Garden Guru: Red revolution

<i>I See Red,</i> designed by Alan Trott and Sir Miles Warren, won Gold at the Ellerslie Flower Show. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Inscribed in Latin on a wall in Sir Miles Warren's garden at Governors Bay, Christchurch, is a transcript of the Chinese saying: "He who plants a garden plants happiness."

Red is a favourite colour for Chinese - passionate, vibrant and energetic.

It is also the colour of celebration, of painting the town red, and one garden at Ellerslie International Flower show this week stands out as a celebration of the hue - the pleasure plants can give and a celebration of friendship too.

Titled I See Red, it was created by a group of extraordinary gardening pals. It's a regulation 10m x 10m square, but once inside the enfolding hedges there is not a regulation in sight, no trendy eco-credentials, no huge budget or corporate backers, and barely a native plant. Just enthusiasm, artistry and love.

Alan Trott is behind the process which seems to have as much in common with the Mad Hatter's Tea Party than planning for a major flower show.

Trott, probably this country's most incorrigible garden-maker, almost single-handedly fashioned the great love of his life, Trott's Garden, from what was an uninspiring flat field in Ashburton, creating a staple of the tourist-coach itinerary.

Trott's 2.3ha are impressive paradise crammed with ponds, follies and mass planting of a hight order.

He moved a chapel - which has become very popular for weddings - to the site to be the centrepiece of what is now officially the biggest true knot garden in New Zealand. He has received an award for garden excellence from the Canterbury Horticultural Society, and the garden was named one of national significance by the Garden Trust.

But Trott isn't a man to rest on his laurels and he and a group of gardening friends decided that with Ellerslie coming so close to their doorstep they just had to do something for the sheer hell of it.

Sir Miles Warren - one of the country's most respected architects - added a note of gravitas to the project. Sir Miles owns Ohinetahi, one of our most iconic gardens. He definitely doesn't do weddings but he does have a weakness for modern art and lots of it is crowded into a garden of classical proportions.

Sir Miles had already developed a striking red garden at Ohinetahi - viewed from a specially built tower - and Trott shares his enthusiasm for massed red. So the theme for their show garden was obvious - a simple harmonious horticultural volcano allowing plants in many contrasting shapes and forms to tell the story themselves.

The plan was for Sir Miles to flesh out a design and provide some sculptural interest. Trott would grow the plants and two talented women would add their considerable artistic clout.

Marilyn McRae has been the head gardener at Ohinetahi for 10 years but it was Sir Miles' sister, Pauline Trengrove, and her husband, John, who helped design the garden.

The Trengroves had long since moved out to create their own distinguished plot - an Italianate extravaganza which has since been sold.

Without a garden to play in at present, Pauline was more than willing to bring her artistic energies to such a fun project. Trott says no-one was in charge, they know each other so well they just got on with it.

The centrepiece is a Price kinetic sculpture that wobbles in the wind.

A sinuous gravel curve coaxes you to immerse yourself in the planting - passing a koru hewn out of clipped buxus - before arriving at the art work.

It's the planting that makes this space sing - from banks of gently weeping hakonechloa grasses to seven imposing spikes of Berberis 'Helmonds Pillar' that rise through the softer planting. The ingredients may not be rare - leafy ligularias, purple cercis trees, graceful miscanthus grasses and the red berries on Malus samba - but the artistry of design makes it special.

I See Red is low on dollars but high on impact. In the Exhibition Gardens category of the show, Red won Gold.