Anam Cara Gardens officially a three-star garden

The hardworking team at Anam Cara Gardens, from left, Thijs Elemans (Lancewood Landscaping), Carla McInnes, Christine Scannell, Tim and Teresa Grigg, Gary Scannell, Carlene Chester and Mike Wells. Photo / David Haxton

The beautiful Anam Cara Gardens have become Kāpiti’s first official registered garden, an achievement that owners Teresa and Tim Grigg are incredibly proud of.

Anam Cara Gardens, located in Ōtaki Beach, has been rated a three-star garden by the New Zealand Gardens Trust (NZGT), which means they are of a reasonable standard and are especially maintained during their identified optimum season.

The rating system goes up to six stars, which is reserved for gardens of international significance.

Currently, there are 112 gardens in the trust, spanning all throughout the country.

Teresa and Tim bought Anam Cara Gardens in 2017 and envisioned the property as a wedding venue and more.

“We were incredibly naïve as to how much work was involved,” Teresa said.

Despite their inexperience, the two, alongside a small, hardworking team, started to develop the gardens into what they are today.

The journey to getting the gardens assessed was by sheer coincidence.

Teresa, while on a girls’ trip with Tim’s mother and sisters, met a trustee of the NZGT.

This sparked Teresa and Tim to set out to discover what was involved in getting their gardens assessed.

“Once again we were quite naïve to how the standards were,” Teresa said.

The gardens didn’t make the cut the first time they applied, which Teresa said was mainly due to much-needed arborist work.

“Fortunately, the assessors gave us some great tips, and as money permitted, we set about quietly working away.”

Their team got to work, pruning rose bushes, hydrangeas, and other flowers, building paths, and adding decorative statues.

Teresa said they didn’t have their hopes high about passing their second assessment, but despite their reservations, they passed.

“Getting the rating the second time around was an amazing feeling.”

The gardens’ history spans four decades, starting in the 1980s when Cynthia Coe and her family bought the bare land to use for selling cut Erica flowers.

She was a writer and a poet and spent two years envisioning what she wanted to do with the gardens.

Part of Anam Cara Gardens. Photo / David Haxton

Eventually, she decided to design the garden as if it were a theatre and used what is now the function centre to write and present her poems.

For Cynthia, gardening was about relationships, including between different plants, plants with soil, past with present, present with future, and more.

During Cynthia and her family’s ownership of the land they planted the swamp sheoak and populus flevo trees as a shelter belt from wind, planted the rimu grove, and a rose garden.

After the Coe family, there were three more owners of the gardens before Teresa and Tim took over, and all of them had different visions.

While Cynthia envisioned a theatre, another owner saw a retreat centre, and of course, the Griggs saw a wedding venture, and they now have about 40 weddings a year.

Despite its vast history, the gardens have always had that wow-factor, and Teresa said she looks forward to improving their star rating.

“We know what we need to do ... and we’ll get there.”

You can view all the NZGT gardens here.