The keepers of the garden

A dozen years on, the answer is a resounding yes – and the glowing comments from visitors to the Stratford property during the annual Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival are testimony to this. “We are the keepers of the garden,” says Linley. “It’s ours now.”

The only dilemma has been identifying the plants. Of course they can point out the old roses and rhododendrons, the maples and magnolias, but they haven’t always been able to establish quite which variety they are – though not for lack of trying.

“I painstakingly went round the garden with Mrs Sangster, but in the first festival someone took all the name identifications,” says Linley. Despite the label larceny, the Olivers sailed on, maintaining the beauty and making changes in the face of disaster.

There are essentially three parts to this creation: the English-style section that flows around the homestead; the tree-studded middle paddock where the Olivers’ three children raised calves; and, below that, a wet woodland area that wanders beside an elongated pond awash with water lilies and bog plants.

Around the house, curved beds flank the lawn, overflowing with old granny bonnets with double-flowering heads, pink and white honesty, clematis, camellias, wisteria, azaleas and maples – the tall, the small and the weeping. “One of the big maples was planted in the 1920s by the grandfather of some local women known as the Styles sisters,” says Linley.

Buxus also cuts a fine figure and there’s plenty about. Craig has trimmed some into low hedges and some into ornamental shapes. In the homestead garden there is a perfectly round ball sitting beside what could be an egg and on a bank by the pond are what can only be described as buxom buxus breasts.

During a twilight stroll through the garden, Craig pulls a stray weed here and there as he takes note of jobs to be done. Linley, also a tireless worker, is less frenetic, soaking in the light streaming through the trees and listening to the dusk chorus of birds.

On average the Olivers spend one day a week on this labour of love – less in winter and more in the warmer months. They do it all themselves with a little bit of help from 16-year-old son Chris, who’s a bit of an action man like his father, especially on the trimming front. The couple’s other children – Anita, 20, and Mark, 22 – have left home.

“They enjoyed it at times,” says Linley. “They loved the farm, going out and playing on the hay bales. We would try to get them to help in the garden and they would run for the hills.”

Though the property does go on show once a year during the festival and has been the backdrop for a few weddings and photo shoots, it’s mostly a garden for entertaining family and friends, says Linley. “It’s a lovely spot. It’s just nice having friends over for barbecues.”

Spring visitors are struck by the dazzling azaleas, the rhododendron ‘Red Glow’ behind the house and a mountainous snowdrift of flowers near the homestead garden gate.

“When that clematis is out, it’s like a sea of white,” she says. “One lady who came here said it was just like a bridal veil.”

At the feet of these stunners is a lawn fit for bowling but there have been times when these expanses of green have taken an accidental beating. The Olivers once bought some spray to attack prickles in an area known as the sunken garden. It had already destroyed the rectangular lawn when they discovered the spray had a glyphosate base. “After that I was very particular about what sprays went on the lawn,” says Craig.

Nature has also attacked the garden. A cherry tree blew down in a storm, blocking the driveway. “We were trapped,” says Linley. “We couldn’t go to work until we cleaned up.”

Another time, an old cowshed collapsed after heavy rain. This prompted the pair to redevelop the area at the back of house, using concrete from the demolition zone to build a retaining wall and to create columns for new fences.

Craig did a lot of the work one-handed. In 2001, right in the middle of the fencing work, he broke a hand playing rugby for the Eltham senior team. The first five-eighth was in plaster for six weeks, had one game back and broke the other hand. In the spirit of the great Sir Colin Meads, the hardcore Taranaki man built those fences regardless. “When I start something,
I finish it,” says Craig.

Losing a macrocarpa tree in a corner of the watery woodland garden the same year led the couple to lay a new garden path leading around a huge clump of purple irises, which cunningly hide the outlet drain, to a bridge curved like a rainbow. Underfoot, crunching metal is broken up with old railway sleepers from Craig’s dad’s farm next door.

Craig grew up down the road and imagined that he too would be a dairy farmer one day. But first he wanted to get a trade. He’s now an instrument and control engineer with Transfield Worley in New Plymouth, but he’s returned to the land in another way. “I never thought I would ever end up as a gardener.”

For Linley, the garden is her sanctuary. After working in an office all day, she loves the tranquillity. “There’s nothing like driving over that cattle stop at night and saying, ‘Yay’.”

Story: Virginia Winder Photographs: Jane Dove Juneau