Richmond's Hidden Gold

Rob Lahood finds a wonderful garden that puts the small town of Carterton on the map.

Close your eyes for a second, open them and pinch yourself. No, you are not in Italy – or looking at a glorious renaissance garden on the continent or in Britain. You are in the Wairarapa, almost in the centre of Carterton, and this is Richmond, an extraordinary garden at the end of a plain street in the centre of an ordinary small New Zealand town.

Richmond, which featured on the cover of Weekend Gardener’s NZ Gardens Trust Guide in March, is one of this country’s four newly proclaimed Gardens of International Significance. It is extraordinary, both as a restored historic home and a reinterpretation of European garden formality.

But more particularly, it is a marvellous testament to the work of one woman, Melanie Greenwood, who, with the help of her husband John and brother Richard, has created a work of art with her vision and dedicated labour.

Melanie, a self-taught gardener and plantswoman, gained a design degree, changed career direction and, while bringing up a family, conjured and brought this grand design to fruition in just 15 years.

“I liked gardening more,” she says of her design capabilities, “it’s more rewarding. Whatever, I always like being out there, doing it.”

Richmond started life almost 130 years ago when Carterton’s first town clerk Henry Wolters built a formal villa on what was originally 42 acres. As splendid as it was in the 19th century, Wolters could not have dreamed how his property would flourish in the 21st century, with its garden achieving such top honours.

After an extensive search for a property with a garden, the Greenwoods bought Richmond after it was passed in at auction.

The house was neglected, some of it ‘dreadful’ but the land was flat. This captured Melanie’s imagination as the perfect site for a formal garden because there were no competing views.

The development of the garden took priority over the restoration of the house: Melanie immediately set about ‘doing it’– designing her three-hectare garden and launching into her long project. She had 24 enormous macrocarpa trees felled. These trees were planted in 1900 and shaded the old house, blocking views of the bare paddocks. The drive was re-routed and shelter trees planted on the boundaries.

She wanted her own garden paradise and the house could wait so a superbly designed addition and renovation – done with the help of an Historic Places Trust architect, Chris Cochrane – was put on the back-burner. It was completed just four years ago and now complements a garden that reflects the moods of all the four seasons.

The key words in the garden’s master plan were multiple planting, symmetry (classic Italian style), exotic trees, topiary and buxus.

The basis of Melanie’s design is multiple planting:

• Buxus sempervirens is planted as hedging and as topiary.

• English (European) beech is used in hedging and as single trees.

• Linden limes are pleached and also grown as separate trees.

• Hornbeam is pleached and grown as hedging.

• English yew is grown as formal topiary.

Richmond is now its owners’ ‘own paradise’. While it’s still a young garden it oozes an old grandeur with vistas under and over the acres of canopies, topiary and exotic trees. It is testament to grand design skills, much patience and a true love of gardening on an ambitious scale. This garden can already be called an icon.

It’s a place of presence, personality and privacy – a place the Greenwoods have created for the sheer joy of living within the garden. The view is magnificent across the formal garden from the balconies of the residence. The focal point is the bronze fountain at the end of the long reflecting pool.

The south side of the garden is intimate, offering diverse and sometimes quirky views from different rooms of the house.

“This is the whimsical area of the garden and is designed to make people smile,” Melanie explains.

The family room views the reflecting pool and fountain out front; the living room looks on to the immaculately clipped chevron garden; from the kitchen you see topiary ‘birds’; the dining room looks out at umbrella-shaped Portuguese laurels showing their legs.

The topiary garden has teddy bears playing ball that never fail to raise a grin. The veggie garden is husband John’s passion. However Melanie has managed to get a peony picking garden in there as well.

Richmond’s flower garden is a journey of discovery. Melanie makes you explore to find it near the pool by the 125-year-old horse chestnut tree and a dovecote. She has packed the beds three-metres deep with David Austin and ‘Burgundy Iceberg’ roses and lines of tall tree peonies.

“I like to tuck the flowers away,” she says, “the peonies all grow like weeds.”

The roses are not sprayed and the camellias are underplanted in mulch. Everything is well fed.

Melanie says modestly the garden has done well but “will be better in another 15 years.

“Yes, it’s starting to get there. I knew what I wanted so away we went. Mostly it’s worked,” she says of the planting.

“But when it doesn’t, I don’t fight it. If something doesn’t work, I just bite the bullet and move on. I don’t fiddle with nature, I just change the planting.”

Richmond is now an old world in a new world. The tennis parties the Wolters threw for the pioneering Wairarapa elite have gone but there is still a court for Greenwoods and friends to play on.

But don’t expect to find Melanie spending hours perfecting her serve – care of her beloved garden wins her precious time, game, set and match.

Richmond Garden can be visited by appointment

40 Wakelin St, Carterton. Phone 06 379 8867,
email richmond@boxwood.co.nz or www.boxwood.co.nz

Article courtesy of Weekend Gardener
 

Published 17th Mar 2010

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