High-country History

In the foothills of the Puketeraki Range, 90 minutes north-west of Christchurch, Virginia Pawsey has created a garden that borrows from the 2705-hectare sheep and cattle farm that surrounds the family home. She and her husband Harry moved there in 1974 but their property, Double Tops, has been in the Pawsey family since 1897.

 

 

It is a garden born of patience, hard work and a constant battle with the elements. It’s also the country garden at the centre of Common Ground, the book Virginia and her school friend, Janice Marriott of Wellington, published in 2008, in which they shared letters and details of their vastly different lives. (The story of Janice’s garden is here.)

 

“It’s not so much a book about gardening as a dialogue between city and country, a collection of letters that bridges the gulf and highlights the differences in our gardens and the way we interact with them,” she says.

 

At Double Tops, Virginia has learned the hard way that nature dictates the success or otherwise of her gardening efforts. When she and Harry first arrived, the garden was rundown and without boundary fences. She still remembers the day they woke to find a cow with its head in their bedroom window.

 

Things have come a long way since then, despite the fact that working full-time as a shepherd on the farm has given Virginia little spare time for gardening. It has been only in the last few years that she has been able to devote more time to one of her greatest pleasures.

 

From the very beginning, Virginia never wanted “a perfect garden filled with clipped hedges and lots of ‘Iceberg’ roses”.

 

“I’ve always felt a garden here needed to blend with the farm rather than being a separate entity. I didn’t want a mini-Sissinghurst planted in the middle of the North Canterbury hills. Apart from the fact that the climate is too harsh, it would be completely out of context,” she says.

 

To save herself the heartbreak of failed plantings, Virginia has learned to plant what grows naturally and well in the area.

 

“Two previous Mrs Pawseys tried to grow macrocarpa and laurel hedges; neither grew. I’ve persisted with a few of my favourite things, such as roses and delphiniums, but it is a challenge for them to survive the frosts and winds. Wide borders of flax, cabbage trees, tussocks and assorted natives do much better here. They do well in wet winters and dry summers.”

 

The Pawseys have also created a special native garden around a pond as a memorial to their son, Kit, who was one of 14 young people killed at Cave Creek in 1995 when a viewing platform collapsed.

 

“We fenced off an area of paddock around the pond and invited a lot of friends, who brought native plants to establish a garden in his memory,” says Virginia.

 

Within the garden itself, the native borders are “lightened” by large tracts of flowering catmint and the shiny tresses of the golden tussock Carex testacea.

 

“I’m not a purist and I felt the catmint was the ideal link back to the main garden nearby, which includes a lot of vibrant blue delphiniums, roses and assorted perennials and annuals.”

 

She calls on all the strong colours in summer – red, pink, yellow, orange, purple – to contrast with the dry hills and intense blue skies, leaving the trees to shower the garden in vibrant deciduous displays
during autumn.

 

Winter is the time for her hundreds of hellebores to surface and hint at spring, and after the snow, hundreds of daffodils flower up the long driveway. They were planted more than 60 years ago by Harry’s mother and, though they’ve never been lifted, they still make a spectacular annual showing.

 

Virginia’s greatest passion, though, is her vege garden. “Vegetables have always been my number one priority. I started growing them when I was six and they’ve always been my focus here. Some of that is to do with self-sufficiency but mostly it is about the pleasure of growing and the pleasure of last-minute picking. I love cooking and there is nothing like vegetables 10 minutes out of the garden. They’re at their freshest, crispest and tastiest.”

 

Her spectacular kitchen garden spreads out in a colourful display of vegetables and fruit. Harvests of strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants make tasty picking; three kinds of potatoes provide all-summer-long fresh spuds; lacy Florence fennel, kohlrabi, rhubarb and globe artichokes introduce a sculptural leafy element; and calendula, poppies, pansies and other self-sown annuals dot the garden with colour and perfume.

 

Like most people in hill-country farming communities, the Pawseys have also been innovative when it comes to entertaining. Several years ago they started the Tommy’s Cabin Croquet Club, which now has 12 members and is believed to be the world’s only croquet club with a tussock lawn. It’s centred around their old shepherd’s hut (circa 1870), which sits beside a stream in a pretty gully four kilometres from the house.

 

“We call it the emotional heart of the farm because our children Kit and Fleur (now 29) always camped there and we had Kit’s funeral there,” says Virginia.

 

“It’s always been a wonderful secret place for all of us and it’s completely wild and unexpected as a base for a croquet club.”

 

The club gets together three times a year – always in themed fancy dress – and Virginia goes all out, serving tea in the china tea set, with silver spoons and delicate cucumber sandwiches.

 

“That’s a typical example of how the city and country differ,” she comments. “We’re not confined by fences the way Janice is in Thorndon. If we want to push the garden out to include another five acres, or if we want to create our own croquet club in the hills, we can. The only restriction we have on garden expansion is our ability to water the plants.”