Altered vision |
|
Life can be intoxicating in Rex and Sue Beale’s Tauranga garden. Tui come to drink in the frangipani nectar and then pay the price.
“One overly indulgent tui is so fat it can hardly fly,” says Sue, “and the others often lie on their backs and rest a while before flying off in a weaving manner. They are clearly drunk.”
It wasn’t always so. A great deal of hard work has gone into transforming what was once an uninspired slice of land into a subtropical oasis where tui and parakeets – and people – love to loiter.
Sue and Rex’s 3000sqm site was part of an orchard block, with citrus, plum and macadamia trees, other large, non-fruiting varieties and lots of weeds. First priority was designing a house and office for their Safari Painters business, but the trees had to be taken into account.
“We certainly didn’t have a slash and burn mentality,” says Sue. “The house was very strategically designed for access, sun, wind and the ability to maintain existing trees.”
The couple and their then teenage sons moved into the house in January 2004 and got to work clearing the site, fencing and putting in the pool before they began planting. Sue clearly remembers exactly when the first plants went in – she had just crossed the Tasman to be with her terminally ill sister. Rex pondered how to cheer his wife up… and found the answer in about 300 plants.
When Sue left, the swimming pool was in but the site was still messy and blank. When she returned, she was met by her industrious, green-fingered husband and agaves, palm trees and ligularias, with their green leaves and yellow spots.
As a “pick-me-up” surprise, Rex had enlisted Tauranga garden designer and pottery artist Tania Capper to help with the poolside planting. “I got such a huge surprise,” Sue recalls. “All I could do was stand there and say ‘wow’.”
The wow factor intensified as the planting expanded to include birds of paradise and the similar-looking heliconia, bangalow and miniature date palms, vireya, elfin lilies galore and rare Brazilian tree ferns that are thriving in the poolside microclimate. Sue’s sister managed a trip to New Zealand to admire the changes in 2005 before she died later that year.
Clever planting ideas continue, as a flourishing 2m by 2m ‘Red Fountain’ cordyline makes a perfect focal point at the end of the pool.
Other plants around the pool show-case different textures and bright hues and many are divinely fragrant. Numerous star jasmine plants embrace one another along the fence line and 10 frangipani trees create a canopy. Green mondo grass has been planted en masse as edging. It’s a great way to keep soil in the gardens, according to Sue, especially when the birds are scratching.
But there’s a lot more to this wonderland than lush poolside planting. In the courtyard garden the burnt orange of vireya and clivia joins the lush greens of hen and chicken ferns and china doll trees. Hostas thrive in their shadow.
Red maples, twisted willows, seating and a lantern mark out an enclosed Japanese garden. And beyond that is woodland, where a hammock sways among some of the site’s original trees – deciduous planes, variegated elms, pin oaks and other oak trees.
“It’s a beautiful place to sit in summer. It gets very hot here because it is so sheltered, so these trees give us huge relief,” says Rex.
The Beales’ garden style – subtropical with a Kiwi twist – can be seen clearly in this area. Pohutukawa, griselinia, puka, silver ferns, king ferns, four different varieties of pseudopanax and mamaku (black tree fern) – they’re all here. So too are black and miniature taro, nikau palms, more hostas and spotted leopards and many varieties of viburnum.
All these gardens are tucked away to the rear or sides of the house. Meanwhile, visitors to the front door are captivated by the surrounding landscape of pond and bronze sculpture, with a sago palm rising from a bed of ornamental grass.
More frangipani have pride of place along the property’s front boundary, joining puriri, titoki and ‘Little Gem’ magnolias, with evergreen white hydrangeas and day lilies as under-planting. Sue makes special mention of the day lily ‘Russian Rhapsody’, which provides purple and yellow flowering colour for about 300 days of the year. The many evergreens ensure the entrance looks lovely all year round.
A deciduous eye-catcher is Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’, with its deep maroon leaves. It stands guard in front of Sue and Rex’s private garden off their bathroom. “It’s perfect,” says Sue, “as it provides lovely leafy cover to shade me in summer, but it’s deciduous so in winter it allows the light through.”
Their garden is also a prolific food producer. Olive, fig and avocado trees surround a potager garden laden with vegetables and herbs, standardised lemons and limes, berries, espaliered apple trees and a plaited, standardised bay tree in the centre.
This isn’t the first garden project Sue and Rex have got stuck into, but it’s the first that didn’t come with a ready-made view. One previous garden was on a hilltop with extensive views; another was on the waterfront with a blue outlook.
“This property had no views, so we had to internalise the view,” says Sue. “We had to create our own and we’ve learned we can do just that.”
For web-exclusive images click on the "photo gallery" link above.
Story: Monique Balvert-O’Connor
Photographs: Paul McCredie
| 
|
| 
