GROWING A LEGACY

- In this historic garden, a plantswoman makes her mark.

They were at a dinner party. She was talking about wanting to get galanthus for her new meadow garden. He said he had thousands. She was impressed, not so much that he had a paddock of them, rather that he knew their name. The rest, as they say is history.

Both widowed, Sharron Ballantyne and Gavin Bain went on to fall in love, get married and now Sharron has more galanthus than she could ever have dreamed.

The gardener from “back when she was a dot” also stepped into an old 1.8-hectare garden, part of Gavin’s historic property Waitahuna – the oldest part of the dwelling dates back to 1851, when it was built by Governors Bay’s first Pākehā residents, John Dyer, his sister Mary Ann, and friend Charles Parsons. The property is named for the two creeks at its boundaries.

Gavin and his first wife, Jackie, bought the all-butderelict homestead in the early 1970s. No matter the condition, for its main attraction to Gavin was its size. “I love stuff,” he says, and the garden offered room for sheds for everything, including his vintage cars, motorcycles and bicycles.

When Sharron moved in five years ago, the bones of the garden were its trees, some 170 years old. The magnificent Wellingtonia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) out front had been a wedding present to John Dyer, in 1853. The story goes it was brought out as a seedling in a Wardian case from Kew Gardens. In autumn, it sheds needles that blanket the garden and barbeque area in a vivid rusty orange. Only the determinedly green shiny acanthus leaves resist them, and the ivy escaping up the tree’s rough bark. Sharron says she used to sweep the needles up until she realised they stopped the paved areas becoming slippery.

Among the remnants of the old commercial pipfruit orchard is an immense unidentified pear at the end of the drive. “Its white blossom at night lights it up. It’s amazing,” says Sharron.

She cautions people against going too close to another old pear, in autumn at least. ‘Uvedale’s St Germain’ is an old British variety dating to the 17th century, with hefty fruit weighing up to a kilo, 20cm or more long. Not a great eater, she says, even the two resident ducks on the nearby pond reject the fallen fruit.

Another unidentified pear tree has a cultural claim to fame: The artist Evelyn Page, who lived at Waitahuna for 12 years in the 1930s and 1940, is said to have tied her young son Sebastian to it with toys within easy reach while she painted.

Some old apple varieties here have also been identified: ‘Reinette du Canada’, a brown gold russet from 1770s

Despite his knowledge of snowdrops, Gavin is not a gardener, and as Sharron was to find out once she began working in the garden, to him it was another place to store his old car parts.

France; ‘Lord Alexander’, which is possibly ‘Emperor Alexander’, a Ukrainian apple dating back to the 1700s; ‘Ballarat’ from late 1800s Australia; and ‘Peasgood Nonsuch’, first grown in England in 1860.

There is also a very old perry pear, used for making perry or pear cider.

Sharron also came to a quaint circular front lawn probably laid by the Dyers and within sight and sound of the lapping water on the shore; back up the hill is a beautiful spring-fed pond, with an island of irises and fringe of tree ferns, rhododendrons and native grasses.

While the garden had not exactly been ignored since Jackie died, Sharron says it had been tended by paid gardeners rather than loved.

For despite his knowledge of snowdrops, Gavin is not a gardener and as Sharron was to find out once she began working in the garden, to him it was another place to store his old car parts. “It was full of them,” she says with a laugh.

Once cleared, she could begin planting. Fortunately, since the early days of her first marriage, Sharron has propagated plants. Then, she had supplied between 200 and 300 different culinary and medicinal herb plants to Thyme Cottage, a gift shop in Christchurch in the

1980s, and hundreds of succulents and perennials to garden centres in the 1990s. She had more than 25,000 plants growing in the backyard of her Governors Bay property, Nydfa.

“When you have a big garden, you have to grow a lot of your own plants,” she says. “If you just divide up existing plants, you get the same plants and same look all around the garden. I try and introduce new plants for each location. There are always new plants arriving onto the property.”

So green and busy are her fingers that parts of the garden resemble a commercial nursery, with seedlings in pots and trays in boxes on benches, in glasshouses and greenhouses, along paths and down the drive.

She buys potting mix by the trailerload and works from it, customising it according to the plant, such as adding perlite to seed-raising mix or pumice for the division of hostas, of which she has around 50 varieties, having bought the collection of well-known breeder and collector, Barry Sligh of Taunton Gardens.

What plants she doesn’t use, she sells at an open day, Vintage Collective, at the property every Labour Day.

Here locals and the like sell their wares around the old railway carriage full of vintage collectables. “I do all the potting up by Labour Weekend, and finish planting out by November, then I can really sit back and enjoy the garden. It’s too hot to work in over summer apart from cutting flowers, and the roses,” she says.

While the seedlings and cuttings have to harden off outside in the Waitahuna microclimate, the parent plants are housed under cover, in the plastic tunnelhouse, or in the case of her loved succulents, in the elegant Victorian-style glasshouse, which Gavin had a local artisan build for an engagement present.

“He built it because I said I needed somewhere to play. I spend five days a week in the garden for at least three hours a day,” she explains.

The ornate metal spandrels and finials were carted home from England in the couple’s suitcases, and the workbench came from Gavin’s mother’s glasshouse. Even the containers holding the river sand, perlite, vermiculite and pumice, in the glasshouse are comely. The fine old metal buckets include some brought back from Turkey; the scoops are perfectly rusted and rusticated.

The most recent addition to the property is a wildflower garden, inspiration for which came after a car rally trip to northern Italy.

Perhaps because Gavin has so many sheds and outbuildings himself – including one that looks like a colonial woolshed – Sharron now has her own purpose-built shed for winnowing, drying and storing seeds and for drying flowers, herbs and seedheads for arrangements, potpourri and herbal teas, and for books and pots.

This fragrant den of delights is also a favourite of granddaughters, who love making their own potpourri mixes. Her grandsons prefer to make little succulent gardens. But all like foraging in the garden with Sharron, who says she has always liked nature.

She recalls being the one fascinated by the school nature study table, and at boarding school, while the other girls were studying, “I would be out picking wildflowers and grasses in the hills to put by my bed.”

She says that after years of gardening she has learnt the key to growing healthy plants is all about the right soil. “Especially when making a new garden, this can take some effort,” she says.

Ever enterprising, she perfected the art – or craft – of compost-making to feed the clay-heavy Governors Bay soils and then held workshops teaching others.

Pea straw mulch is another good friend of the garden. Sharron swears it spares her having to weed. Each autumn 100 bales, are spread to about 20cm to 30cm thick over the gardens. “We have two wonderful helpers that come regularly to help on new projects,” she says.

The garden’s bones have been filled in by Sharron’s planting. The extensive beds around the lawn and summerhouse, where the Sumner Silver Band plays for the township’s carols evenings, are beautiful, flush with an abundance of interesting plants.

She has added new gardens too, such as the prettiest white patch at the front of the new glasshouse; the paeony and perennial bed overlooking the pond; a classic laburnum walk dripping yellow blooms (while Sharron and Gavin devise ways to keep the kererū off them).

Meanwhile, ferns are being bulked up ready for the gully on the northern boundary, which Sharron is slowly clearing of the smothering tangles of climbers and recreating the path through it.

The steep banks of this sinuous stretch of wilderness are home to mature nīkau, kōwhai, ponga and other tree ferns, and other natives. The gully and the host of large trees throughout the property provide food and habitat for birds that call it home, including pīwakawaka, kererū, kōtare, korimako, quail, blackbirds, thrush and silvereyes.

The most recent addition to the property is a wildflower garden, inspiration for which came after a car rally trip to northern Italy. “We were sitting out each night in a beautiful garden in a hotel in the Dolomites and Gavin said,

‘We could do something like this’.” So, a piece of lawn was dug up and a small orchard including medlar, quince, loquat and ‘Omega’ plums planted. Masses of wildflower pollinators, species geraniums and anise hyssop underneath have resulted in a massive increase in bee and butterfly numbers; a doubling of the fruit crop; and a most gorgeous and wondrous sight in full bloom.

And right in the middle of all this sit a small table and chairs – pure gardening heaven.

Masses of wildflower pollinators, species geraniums and anise hyssop underneath have resulted in a massive increase in bee and butterfly numbers.