Through the Looking Grass /
Captivating with texture and grass
A deep border planted entirely with Miscanthus grasses appears to be impassable: dense green walls above head height conceal whatever lies beyond. However, each clump has only a narrow base and is quite flexible; it’s possible to press forward between the plants and on through enclosing foliage with virtually no resistance – a trick of smoke and mirrors…
Some years ago I saw a photograph of Miscanthus sinensis ‘ Gracillimus’, one of the best large ornamental grass species, growing amongst the equally tall Hydrangea paniculata ‘Kyushu’ with cone-shaped cream flowerheads. They associated well together with contrasting form and foliage but similar colours – and both are from East Asia.
There’s a clue in the names: in Latin sinensis refers to China; and the hydrangea selection in 1926 by English plantsman Collingwood Ingram was later named for Japan’s Kyushu Island by his great friend Anne Berry, a Gisborne resident until last year at the age of 99.
This combination of grass and hydrangea makes an attractive screen in front of a woodstore and utility area in my own garden for nine months of the year, as the grass bleaches to a straw colour and stays standing through winter. Its growth cycle is different than most of our native grasses. It shoots up rapidly to its full height in spring and early summer, opens even taller flowerheads with coppery plumes like sweet corn in early April, and can be cut down to near ground level in early September just before new shoots emerge. Perennial grasses such as this are often used in the Northern Hemisphere’s prairie planting style of recent decades, however they’re not as well known here. Unfortunately I don’t have room for more ‘Gracillimus’, but seven of the smaller selection Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ are thriving along the driveway – ideal companions for dark purple Salvia ‘Amistad’ and green sea holly Eryngium agavifolium.
A large group of ‘Gracillimus’ is spectacular if space allows, and friends were impressed last year to see about 70 of these grasses planted en masse in a Halswell garden. Wharariki is the home of Tim and partner Heather, Tim’s daughter Poppy, and their two dogs: good mates Louis, a Staffordshire terrier and Ruby, Poppy’s lively young pug. Managing Texture Plants, one of Canterbury’s best nursery and landscape practices with his brother Hamish in Prebbleton, Tim has access to larger stock numbers and unusual plant species. He has also had the confidence to roll out this monolithic planting of Miscanthus around a big rectangular lawn near the front terrace. It’s a grand gesture in the landscape, and its simplicity makes a perfect foil to the steelwork, concrete and cedar used in the construction of their home.
The grasses are aligned with the house but not in a grid: they’re in blocks of five like the dots on a dice. It took several tries to perfect the spacing of two and a half metres; close enough for the clumps to merge slightly but also retain their individual shapes. Annual trimming by Tim in early September is with a chainsaw – nothing tentative about it – and the cut stems are spread out around the plants as mulch. Relatively drought tolerant, Miscanthus recovers quickly after watering.
The house design is by multi-award-winning Christchurch architectural designer Nic Curragh, one of his first projects after returning from Canada in 2010 after 14 years as a special effects designer and builder in the film industry. Nic’s website notes how the residence was ‘designed to offer its owners a play on the classic European Farm Barn conversion’. The house is a two-storey rectangular block clad in cedar, with a mono-pitch roof angled to the sun. Tim and former partner Kath were both design conscious and looking for a strong house, physically and aesthetically, which would attend to passive heating and cooling principles and keep their home environment comfortable in the Canterbury climate. The results are extremely successful, including elements such as windows of different shapes and sizes, a recessed portico, and
external sliding timber screens to permit or exclude seasonal direct sunlight; solid concrete walls and floors for thermal mass; skylight windows to vent warm air upwards in summer and draw in cooler air at ground level; and rooftop solar water heating – so effective that the backup power to the hot water cylinder has yet to be used.
Tim was keen to see generous wall space for art, and this has been beautifully achieved in some truly impressive spaces, linked by smaller-scale enfolding timber stairs, walkways and finely crafted built-in timber joinery. The Great Room and kitchen are double height to around 6 m, and the mezzanine level and upper walkway is supported in part by massive 40 cm square hardwood beams sourced years before by Tim, sandblasted, and lowered into metal brackets. The ground floor living room with woodburner is separated from the kitchen-dining by a textured concrete wall: temporary formwork of Douglas fir planks was stripped off leaving woodgrain patterns in the surface. The relatively low ceiling of this room is the underside of the mezzanine; at each end white walls soar up into the main vault, lit from the side by natural light through vertical glass panels. The result is a comfortable, almost contemplative space, watched over by a New Zealand falcon – a preliminary study drawn by Golden Bay artist Indigo Wise. A horizontal glass panel at floor level under a built-in daybed redefines the conventions of a window seat.
Tim, Kath, Nic and different craftspeople worked hands-on with builder Andrew Timbs, including on the textured concrete walls. ‘We re-did all the concrete work after 4 September 2010 – in some ways we were lucky to have a second go at it.’ Construction overlapped the most acute period of Canterbury’s earthquakes, and they have left poignant reminders. The magnetism of iron-rich minerals in molten lava aligns along Earth’s magnetic field, becoming locked in place as the lava cools and hardens, and preserving a ‘memory’ of the field at that point in time. Similarly, the polished concrete floor at Halswell was poured soon after 22 February 2011, and acquired a permanent memory of those first months of aftershocks as it hardened: delicate branching networks of fine lines across the now solid material, like
The grasses are aligned with the house but not in a grid: they’re in blocks of five like the dots on a dice.
character lines on skin just under the gleaming surface – a curiously light touch from such powerful forces.
A tall Black bamboo grove and the house’s front entrance are well protected from the south by an attached garage. Its concrete north wall is also patterned with woodgrain, and separated from the house’s south wall by a narrow garden sheltering Muehlenbeckia complexa. A wedge shape at first glance, the garage is insulated with soil which sweeps up the sloping roof towards the main house and reaching its highest point above the front entrance door. A lighter soil mix supports the coastal and waterside groundcover Selliera radicans, which thrives with an occasional dressing of salt. It can also be drenched in salt water to deter weeds – natural rocky outcrops topped with Selliera in Golden Bay (one of the family’s favourite areas of the South Island) were an inspiration for the garage’s form. Inside, pre-stressed concrete beams support a macrocarpa timber lining, and then poured concrete, waterproof membrane, plastic tile and finally woven cloth under the soil mix.
The roof is also an example of subtle geometry called a hyperbolic paraboloid – a curved plane twisting in two dimensions which offers loadbearing strength and stability. The Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) whose great basilica church Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) in Barcelona is nearing completion after nearly 145 years, used this and many other geometric forms he observed in nature – leaves, buttresses on tree trunks and even the webbing between our thumb and forefinger when they’re stretched wide apart. The house was deservedly the regional winner for its size category in the 2015 ADNZ Architectural Design Awards.
Tim and Kath lived in a smaller Lockwood-style house just along the driveway for 11 years before building, so the property is well established, with Knights Stream thickly planted along the boundary. Tim has been transplanting exotic fan palms next to the driveway recently: Washingtonia, Chamaerops, and Jubaea chilensis the Chilean wine palm
– some are looking a little thoughtful but with their solid fibrous roots and some careful watering a new set of leaves will emerge. There’s also a passive thermal greenhouse, sheltering banana trees, black passionfruit, peppers and capsicums under cover. Nearly eight tonnes of fresh water in tanks absorb and slowly release warmth. ‘It doesn’t need
The family loves the grasses’ character, and particularly appreciates how the foliage is almost never still.
heating in winter and didn’t drop below 7 degrees last year,’ says Tim.
The soil is one of the best in Canterbury, a Templeton silt loam, and two vegetable patches keep the family well supplied; fresh produce and kitchen surplus are also enjoyed by Ginge, their kunekune pig. Sunflowers beside his paddock were blooming when I visited, grown from last year’s seed crop in a little over two months. Back towards the main house a hedge of Podocarpus totara ‘Ardmore Green’ follows the line of the driveway; tōtara and grasses are the garden’s main ‘bone structure’ next to the house. The tōtara changes direction opposite the front door to follow the east wall of the house, and the Miscanthus grasses only come into view at the end of this hedge, so their impact is all the more impressive. The family loves the grasses’ character, and particularly appreciates how the foliage is almost never still: the lightest breeze has an effect, and in a strong easterly the plants surge and hiss like the ocean.