Taking up palms |
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Tucked away down a modest driveway in the plush central-Auckland suburb of Parnell is a home that resembles two Paddington, Sydney terrace houses. It’s decorated in flamboyant rococo style, with elegant, ornate furniture and whimsical flourishes – but even more extraordinary is the backyard. There isn’t a patch of lawn on the site. Instead, there’s a lush, tropical jungle with a tranquil air. It’s difficult to imagine that this is all just minutes from the buzz of the city.
Surprisingly, the house is only three years old and the garden less than two. The owners, Barrie and Lynn Espie, have always loved terraced houses but they wanted plenty of room, so this was their compromise: one home that looks like two.
The architects, Brown Day, said the design was wasted on a back section, that it was a “streetscape” house. But that’s just how the owners like it – private and peaceful.
This is no small city site: in all it’s 1528sqm. The spacious 400sqm five-bedroom house takes up less than 180sqm of that site space as it’s built over three levels. A self-contained ground floor can accommodate a live-in nurse, should Barrie and Lynn feel the need for one, and they’ve also installed an elevator for their old age. But it doesn’t look as if that will be needed any time soon.
Both love projects and this home has been their latest. Barrie, a cabinetmaker by trade, has turned his hand to everything from the American white oak cabinetry in the kitchen to wall units and bedroom and wardrobe fittings. He has even built bridges in the garden, made the exterior shutters for the windows and espaliered dozens of star jasmine plants along the side of the house and all along the driveway – no mean feat when you’re 72.
Barrie has a talent for design too. After admiring a feature of the atrium in a Swiss chateau, he drew something similar for the skylight in their kitchen. “He’s always making sketches,” says Lynn. He also did a sketch for the body jets he wanted in his shower and the curved glass door – which, he was told, would be too hard to make. “But I want one,” said Barrie, so he set about figuring out how to do it himself.
Barrie has always loved palms so, when it was time to plan the garden, he headed north to Kerikeri. “I knew they had palm farms up there.” In Kerikeri he met up with Adam Shuter, the landscape manager from Palmco. “I told Adam I wanted a garden like Alberton Reserve in Parnell.”
It just happened to be the same week that Adam was designing Palmco’s entry for the 2007 Ellerslie Flower Show (Palmco scooped the awards that year, taking home the title of supreme winner in the retail section). Says Adam: “I told Barrie my concept for the show was to have a jungle garden theme and he liked that idea… It just took off from there.”
Barrie and Adam checked out Alberton then met at the Parnell site to measure up. Barrie, of course, had drawn up a plan. Apart from a number of established pohutukawa and cabbage trees and a few nikau palms, it was a bare landscape with poor soil. But Adam realised that it was a microclimate, tucked away in a gulley with virtually no neighbours. “It’s such a unique environment, just ideal,” he says.
To save excavating, the selected king and queen palms, kentias, bangalow and miniature date palms were planted at ground level, with soil pumped in around them.
Since the narrow driveway was the only access to the garden, a truck similar to a concrete mixer was used to deliver the 170 cubic metres of rich growing soil used to bed in the palms.
From October to February, white autumn crocuses flower under a large butia, or jelly palm, creating a dramatic centrepiece in the garden, just off the courtyard. A row of standard citrus trees leads along a limestone path to a potager, continuing the formal lines of the house. Papua New Guinean pongas provide a dramatic backdrop to this area. Adam finds this variety more robust than most pongas. “It’s one of my favourite plants with its white-haired fronds.”
 Past the path to a secret garden, a larger pathway curves around the house to a recreated dry riverbed of grey stones. The occasional cycad and giant bromeliad are strategically placed and creamy clivias, day lilies and giant strelitzias provide bursts of colour. Within two years, layers of garden and a canopy have already formed. “Ultimately we won’t be able to see the ground,” explains Barrie, who was keen to cultivate as many different plants as possible and to introduce a range of textures and colours. While sourcing plants from nurseries for his Ellerslie exhibition, Adam was able to contribute a number of unusual specimens to what he calls “Barrie’s liquorice allsorts” garden.
This is Barrie and Lynn’s third home. They lived in Epsom for 29 years, in an old bungalow they restored themselves. Then it was on to 4ha at Whitford where they opted for an English-cottage look, with 200 roses in the garden. The pair bred prize-winning English sheepdogs and kept up to nine of them at a time on their Whitford property. Now back in the city after 19 years of rural life, to be closer to their son and daughter and grandchildren, they restrict themselves to just two dogs.
Barrie and Lynn now declare themselves to be over the country look and the clutter they had collected, though Lynn did install the same French La Cornue stove in the new house. There’s also a luxurious French tub in their bathroom and touches of France and Italy, their two favourite European countries, throughout the home.
While Barrie has looked after the outdoors, Lynn has taken care of the finishing touches indoors. The rococo look – named for a period of European interior design that was typified by whimsical sweeps and flourishes – is everywhere. Feathers, frills and other fripperies have been used to highlight Lynn’s many cherished objects and ornamental mirrors.
Her favourite room is at the front of the house. It can’t really be called a lounge; it’s more like a sumptuous parlour where a faux zebra rug and two classic European chairs bought in the United States take centre stage. Barrie agreed Lynn could buy them on condition that he could have the drinks cabinet, complete with copper sink and hot and cold running water, now also gracing the parlour. Antique Italian lamps add to the general flamboyance.
Barrie himself designed the bespoke iron railings on the staircase. He sourced the Italian-made bars and took them to a blacksmith to have them welded into a handrail. “He said it couldn’t be done, but I had a plan…”
Story: Lyn Barnes
Photographs: Aaron McLean
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