It's a little beauty
Open to the public for the first time on the Wairarapa Pūkaha Garden Tour this year, Longbush Cottage packs plenty into a one-hectare plot.
Five years ago Luke Gardner and Ben Quay bought Longbush Cottage as their weekender. “We thought we would drift over the hill here from Wellington on weekends, but even after about a month we just wanted to stay," says Luke.
This finally come to pass last November when they moved into the cottage permanently, giving them the chance to focus on further developing the garden.
Luke’s background in interior design comes to the fore in the garden’s structure. Designed as a series of outdoor rooms, each with its own style and colour theme, the garden appears to meander around one of the sweetest colonial cottages you’ll ever see. But there is a clever structure at work here, creating a garden that packs so much in, it seems much larger than one hectare.
“As you go further up into the garden you’ll see a range of styles, but around the house I wanted it to feel very cottagey.
Standing out against the gunmetal grey of the cottage, the white garden at the front welcomes with iceberg roses underplanted with silvery grey foliage and seasonal white flowers. In other flowerbeds, you’ll find blue, purple and pastel shades – delphiniums, peonies, irises, aquilegias, lupins, geums and other cottage blooms.Walk down the path towards the pond and you’ll see a contrasting ‘hot’ garden of vibrant oranges and reds.
Memory played a role in shaping the garden. “I grew up on a sheep farm in North Canterbury, and my mother and all her friends in the Eighties had big country gardens. I think subconsciously I wanted to create my childhood garden,” says Luke.
There’s also a hint of the gardens in National Trust Properties explored during Luke’s OE in the UK. But although Longbush may have traditional cottage garden roots, it definitely has a Kiwi stamp on it. “If there is a New Zealand native plant that will perform the function I want, I will use that instead. And we are putting in a block of natives along the back garden to attract native birdlife.”
There’s a flourishing potager, and one of Luke’s favourite spaces – a cutting garden where flowers are grown to be picked.
Five years on from the first shovel in the ground, Luke modestly says the garden is still a work in progress. It’s taken an impressive amount of hard graft to make so much of a sometimes challenging plot of land. The garden is in a frost pocket and the soil was heavy clay. “Clay is actually nutrient-rich but it needs breaking down. I’ve chucked in blood and bone, mushroom compost, and woodchips – it’s really good soil now.
He’s also put in structural elements such as the large pond, and the menhir-like standing stone, leading the eye down a line of graceful totara to the newly planted orchard.
Luke raises many of his plants from seeds in his own nursery.
Plants will be available for sale during the Pukaha Wairarapa Garden Tour.
