu’s persistence is that it’s made “a real trooper of a lawn”, says Susan, after their attempt at growing rye grass failed. “The kikuyu just ate it up,” says Terry.

In the first year, when much of the garden was newly planted, it hardly rained for three months. “So every morning each of us was doing an hour of watering and every evening we were doing probably an hour and a half to make sure nothing died. It was just a mission,” Susan says.

It’s not all hard graft though – there’s time to savour new plant discoveries. Their favourites include fragrant blue ginger; the dinner plate fig,

Q&A

Something that’s worked well: Putting down bark chips. As I dig down to see how much is left, I see the most wonderful rich mulch that’s forming underneath that, which will be so good for the garden. When it starts to weather it gets a lovely texture and colour and it will be our saviour as we age, in terms of weeds. (Terry)

We couldn’t have done it without: Backpackers from one of the hostels in Kerikeri for doing heavy jobs. We’ve had the nicest young tourists helping us out. (Susan)

We’re hoping: That when the NZ House & Garden House Tour is on (February 14), the blue ginger will be out. It’s wonderful. (Susan) We’ve discovered: Weeds are a problem in our mondo grass and Spanish shawl. We wouldn’t plant those again. (Terry)

Susan and Terry Kilmister

(Ficus dammaropsis) with its enormous pleated leaves, and the Brazilian tree fern (Schizolobium parahyba) which is a 5m bare stick in winter and pops out a beautiful, feathery umbrella in spring. “They drop all their fronds in autumn. They’re a real mess to clean up,” says Terry who, unlike his teenage self, no longer resents hours spent tidying the garden.

In fact, the garden is a constant reminder to Terry of his green-fingered parents. When his mum died, Terry was left enough of an inheritance to build this garden. “For me, I always think of this garden as a tribute to my mum and dad. I just wish that they were around to see it, they’d just love it.”

THIS PAGE Susan and Terry Kilmister love the drama of the Alcantarea imperialis ‘Rubra’ bromeliads in their Kerikeri garden; the flower spikes grow to more than 2m tall. OPPOSITE The two Brazilian tree ferns have grown at an astonishing rate; they look like lanky sticks in winter before producing umbrella-like foliage each year; other plants include (from left) bangalow palms, Australian grass tree (Xanthorrhoea johnsonii), star jasmine, pink SunPatiens (an impatiens variety), a cycad, monstera and a dinner plate fig.

THESE PAGES (from left) Terry and Susan with Rory, an ocicat, who is “the best garden friend you can imagine”, says Terry, following them when they garden and play fighting the lomandra grasses. A view of the house from the road; Kerikeri landscape gardener David Monks has helped with this part of the garden and gave the couple the volcanic rock; to its left are Indian hawthorn (Rhaphiolepsis indica) with three sugar cane palms (Dypsis baronii) behind; the square hedging is corokia.

THESE PAGES (from left) Gardenias surround the deck on which sit Palma outdoor chairs and a table from ByDezign Furniture in Auckland; the scarlet banana (Musa coccinea) plants that screen the Kilmisters’ bedroom don’t fruit but they have a beautiful red flower. Terry tending the garden on the south side of the house, which includes ligularia and SunPatiens.

THIS PAGE (clockwise from top) Local landscaper Ali Mills built the rock wall and path and has been a constant helper in the garden; the path is framed by mondo grass and light green ‘Tinkerbell’ agapanthus grows above the rock wall. In the background is an Australian frangipani and a brugmansia with pink trumpet-shaped flowers. The dragon trees will soon outgrow their corten steel planter boxes and need to be transplanted. OPPOSITE The curving garden beds were designed to offset the squareness of the house and lead visitors round the garden; California elephant ears (Alocasia gageana) and black taro grow at right.

THIS PAGE (from top) The ceramic piece on the bench is by Sang-Sool Shim and Keum-Sun Lee, winners of the 2018 Portage Ceramic Awards; the dining room looks out onto lush plantings of sugar cane palms and a dinner plate fig. A red Morris & James urn sits on the deck along with a barbed wire ball from Wire Art. OPPOSITE The boardwalk winds through the bangalow palms, which were lifted on site the day the couple moved in; the dinner plate fig, with its enormous leaves, is one of the garden’s standout plants.