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Almost 30 years ago, when Lorna Henry and her husband Peter moved from town to an 18-acre property near Mt Tauhara in Taupō, just about the last thing on their minds was creating a sprawling country garden.
Rather than plants, Peter wanted the extra space for his “toys” – bikes, cars and trailers. At that stage there was only a bit of garden around the house and a bark dressage arena out the front beside a long driveway. “Eventually we got tired of people asking if it was a carpark for the nearby walking track so we figured we’d put up a fence and make a garden,” recalls Lorna.
The couple chose to plant rhododendrons as they are low maintenance and toxic to the possums, which roam over from the nearby bush and devour anything they can.
Paul McCredie/NZ Gardener/Stuff
Azaleas and rhododendrons flourish in borders on both sides of the large lawn. They include the scarlet Rhododendron ‘Kaponga’ as well as ‘White Pearl’, underplanted by the deep pink Geranium macrorrhizum, pink daylilies, red alstroemeria and white argyranthemum in the foreground. Pachysandra has been used as a groundcover.
In the years since, Lorna has discovered which plants are the most possum-proof through a process of trial and error.
“We learnt the hard way,” she says. “They’d eat my roses, so I’ve had to give up on them. They absolutely love the oak tree and will even eat geraniums in winter. But they’re not so keen on grasses, ferns and shrubs, and don’t seem to touch the hydrangeas.”
When the couple decided to expand the garden into an area to one side of the property, again it was mostly for practical reasons.
Paul McCredie Photographer/Stuff
The wow factor at Tauhara is definitely the densely-planted long border which spills over with Crocosmia ‘Severn Sunrise’ and ‘George Davison’, blue lobelia, Verbena bonariensis, Calamagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Red Baron’. Further along the border, there is Rudbeckia ‘Herbstsonne’ and ‘Prairie Sun’, Eupatorium maculatum (Atropurpureum group), Crocosmia ‘Star of the East and ‘Lucifer’, Stipa gigantea, heleniums, salvias, orange canna lilies, Kniphofia ‘Dwarf Orange’ and more.
“We had a little bridge that went over a gully into the paddocks,” explains Lorna. “But because we had deer, they kept eroding the banks.”
Lorna had always liked the idea of a water feature so the gully was cleared of pine trees and turned into two ponds and a small waterfall, with grasses planted to protect the edges. This time it was the horses that came looking for something to eat.
“They escaped one day because someone didn’t shut a gate, and it was just when the grasses were young and soft,” says Lorna. “After that we started putting in more bits and pieces, and making sure the gate was shut. It was a steep learning curve.”
Aside from hungry critters, the other challenge has been that there are pine trees in the woodland areas, and Lorna has struggled to find plants that will thrive in the shady acidic ground beneath them.
“Rengarenga and ferns will grow, hydrangeas too if you can get some moisture to them,” she says. “It’s pointless trying anything except acid-loving plants.”
After Peter’s death 13 years ago, gardening became a real solace for Lorna and she found herself spending more and more time in the garden.
Paul McCredie/NZ Gardener/Stuff
In Tauhara’s woodland area, Aquilegia vulgaris, rengarenga, hostas and hydrangeas cope with the acidic soil under the pines and oak.
“It fills your days if you’ve got a project or something to aim for,” she says. “Then I started making friends with other people who had gardens and that’s when the bug really started.”
Every morning, Lorna wanders through her now almost two-acre garden, pulling weeds if she sees them springing up, and looking for where she needs to prune, clip or fill gaps. Even during the cold winters, she’ll spend about three hours a day out there.
“The rain over summer has made everything so lush,” she says. “I had huge hostas, twice the size they normally are. It’s turning into jungle now, especially the long border, because the wind has tangled plants together and they’re half falling and half standing. So, I have a lot of cutting back to do.”
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Lorna is near the entrance to the woodland garden where the yellow banksia rose grows on trellis beside Rhododendron ‘Plum Duff’.
Lorna was always attracted to the long borders she saw when visiting grand English gardens but was nervous about creating the impressive one that now runs alongside the driveway at the front of the house, because she was concerned it would be too much work to maintain. The gardener who comes to help out once a week convinced her it was worth having a go.
“He said that if it became too much, I could always put it back into grass again,” says Lorna.
And so, the lawn was sprayed, and a griselinia hedge that had been half-eaten by neighbouring cattle was removed.
Paul McCredie Photographer/Stuff
The curved buxus hedge gives structure to the garden. Behind it are dahlias, salvia and lilies, along with two ‘Pat Austin’ roses, heleniums and purple-blue perovskia.
Five years on, the border is 4.5m wide and brimming with flowering plants that attract bees and butterflies. There are lots of tall single dahlias, masses of purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) as it’s a great filler, as well as achilleas (yarrow), tall salvias and heleniums (sneezeweed).
“There are some euphorbias in there as well, and crocosmia. I quite like those so I have four types,” says Lorna. “My latest planting was the Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’. It really pops in the garden. This is its second year. The first day of spring last year we had a really heavy frost and it wiped it out, but it did come back again.”
Lorna describes the long border’s planting as “prairie-style” with a lively mix of tall perennials. She hasn’t followed any strict plan and if plants fail to thrive, she is ruthless about removing them to make way for something else that will look good.
“The Rugosa roses haven’t done well there so I’ve taken most of them out and put grasses in their place – Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and miscanthus. I put in some yellow achilleas because I thought they’d look good with the grasses, but they got all leggy and flopped over.”
Looseness and abundance is the effect that Lorna is going for with the long border, which is the real wow factor of the garden and not in danger of being returned to grass any time soon.
“I like the borders to be full,” Lorna says. “I don’t like to see bare earth, that’s not my style at all. Still, the garden is a work in progress and things change from one year to the next.”
Paul McCredie Photographer/Stuff
A highly-scented Asiatic lily.
When the New Zealand Gardens Trust came to assess the property, they told Lorna that her long border ought to be made a little bit wider, but the problem is that then she wouldn’t be able to turn the trailer around in her driveway. “So, I agree that it should be wider but I also have to be practical, it has to work for me.”
While the long border puts on a spectacular display when in full bloom over summer, Lorna has also grown to love the less showy woodland plants in her nature areas. “I’ve got quite a soft spot for them. In the summer, there’s not a lot to see other than green, but it’s a relaxing area to walk through and provides a contrast to the long border.”
In early spring, the woodland bulbs start to come through and by late October the rhododendrons are starting to flower. Then the long border springs to life around Christmas and flowers through to late autumn.
Paul McCredie/NZ Gardener/Stuff
The house looks out onto borders planted with Rhododendron ‘Mount Everest’, with its trusses of pure white flowers.
Winters are harsh, with heavy frosts that can continue into spring as plants are starting to come away. But with judicious use of pea straw, Lorna even manages to grow tropical canna lilies and sun-loving rudbeckias.
“The rudbeckias do really well in the garden. They seem to stand up to the frost and, when they die back down, they’ll come away again quite quickly.”
Lorna thinks if her husband Peter could see the garden today, he would be amazed. “I’m sure that he’d like it.
How to deadhead flowers in the garden and why you should.
He might not like the work so much though. I can remember when we used to visit gardens overseas, he would always remark about how much work they must be. So, I think that’s probably what he’d say about this one!”
Tauhara is a five-star Garden of International Significance, as graded by the New Zealand Gardens Trust. To visit, email lorna@henry.org.nz.
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