A timeless, pretty Northland property created with an interior design sensibility.

A sweeping arc of multi-coloured flowers is just one of the enchantments of this exuberant Kerikeri garden

As Anita Murray meanders through the Kerikeri garden she has imagined into being, the breeze rustles the leaves of eucalyptus trees that, in these subtropical climes, have rocketed to dizzying heights. All is calm. Until a pheasant with its splash-of-red face and ramrod tail dashes from the shrubbery. “They fly out and give us a hell of a fright,” she laughs.

Anita and her husband Campbell relocated from Auckland in the mid-1990s. Campbell had grown up here and straight away, got stuck in at the mandarin orchard they owned on neighbouring land – but Anita floundered. “It was hard leaving my friends behind for this huge change in lifestyle,” she says. Then, a project came to the rescue: the interior designer set her mind to doing what she does best.

Working alongside Auckland architect Crofton

Umbers, the couple began to craft a home that would have a feeling of timelessness – an anchor in the midst of the 6ha of bare sloping paddocks. Today, the house with its multiple gables, pretty bay windows and a wraparound verandah has both elegance and substance. Its white stucco finish looks stately yet fresh against a garden where pathways are delineated by clipped westringia, buxus and teucrium hedges, which curl around each entrance in a koru form. There are colourful borders and roses, befitting of the English style.

Anita admits she knew very little about plants when she started. “I approached the garden as any interior designer would – I thought first about the way it would connect with the house.” That meant a front and back courtyard and decks on both sides. An entry courtyard to the south is fringed in trimmed buxus for a formal welcome; to the north, the feeling is more relaxed with a gravel courtyard planted in lavender and catmint. To heighten the Englishness, a pergola dripping with wisteria can be seen from the sitting room while thunbergia, white mandevilla and petrea clamber over a curved cloister at the end of a 20m-long, rose-covered tunnel leading from the kitchen. “Beneath the tunnel is a wonderfully cool place to set up the lunch table in summer,” says Anita.

Alongside this area is the formal herb garden. “I asked my son Matthew to draw me up a geometric shape – and then I asked him to dig it.” Beds of thyme, rosemary, garlic, chives and marjoram are edged with hedges and each is punctuated by a standard ‘Graham Thomas’ rose.

Deciding what to do with the gardens closest to the house was easy – “I wanted each room to have a view” – but what to do further out presented a problem. A circular border seemed like a solution. “I based it on shades of the colour wheel,” says Anita

Choosing specimens by eye, she set about creating an 80m floral rainbow which arcs from pink (with plants such as penstemon and petunias) through white and green (“I have gypsophila and bog-standard sage as it gives height and looks pretty”), yellow and orange (alstroemeria and pelargonium) and finally to a red section with camellias, vireya rhododendrons and carpet roses.

Slowly but surely Anita conquered this ambitious border, but another idea didn’t quite go according to plan. Further out in the radius of the garden, the Murrays decided on a pond as a focal feature – a romantic notion that made sense considering diggers had unearthed myriad boulders that were hidden in this former riverbed. Those boulders were why the couple called the property Seronera. “We once holidayed at a lodge of that name that was built on a rocky outcrop in the Serengeti,” says Anita.

The title stuck but the pond proved a mistake. In fact, even though the couple spent years building an enclosure of boulders then lining the ground, making the pond bigger, then smaller, then bigger again, it never held a drop of water. “The pūkeko would pick at the liner and make holes – it all just got too hard.”

The pond was abandoned in favour of a white plaster fountain which now tinkles in the background as couples come to pledge their troth and cite their vows beneath a covered pavilion and archway strewn

‘I approached the garden as any interior designer would’

strewn in white gardenia. “We had so many people ask if they could get married in the garden, we decided to create an area especially for weddings,” says Anita, who is also a celebrant.

Anita squeezes in 20 hours of gardening a week between gigs as an interior designer and wedding organiser, along with her faithful sidekick Sassy, the birman cat and Campbell who helps out too.

She has learned a lot by being hands-on, and faithfully records when plants are in flower in a little blue notebook.

Having planted maples, weeping cherries and magnolia, she is also mastering the use of foliage texture as part of her palette. A wedding cake tree near the classical pavilion is still tiny after five years, but hers is a long-term vision. “It will look spectacular when it is mature enough to have layers and layers of white flowers,” she says.

No longer uncomfortable in the countryside, Anita is happiest with her fingers plunged into the rocky soil. The property may take its name from an African lodge and its design inspiration from an English country garden but when Anita lies in bed at night and hears the kiwi call, she knows she is home.

THESE PAGES Since their home was built 25 years ago, Anita and Campbell Murray have developed their country garden, called Seronera, from bare paddocks; fringing the circular lawn is a colour-coded border where French lavender is punctuated by standard roses ‘Seafoam’ and ‘Albéric Barbier’; low-growing gardenias are planted in pots and on top of the columns, and an Azalea mollis ‘Carmen’ blooms in the orange section.

THIS PAGE The breakfast deck as seen from the herb garden is a wonderful spot to enjoy early morning birdsong. OPPOSITE (from top) Fortuitously, these self-sown foxgloves have grown in the pink part of the border; a north-facing gravel garden is surrounded by buxus, English lavender hedges and two weeping cherry trees. Anita spends her time between the garden and her interior design business while Campbell, an orchardist, is entrusted with the ride-on mower.

THESE PAGES (clockwise from top) The pretty English-style homestead is framed by foliage including a magnificent Magnolia campbellii ‘Alba’ in the foreground: “It was a must-have with a husband called Campbell,” says Anita. This stone sculpture is the focal point at the end of the 20m-long rose tunnel, surrounded by purple petrea flowers and red Mexican blood flowers (Phaedranthus buccinatorius). ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’ roses clamber up the verandah posts.

THESE PAGES The herb garden where Anita grows rosemary, thyme, garlic and marjoram; orange-flowering pelargoniums and various-coloured nasturtiums climb the tepee poles while the sunny yellow blooms of ‘Graham Thomas’ rose can be seen to the left; the crabapple ‘Gorgeous’ is used as a focal point.

THIS PAGE (clockwise from top) The sweeping croquet lawn is used by family when they visit: “Slight cheating may occur – excuses, laughter and denials are all part of the fun,” says Anita. Bangalow palms provide shade near the fountain and pond. Sassy, the birman, is often by Anita’s side: “We call her the head gardener.” OPPOSITE Eucalypt trees tower beyond the 20m-long tunnel, cloaked in ‘Albéric Barbier’ roses.