The splendour of NZ gardens

More than 50 of Aotearoa's loveliest gardens feature in the new hardcover book New Zealand Gardens to Visit.

It's the work of former NZ House and Garden journalist Rosemary Barraclough and photographer Juliet Nicholas, who travelled from Northland to Southland capturing the stories of gardeners and their beautiful properties.

The idea for a book had been bubbling away for many years, Barraclough told Kathryn Ryan.

“I'd got to know all these amazing, beautiful gardens around the country, and also got to know the gardeners as well.

“And thought that because a lot of them were open to the public would be great to have them all in one place. A lot of people don't know that these gardens are accessible. And that it was a big project. And I had a big job."

Then along came Covid and Barraclough was made redundant by Bauer Media Group.

“So, I thought, perhaps there's a silver lining to this and I talked to Juliet, who I'd known for years, about the project. She's a fantastic garden photographer. And she was keen to do it with me.”

New Zealand Gardens to Visit features 56 gardens across the various micro-climates around the country.

It was quite a task to narrow the list down, Barraclough says.

“When I thought about the book, I thought we'd have about 25 but it just grew and grew and some areas, in particular, it was so hard to choose.

“For example, Canterbury it was an awful job choosing and we ended up including 12 gardens from there because there's just such so many amazing gardens.”

Some clusters of gardens worked well together in the book, says Nicholas, who has focused her lens on flowers and plants for three decades.

“For example, in Marlborough, we've got four lovely gardens, that you could easily visit over a short period of time.”

Gardeners tend to be cut from a particular cloth, Barraclough says.

“Gardeners are generally lovely people. There's something about a person who dedicates their life and some of these people have, put decades and decades into gardens, that they sort of have a long view of things and they're patient and kind and they share their gardens with people."

One such example is Broadfield Garden in Christchurch, created by David Hobbs.

“This was a fascinating garden because it's entirely planted with either New Zealand natives or variations of plants, cultivars that have been bred in New Zealand.

“It's got a very unique flora. And it is on the outskirts of Christchurch near Pendleton, so only a half-hour drive from central Christchurch, it's flat land. David began it 20 or 30 years ago and included Robert Watson, a local landscape designer in Christchurch, to help with the layout and then got planting.

“[Broadfield] is an extraordinary garden laboratory and a museum, almost a living museum of New Zealand natives. And it's stunning, absolutely stunning. And a wonderful way to learn about plants our plants in this country,” Nicholas says.

Ōmāio Garden, in the far north is another of Nicholas's favourites.

“It's a beautiful garden an hour and a half north of Auckland on the coast at Matakana owned by Liz Morrow. And this was an extraordinary garden."

The te reo Māori word 'Ōmāio' translates as 'a place of peace and tranquility' and it has those things in bucketloads.”

It is a magical experience to be in a garden that's planted among ancient and giant native trees, Nicholas says.

“Kauri, pūriri, totara, all 1,200 to 1,500 years old... the experience, the emotional experience of going to that garden was extraordinary."

At the other end of the country, Barewood Garden is a standout, Barraclough says.

“Both Juliet and I have recently been to [the festival] Garden Marlborough and Barewood there is an absolutely incredible garden,

“Carolyn Ferraby has created this beautiful garden. Carolyn was a florist in a past life. And she is an absolute master of creating beautiful colour arrangements and flower displays in her borders with lots of foliage and lots of beautiful pastel colours and so on,” she says.

Paloma Gardens, in the Manawatu-Whanganui region, is the creation of Clive and Nicki Higgie.

“It's a very idiosyncratic garden, and it's very surprising you're in the middle of farmland and you come upon this huge garden, which has really been driven by Clive's passions for different plants over the years.

It pretty much started off because they grew a whole lot of Washingtonia palms from seed, maybe 30 or 40 years ago. And now there's this massive avenue of palms.”

The garden reflects Clive’s mischievous personality Nicholas says.

“He's a bit of a character. And he's established this garden that he calls the ‘garden of death’, which is his collected plants, the stimulants, irritants and poisonous plants.

"So there's all these scary plants that you don't want to touch, but in a humorous touch, he's putting in his own poison of choice, which is sugar. So, he's growing sugarcane in there as well.”

New Zealand Gardens to Visit is published by Penguin.