Wandering the Wairau
Half Day Tour
Key features: A half-day tour immersing you in expansive country gardens that traverse the magnificent Wairau Valley. With an afternoon or morning option to choose from, appreciate panoramic views across Cloudy Bay to the North Island during the morning option and explore a NZ Garden Trust landscape during the afternoon tour. Showcasing gardens that inspire the good life to terraced vistas that exemplify clever responses to sloping sites, there is much to learn during either option of this tour.
This sixty-acre block was purchased in 2000 with a long-term plan for a busy retirement, and the owners used the intervening years to establish structure by planting mostly natives. The recently completed house captures the sun and magnificent views, while the inspiring recent plantings – including on a challenging clay bank – show what can be achieved in a short time. Please note parts of garden are steep.
Bhudevi (Sanskrit for ‘Earth Goddess’ or ‘Mother Earth’) includes stunning formal and native gardens with sheltered and open seating areas for enjoying birdsong, plantings and outdoor sculptures. A citrus garden, bordered by a myrtle hedge, features a pavilion enclosed in wisteria, and a delightful potager produces an abundance of vegetables and flowers.
A unique response to a challenging site, this terraced hillside country garden features beautiful blooms, a pergola-covered ‘lane of roses’, a summerhouse and paths through a woodland filled with camellias and hydrangeas. With expansive open spaces beyond, you’ll enjoy serenity under the poplar trees surrounding a beautiful pond.
A peaceful and tranquil established garden with abundant fruit trees, vegetable gardens and berry enclosures. Formal plantings create rooms for outdoor living, with adjoining productive spaces to nurture compost and generate mulch to feed their soils. A labour of love and happiness.
