In fine form |
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Driving down the long, bush-fringed lane that leads to Nurse Hill in the Waimauku hills of south-west Auckland, it’s easy to feel that you’re entering a special kind of sanctuary. Fifteen years ago, Richard Matthews and Seng Cheah saw the potential of a rundown former district nurse’s house on the 3.6ha property and bought the plot as a place to escape city life at the weekends.
The pair were living in an apartment above their shop, Richard Matthews Antiques, in Remuera at the time. “We loved being here so much that, after three months, we decided to rent out the apartment and shops we owned and move here permanently,” Richard explains.
It is easy to see why the couple fell so quickly for the charms of Nurse Hill. The house and garden are on a shelf of flat land 287m above sea level. You feel part of the landscape here, surrounded by thick native bush, with spectacular bird’s-eye views over the valley below, stretching towards the Kaipara Harbour.
A lot of work has gone into creating the garden and developing the house over the intervening years and the pair have had the benefit of some stellar landscaping advice. Christopher Masson, UK-based, New Zealand-born landscape designer to such luminaries as Lord Snowdon and Madonna, is a childhood friend of Richard and visits often, with plenty of advice on gardening projects.
Richard Matthews (left) and landscape designer Christopher Masson.
“Criticism is always veiled,” Richard says, chuckling. “He’ll say things like, ‘It’s nice to see you having fun with annuals’, when he means they have no business being in that part of the garden.”
“Or he’ll say, ‘That hedge should be half the size’ when he means that we should rip it out completely.”
The garden has some wonderfully artistic features that set it apart. The grove of lancewoods (Pseudopanax ferox) underplanted with carex surrounding a Terry Stringer statue sets the tone at the entry. It leads the eye towards a long pergola covered in Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia).
“In New Zealand, you normally only see Virginia creeper growing on buildings and walls,” says Richard. “But in Italy you see it everywhere, scrambling over pergolas and porticos. The effect is totally different and you wouldn’t think to do it unless you saw it first.”
Richard and Seng used to travel to Europe often. “We would spend three months each year in England and France, buying for the shop.”
As a result the garden is full of references to European gardening tradition, given a creative twist. At the side of the house Richard has designed a grotto with mossy walls, trickling water and a classical urn centre stage. Virginia creeper-clad brick walls and a griffin oversee the proceedings.
Visitors are enticed forward to discover the grotto by a broad band of Japanese buxus hedging laid out in a semi-classical design. “We gave Christopher the measurements for the knot garden in feet, because that’s what they use in the UK, and he presumed it was metres and came up with an immense plan that would never fit the space,” says Seng. “It took us a while to sort out the confusion.”
“When the hedges are trimmed, they look sharp enough to cut your hand on. That’s because the man who does them for us, Bradley, is a former hairdresser,” Richard comments wryly.
At the back of the house, Seng has a summer “picking garden” where all those offending annuals are kept corralled. He has a bit of a bugbear about the current trend for nurseries to offer only dwarf varieties of some of his favourites: “It drives you mad. If you want the full-sized varieties you have to collect the seeds yourself. Visitors come and look at the Queen Anne’s lace or the cosmos and cornflowers and ask what they are. They don’t realise that’s their natural height.”
At the side of this area an old shed and an equally antique truck are a whimsical nod to the property’s past.
Plants are cleverly used to define the different areas of the garden. There are the mounds of coprosma that blur the side of the expansive lawn where it meets the bush, the brightly coloured salvias that billow along a garden path and the curved lonicera hedges that urge visitors to climb the stairs to the outdoor living space of the grape-covered verandah.
“Gardens are always changing,” says Seng. “They’re never the same from one season or one year to the next.”
So do they have any more projects on the drawing board? “Only to make sure that it doesn’t get any bigger. My father ended up needing six gardeners to help him, you know,” says Richard, referring to prominent businessman Sir Russell Matthews, and Tupare, the famous New Plymouth house and garden where Richard grew up.
“I don’t discriminate when it comes to common plants. They can be just as effective as unusual plants if used well. It’s all about form, foliage and flowers.”
Story: Sarah Beresford
Photographs: Gil Hanly
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