HAPPY HARVEST

This Northland couple juggle two passions – gardening and sailing.

It’s sometimes tricky to catch Caroline and John Locke at home. “We only come home to get clean,” jokes Caroline, as when they’re not in the garden they are often out sailing in the steel yacht that is their other passion. Dovetailing the care of a 2ha productive garden with a sailing habit that takes them away from home for days on end would seem to be quite a challenge, but Caroline and John don’t describe it that way.

“Since Christmas we’ve spent half our time on the yacht and when we are at home we would only spend an hour or two a day in the garden anyway,” Caroline says.

“It’s designed to be easy-care,” adds John, “and it is getting that way.”

Now retired as a secondary school principal and executive assistant respectively, John and Caroline bought their land here 23 years ago to realise a dream of creating a garden that would allow them to be self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. The property is at historic Waimate North near Kerikeri, close to the Te Waimate Mission house. It is secluded and has deep volcanic soil – ideal for what they wanted.

“I’d always wanted to be able to grow all our own food,” Caroline says. “I came from a family where we always had our own home-grown vegetables.”

There are many different garden areas on this property, but the vegetable garden makes visitors gasp – the southern side of the sheltered potager is defined by a 20m-long, 3m-high wall of vintage bricks.

John and Caroline collected the bricks over 15 years. “This is a high wind zone and we needed consent, so we had to have it drawn up,” John says. “It’s actually a concrete block wall, faced with bricks.”

Caroline took night classes in landscape design to develop the skills she needed to create the potager and they built raised beds for their vegetables.

At right angles to the brick wall is an espaliered apple tree hedge, which Caroline loves. Because it loses its leaves in winter, John has planted a tōtara hedge behind it, which has taken a leisurely seven years to grow dense enough to be called a hedge.

“Most of our apples are heirloom varieties, and they seem to be very resilient to pests and diseases,” says Caroline.

The robust health of the fruit and vegetables grown here generally results in large surpluses, which John and Caroline love to give away. As well as supplying friends and family, they

contribute to a community “sharing shed” at the end of their road where neighbours deposit surplus produce for others to use. One of the couple’s pet sheep also helps deal with the surplus by eating pears and other fruit.

With the orchard and potager well established, John and Caroline have moved on to other garden projects. John started a woodland garden in 2014 and has since put in thousands of trees – cabbage trees, pūriri, toetoe, tōtara, a handful of kauri and kahikatea, 10 magnolias, and specimen trees of mātai and rimu. “Plus lots of hydrangeas and rengarenga lilies, which give great coverage, so I don’t have to weed and mow,” says John.

Caroline has long hankered for topiaries, but that idea doesn’t fit with the easy-care philosophy of the garden, so she is currently turning her attention to getting a glasshouse. It’s a plan that’s been on the drawing board for a while, but she could never decide where to put it.

“Then in June I had a flash of inspiration and I saw where it could go. So when we were visiting Dunedin a while ago we went to a firm down there that’s been making glasshouses for years and now it’ll go ahead.”

John, meanwhile, is on a mission to finish a new pond that has been dug out of a clay area, and he also wants to establish a lot more grasses in the woodland.

All of these ideas feed into their long-term plan for a sustainable lifestyle here. Their house, designed by architect son Tom, is a small, smart, single-level building with easy access, so age will not force them to make modifications.

And also on the drawing board is accommodation for helpers that will be built on the other side of the brick wall.

“We’ll always be here,” Caroline says. “I will always be gardening and John will always be sailing, and our legacy for our children and grandchildren will be the garden. In the long term, it’s the most important.”

ABOVE The boat shed at John and Caroline Locke’s Northland property is a reminder it’s possible to have more than one passion – they find time for sailing trips as well as gardening. RIGHT Partly inspired by Prince Charles’ walled garden at Highgrove, Caroline’s potager design had a lengthy gestation – she read, looked at photographs and took a landscaping night class: “I had it in my head for eight years before we started building – and yes, it did turn out as I expected.”

RIGHT The brick wall that shelters the potager is 20m long, used nearly 3000 bricks and took the bricklayers two to three weeks to build: “They did a damned fine job and they really enjoyed it,” says John.

LEFT FROM TOP John and Caroline’s dream of self-sufficiency has been fulfilled, yet the garden only takes them an hour or two a day when they are home. An espaliered ‘Williams’ Bon Chrétien’ pear is one of several varieties grown here including ‘Beurre Bosc’, ‘Triomphe de Vienne’ and nashi; one of the couple’s pet sheep enjoys the surplus. This terraced slope is a recent project with steps flanked by teucrium hedges, and olive trees at the bottom. ABOVE Built on the foundations of an old cowshed, this outdoor sitting space has been christened Altana, after the rooftop loggias of Venice; it includes a rill and waterfall and has wide rural views.

LEFT John created this area of the garden from a paddock by mowing sensible places to walk, while the spaces in between became garden beds which were planted with an eclectic collection of colourful plants including a red-foliaged maple, daylilies, a ‘Jean Marie de Montague’ rhododendron and prolific ‘Red Baron’ alstroemeria in the background.

ABOVE The view from the outdoor living platform takes in a copper beech, left, which was given to them by a dear friend, as well as a liquidambar, right; the tall trees in the background are a neighbour’s Cryptomeria japonica. RIGHT FROM TOP The couple’s grandchildren call this lichen-covered pūriri “the ghost tree”; the presence of hanging lichen indicates superior air quality, says John. Two kahikatea trees on the western boundary frame the setting sun and provide a backdrop for a blue garden bench. Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Frisia’ shows the bright golden tones that come before leaf fall; white watsonias grow beside it.

ABOVE John says he’s planted thousands of rengarenga lilies; they contrast nicely with the house, which was designed by their son Tom; rengarenga lilies and hydrangeas are John’s go-to plants for providing good coverage and reducing the need to mow. ABOVE RIGHT Caroline loves having the vegetable garden close to the house; next on her list to enhance their sustainable lifestyle is a glasshouse.