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Helen and bryan Airey insist they still have their training wheels on when it comes to gardening, but a visit to Brookgreen Park in Coatesville, north-west of Auckland, will have serious gardeners singing the praises of this industrious couple. In just over 10 years they have turned a paddock with shelter belts into a wonderful green retreat – and a garden of significance.
Visitors to the house are greeted by a formal garden laid out precisely along a central axis that flows from the living room French doors out past a rectangular pond to a statue framed by a metal cupola. In the curved beds enclosing this area are clipped buxus hedges, topiaries, roses and four delightful buxus “hearts” planted with red begonia.
“We bought the statue while we were still building the house,” says Helen. The classically balanced vista is a magnet for visitors who, once enticed outside, are surprised by the extent of the park-like garden that stretches out below.
Groves of trees and a velvet sweep of immaculately kept lawn (the couple keep it looking good with the help of two Walker mowers) lead on to another much larger pond that’s a shimmer of pink water lilies in spring and summer.
Bryan, an architectural designer, says he had no interest in gardening when they bought the property 11 years ago.
“We decided we needed to make a view,” says Bryan. “The bottom of the property was very swampy so, while we were still building the house, we had diggers excavating a pond. We heard a big storm was coming so we got them to work all weekend to finish it. The rain hit and the pond was filled overnight.”
It may sound easy, but great attention to detail has been lavished upon it.
Bryan worked hard to get the outline of the water-lily pond just right. At one end, water from a fountain set among clipped hedges and roses flows down a tiled rill fed by a stream at the back of the property and into the pond. At the other end, a green bridge reminiscent of Monet’s garden at Giverny looks down over a little dam that flows into a lower pool and fountain.
Brookgreen Park’s drainage and reticulation system has been designed so that water can be pumped into the metres of irrigation tubing that snake around the garden beds, helping new plantings to become established.
Though Helen says they’re not really “flower people”, beds planted with day lilies, alstroemerias, agapanthus and hydrangeas provide flashes of colour. Hostas and clivias promote a woodland feeling in the groves of trees, which include a variety of different maples and cold-loving species such as dogwoods and horse chestnuts.
All through the garden little details are placed for visitors to discover. Black mondo grass and acid-green scleranthus surround the figure of a girl sitting beside a series of small pools; a gazebo offers the perfect spot in which to relax and enjoy the views and statues are placed at intervals among the trees.
On the land that slopes up towards the house, plantings of more tropical specimens such as bromeliads, Dracaena draco and palms require vigilance in the winter months, when hard frosts hit and the plants need to be covered.
Helen admits to sometimes working in the garden till the light fades around nine o’clock in summer. One of her many jobs is clipping the buxus hedging that gives the beds structure. Getting the right line and proportion becomes a matter of instinct after a while, she says.
Brookgreen has provided a great return for their efforts, but Helen and Bryan have plans for further work – and the space to accommodate them. At the moment, the garden covers about 2ha of the 4.6ha property.
They have already embarked on the digging of a new pond and some contouring to prepare more land for serious planting. “We are thinking of putting in a Japanese-style bridge over the pond,” says Helen, “but it’s just a dream at the moment.”
Well, watch this space because, if anyone can make a garden dream come true, it’s Helen and Bryan Airey.
Brookgreen Park is open by appointment from October to mid-May; see www.gardens.org.nz or www.gardentovisit.co.nz for details.
Story: Sarah Beresford
Photographs: Sally Tagg
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