An arty Okato makeover to love
Virginia Winder visits an Okato garden that’s had an artistic makeover ready for the 30th Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular.
At first you don’t see the art.
But walk and stare and you will slowly become aware of sculptures emerging from garden beds, standing against fences, poised on plinths and hanging from trees.
Along with the art, Maria van der Poel and husband Hugo have a garden that’s filled with sculptural elements provided by clipped bushes, graceful trees and the drama of native bush.
The long-time dairy farmers have a lifestyle block on Ruakere Rd, where they moved 14 years ago. Around the colonial-style home they had built, is a property filled with gardens, vegetables, fruit trees, beehives, livestock and a bush backdrop.
For seven years, the garden has been open for the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular, the first two as a ‘‘garden in development’’.
This year, it’s been embellished and is part of a new section for the festival called Art in Gardens. It is one of eight gardens scattered around Mt Taranaki that will have art on show from October 27 to November 5.
Maria’s brother Mark Joyce and his partner Chin Chye owned the Koru Contemporary Art gallery in Hong Kong, but when it wound up they had art destined for storage – or a Taranaki garden.
Chin and Maria were going for a wander around the back of the property when he exclaimed: ‘‘My god, Maria, look at all this garden. You know what you need – you need some art pieces.’’
Next, Maria and Hugo were on a plane to Hong Kong to look at the art on offer. ‘‘It was quite exciting,’’ she says, remembering looking at the mostly sculptural works.
Now they have works from 10 New Zealand artists and one Italian sculptor dotted around the garden. ‘‘I probably don’t realise how lucky I am,’’ Maria says.
When they first moved to the property, it was the existing trees that created the shape of this place. And the wind. ‘‘It used to be southeast, now we are getting them from the north-east,’’ she says.
One of her cherry blossom trees by the drive was blown over by those wicked winds about four years ago. ‘‘I didn’t enter the festival the next year – I ran 42km instead,’’ she says, citing the Auckland Marathon.
Sitting in the dining room, the scent of limes floats through the air in Maria’s kitchen.
She’s just picked a bunch of the green fruit off her Tahitian lime tree in the country garden and is juicing them ready for freezing. ‘‘You can never have too much lime juice, I say,’’ she says.
Maria describes herself as an outdoors person and if she’s forced to stay inside through sickness or weather, she finds herself itching to get back into the garden. But she didn’t always love to garden.
She grew up at Rahotu, where her parents made the kids work in the pea or potato patch or weed the vegetable garden.
Despite her early disinterest, gardening seeped into her veins, just like her parents before her.
At Okato, rich volcanic soil, calf shavings as mulch around the back and bark at the front, have helped this garden grow and keep it in tow.
Heading outdoors on a sundrenched spring day, Maria takes us on a whirl of the garden, pausing first at a sculpture by Terry Stringer called Autumn Spring. Then we’re on to her own sculptures – 14 rocket-shaped Buxus ‘‘Graham Blandy’’ and on to Magnolia ‘‘Genie’’, which flowers twice a year.
The blown-out cherry blossom bed has been reworked and is now Hugo’s favourite garden because it’s full of all sorts, including hostas, hydrangeas, lavender, osteospermums and other ‘‘beefriendly plants’’.
She points out a piece by Rudy van der Pol called Cloverleaf Orbital, that moves in the wind.
Under an oak tree are Chatham Island forget-me-nots that get rave reviews by visitors in the festival and nearby is a koru-shaped steel sculpture called Zepher by Gary Baynes.
Not far away is a woman’s torso made from glass by Italian Simone Cenedese and beyond this is a lush lawn that was an old tennis court when they first moved in.
They had to do quite a bit of clearing out when they got there. ‘‘There was a massive camellia as big as the house – it was huge.’’
We’re on to the citrus area, home to the just-stripped lime, a Lisbon lemon, oranges, mandarins, roses given by her daughter’s friend and garlic behind.
Clivia flowers glow orange beneath a rimu tree, a tiny pink camellia gifted by Abbie and Mark Jury is in full flower and an original puriri is graced with a giant basalt necklace by Chris Charteris.
‘‘This was just a paddock when we first came,’’ Maria says. ‘‘We wanted to preserve the trees. It was my husband’s idea to come out here. We spent 18 years down the road farming on Hugo’s parent’s farm.’’
Fittingly, we pass by a lush planting of tractor seat ligularia and head on to a new garden, slowly filling out with more beefriendly plants and home to Rick Swain’s bronze sculpture ‘‘Origins’’.
Behind this are three weeping birches, which were a gift from Maria’s brother for the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary. ‘‘They are quite an art piece in winter.’’
Bricks and railway sleepers line the garden beds, which float like islands in a sea of green lawns cut by Maria on a ride-on mower.
Old cabbage trees that flower during the festival stand tall above bird boxes with high occupation rates. These were made by Maria’s father and attract sparrows and starlings.
Beneath a pohutukawa that flowers yellow in summer in an urn-shaped ceramic work by Wendy Hoare that matches perfectly with the orange-brown bark of a gum tree behind.
By this is a cream-burgundy magnolia in full bloom, which is now known as ‘‘Abby’s wedding tree’’ because she was married on the property in September last year and they got some great photos beneath its branches.
Then we reach the start of the bush walk, which is plump with puka, cabbage trees, rimu and karaka, of which there are many. There’s also an art work featuring the lollipop heads of Maria, Hugo, and their three daughters, Johanna, Megan and Abby. One has a grumpy face, but Maria’s not saying who that represents.
She points out the orchard, featuring apples and peaches, a paddock for holding calves and another sculpture, this one a turquoise-coloured cast bronze form called Whale Form II by Tanya Ashken.
There’s a lot more to see in this property, including another Rudy van der Pol work by the raised vegetable garden and ‘‘Quake Drum’’ by potter Cheryl Lucas. She was making this in Christchurch on February 22, 2011, and when the 6.3 quake struck she had to leave the work and couldn’t restart for over a week.
But don’t expect the art to jump out at you as you wander through the garden – it’s a treasure hunt of works, artfully placed by creative gardeners.
You can never have too much lime juice, I say. Maria van der Poel