Tranquil outpost of north Indian colour
Virginia Winder meets a couple bringing the colour of their childhood home to their tranquil New Plymouth garden.
From lockdown to lockdown, Bindu Sharma has been creating magic behind the scenes at the Himalayan Garden of Tranquillity.
‘‘The first lockdown (in 2020), I could hardly find her,’’ says husband Kam. ‘‘I look to see where she is and see these beautiful things she has come up with.’’
On one side of the immaculate hillside garden is a sign saying Chhatri Lane, a section they have aptly planted with a variety fruit trees.
‘‘When we were kids, we had orchards at Chhatri – apples and almonds,’’ he says, of the village in northern India.
Beneath that is another sign, saying ‘‘Fairy Garden’’, where Bindu has used a vivid palette to paint wooden borders, furniture, plinths and a picture of a person inspired by Lord Shiva sitting in a deep yoga position against a blue bamboo screen.
‘‘We are from India, so we love the colours.’’
Among splashes of orange, green, pink, blue and yellow are fairies, cherubs and whimsical ornaments. ‘‘From last lockdown to this lockdown, I developed it into a fantasyland.’’
Youngsters and the young at heart can discover the enchanting addition when the Sharmas open their property for the 34th Taranaki Garden Festival, from October 29 to November 7.
It will be the fourth time they have opened their garden for the festival, which is running in collaboration with the Taranaki Arts Trail and Taranaki Sustainable Backyards Trail.
The joint programme details 43 gardens, 84 artists and 27 backyards.
There’s even a touch of Middle
Earth in this serene garden.
On a slope beside the house, they have added a sauna that looks like a Hobbit hole ‘‘just to get the feeling of the tropics’’, she says.
Making their property feel like home has been hugely important to Bindu and Kam.
The house that watches over the land was constructed in 2006 and the main garden was developed in 2012.
Bindu planned the garden, landscape designer Chris Paul drew it up and the bones were laid by a hard landscaper.
Every single plant was put in by Bindu, a Spotswood College maths teacher who has a doctorate in botany, and Kam, a self-employed project manager.
They have created mini mountain ranges with tall peaks of the conifer, Thuja occidentalis ‘‘Smaragd’’, valleys of colourful shrubs, including mass plantings of Nandina ‘‘Gulf Stream’’, pittosporum yellow ‘‘Golf Ball’’ and fiery leucadendrons.
The 1.2-hectare property includes the garden and surrounding farmland where they have nine sheep and three lambs, providing a baa-baa-bleat soundtrack.
Most noticeable is the lawn, formed by two large circles that fit in with a curved garden wall and landscape beyond.
Their grass of choice is kikuyu because it stays green and doesn’t need watering.
‘‘When there are water restrictions, the other ones don’t survive,’’ Kam says.
However, they do have a small oval of rye grass in the entrance garden, which is encircled with 24 standard roses. There are 40 all up throughout the garden, which is also marked with wooden signs telling of the Sharmas’ origins.
Below the deck one reads, ‘‘Serenity of Bilaspur’’, which is a small town where she is from and, nearby, in a garden filled with fragrant plants, another reads, ‘‘Essence of Hareta’’, where he hails from. These places are in their home state in the Himalayas, noted on another signpost saying, ‘‘Spirit of Himachal’’.
‘‘Before this house was built, Bindu got really homesick,’’ says Kam, who first came to New Zealand by himself in 1997.
Bindu joined her husband in 1998 but returned to India in 1999. ‘‘I convinced her to come back in 2000.’’
The Horizon Heights property cured her of homesickness and Kam has also found a feeling of familiarity in this undulating landscape.
‘‘When we were kids, we would climb these hills and we thought we’d be at the top, but suddenly there would be bigger hills behind,’’ he says. ‘‘We never knew the landscape was flat, we thought the whole world was hills, hills, hills.’’
Kam says he was aged 20, when he first saw the sea and Bindu got her first glimpse at age 25, after they were married in 1989.
‘‘Now we look at the sea every day,’’ he says. ‘‘Once we came to New Plymouth we never left – we had the mountain and the sea.’’
Wandering through the garden, Bindu, can identify all the plants, but that’s not Kam’s strong point.
‘‘When someone asks me the botanical name, I say ‘Name neverhearda’ or ‘Planta neverseena’.’’
He’s more likely to have details about the climate.
During a quick garden tour on a changeable day, Bindu is asked a question: ‘‘What river is that we can hear?’’
‘‘That’s not a river – it’s rain,’’ she exclaims.
At first there are a few pockpock drops and then the rain sweeps in cold, hard and heavy as Bindu leads the way into her new fairy garden for shelter beneath loquat trees. Then it hails.
‘‘It’s like the rainy season in India,’’ she says.
It is surprising Kam didn’t foresee the pending downpour, because in 1997, when he arrived in New Zealand, he became a weather expert.
‘‘The first thing I noticed was that whether I am at the gas station, the dairy or the supermarket, people will ask me about the weather,’’ he says. ‘‘I thought maybe my face resembles a weatherman.’’
He watched all the TV weather reports but found no lookalike.
Still learning about Kiwi culture and its conversational nuances, he thought knowing about the weather must be one of the important things needed to gain employment.
One day, he landed an interview for a small car sales company in Auckland, so the night before he schooled up on the weather report.
‘‘Lo and behold, next morning I get to the interview and the first question I was asked was how was the weather? I could not believe my luck, I was all prepared for it.’’
He then recited all the temperatures around New Zealand, from Northland to Invercargill. ‘‘I thought I was doing well because the man looked amazed.’’
Kam then gave the rundown on rainfall for every place in the country, then the wind speeds, the isobars and high and low pressures. ‘‘Every detail I knew.’’
The interviewer was too polite to interrupt the report, but Kam didn’t get the job.
But he’s a man of perseverance: ‘‘As long as you are willing to work and work hard, you can achieve your dreams.’’
That includes developing a garden on an exposed hillside.
‘‘You need a lot of love and passion; sometimes it can be challenging,’’ he says.
‘‘For me it was like a canvas,’’ Bindu says, explaining how she chose the plants she loved. ‘‘And it worked.’’
She puts hours and hours into the garden, but still takes time to relax in one of 10 seating areas for a cuppa and often with Kam.
‘‘Sometimes we go for breakfast, and we may be there until 3 o’clock,’’ he says.
Both say the garden has been especially helpful while living through the Covid 19 pandemic. ‘‘It gives me tranquillity and it helps with our mental wellbeing,’’ Bindu says.
This story is published as a partnership between the Taranaki Daily News and the arts festival charitable trust TAFT.