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THE ACCIDENTAL GARDENERS

A King Country couple created a magnificent garden of many parts

WORDS VICKI HOLDER / PHOTOGRAPHS JANE DOVE JUNEAU

When Melana Bradley and her family arrived at their Taumarunui property 25 years ago, she didn’t know the difference between an annual and a perennial. It was never her ambition to develop a majestic garden. The bare paddocks she and husband Simon bought were intended as a playground for their now-grown children Zac and Bianca, and the location chosen for its handiness to Simon’s work as a stock agent for Affco.

Set in a valley, sheltered from the winds by distant hills, it seemed a great place for a home, with a long, elevated building platform overlooking a large, level lawn for the children and enough space for horses and pigs.

That property is now an expansive and beautiful garden, used as an event venue and full of unexpected surprises.

Early on, the family went to Taranaki to visit the Rhododendron Festival (now the Taranaki Garden Festival). Melana was enthralled. She set about transforming her 1ha plot into a tranquil park-like garden that was recently awarded five stars by the New Zealand Gardens Trust as a garden of national significance. Applying interior design principles, she used scale, proportion, space, harmony and flow as her guidelines.

“I wanted to create a journey through a series of rooms so you wouldn’t know what was around the corner and you’d be pleasantly surprised by special features at every turn.”

Initially, Melana divided the property in half to make developing the garden more manageable. Ponga clung around the garden edges and she filled in the rest with big specimen trees before adding contrasting textures and colour; plants that suit the environment and the acid soil, like rhododendrons, maples, hydrangeas, grevillea, leucadendrons, proteas and hostas.

Among her favourites are the big conifers, which she admits are not to everyone’s taste. “They’re beautiful if left to grow unimpeded. When I put them in, I tried to give them the space they needed. To see how large they would get, I regularly visited a conifer specialist in Taranaki.”

As a newcomer to gardening, mistakes were made. The pumice soil was unforgiving and the sheer size of the space soaked up trailer-loads of trees and required constant maintenance.

She accepted donations from people who were getting rid of trees, like an elderly chap near Taumarunui. “Passionate about rhododendrons, he used to propagate them and had a collection of about 900. When he downsized into town, he gave me a lot of really special ones.”

‘I wanted to create a journey through a series of rooms so you wouldn’t know what was around the corner’

The couple have just finished replacing the gravel on the pathways, wheelbarrowing 17 tonnes of gravel by hand. Adding the bark mulch regularly requires a 20 tonne truckload.

Melana couldn’t have done it without Simon, who lugs limestone rocks, boulders, sleepers, gravel and bark mulch into the garden, mostly by hand. “When I look at what he has achieved physically, I can hardly believe it. Anything I’ve dreamed up and wanted to create, he has done it for me. I had the big ideas. He just got on with creating it for me.”

Different areas are linked by wide paths with deep steps formed by railway sleepers and garden borders in limestone, from a quarry in Waitomo. Defined edges keep things tidy and leaves that fall into the garden turn into mulch, topped up by pea straw every second year.

Accessibility was important. “I made the pathways wide enough for ride-ons and trolleys so it was user-friendly. There were some things I got right, and that was definitely one of them.”

The sloping contour of the land was challenging, but it presented opportunities not available on flat ground. A large pond filled with water lilies was previously a pit where they dumped all the waste wood. Simon built the impressive bridge.

On a steep rocky rise at the end of the garden, Melana sought to replicate a memory from her childhood in Croatia. Trawling through the phone book for gardeners, looking for names that ended in “ich”, she found Bogdan Aleksich who understood her vision. Now aged 82 and still working, Bogdan created an elegant limestone stairway that rises to an arbour draped with grapes.

It leads visitors to a grand sheltered outdoor room enclosed by statuesque conifers, which is a beautiful spot for weddings: “I love it when guests walk up the steps and gasp as they encounter the space.”

Melana began hosting weddings in the garden nine years ago, and also offers boutique B&B accommodation in a cottage on the property.

Around every corner there’s something intriguing – a giant chess set, a little fairy grotto, a natural amphitheatre, a vast golf putting green, an impressive limestone wall and a rustic lichen-encrusted fence made by Simon for their wedding anniversary.

Melana explains: “I believe you create a garden that is a sanctuary; a place that gives you pleasure and fulfilment.

“Not only is my garden a place to be enjoyed on a personal level for the family – from nieces’ ballet concerts in the gazebo to long Italian lunches in the olive grove “cathedral” – but it is a tranquil place for all to enjoy. That could be a five-year-old’s tea party or a 50th wedding anniversary. I just love seeing people enjoy the garden.”

HOMES / TARANAKI

en-nz

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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