A unique tourist attraction lies in the valleys near Fordell, Whanganui, offering superb gardens with palm trees, bamboo, and cycads prevalent. Paloma Gardens is an opportunity to pack a picnic lunch and spend the day exploring.
Moto 71 is a gallery of motorcycles at Paloma, which is a must-see, and a pottery walk is a real talking point.
Owners Nicki and Clive Higgie were both children of keen gardeners but weren’t gardeners themselves. They had planted ornamental trees in their paddocks.
Wedding Lawn, flanked by Arthropodium (Renga lilies) and palms, Tian Yuan in distance.
“In 1980 we went on a holiday up north and happened to visit some sub-tropical plant nurseries, and fell in love with the plants, the rest is history, really,” says Nicki.
Clive explained about a National Geographic article in the 1980s on bamboo, which intrigued him. “We bought seeds of Washingtonia (California and New Mexico) palms from a seed merchant in Gisborne (since closed),” said Clive. “They all germinated - if they hadn’t, we may not have proceeded with the passion we have.”
“At that stage, Clive was only really interested in anything of tree proportions - some of the timber bamboos fits that,” said Nicki.
“We love oaks and maples and traditional trees, but I fell in love with succulent trees such as Dracaena draco, Yucca elephantipes, and Aloe bainesii, also many of the southern hemisphere ones,” said Clive. “Some have come out of Brazil, New Caledonia, and Gondwanaland.
Colourful steps up to Constellation by Steuart Welch.
“We started farming, working for ourselves in 1980. Nicki became pregnant with our first child the same year,” he said.
“The farm is 1500 acres, I had spent 10 years working sheep and cattle. My father was a firm believer in the ‘green desert’, there were only a few macrocarpas around us.
“Initially, I was disappointed there were no beautiful trees, but the great thing is, you can do it all yourself.
“We didn’t inherit someone else’s taste, everything you see at Paloma, we’ve planted. The farm is now leased to our youngest son, Guy, but I and Nicki are still responsible for the forest.
“My older son, Marc, is an arborist, very knowledgeable in plants. Daughter, Simone, is vitally interested in plants, and will eventually take over Paloma.”
Nicki and Clive were married in 1974 and started planting ornamental trees. There is an arboretum to the south and one in the north and some further away, all named after motorbike marques.
Nicki and Clive Higgie in Moto 71 gallery.
Norton Arboretum (oldest), Matchless, Benelli, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, and Honda. There are 4 hectares of gardens and 40ha of arboretum.
In the arboretums, they have planted lots of clones of all the exceptionally beautiful pōhutukawa: deep red, dark red, white, vivid (Vibrance), and others from all around New Zealand such as Parnell - which is one of the biggest.
Another interest is Agathis (Kauri) and Araucaria (Monkey Puzzle) - with nearly 20 species of both of these genera, they are growing two-thirds of those.
The lake in the garden was a paddock in 1990. It took three or four years to complete, but it wouldn’t hold water. So in the end the Higgies were given a recipe of lime and clay. All the local kids with three-wheeler bikes came and rolled it for them. “We wondered if we would ever manage to get it to retain water,” said Nicki.
Doreen Blumhardt pots, part of Paloma's New Zealand Pottery Walk.
Nicki is half-French, her mother was a francophile, fiercely proud of her French heritage. Painted on one of the bridges, by Clive, is the wording “French women are proof of God.”
“Thirty years ago, Julian Matthews wrote in NZ Gardener about our gardens,” said Nicki. “Six months after that, in 1992, we used to get groups asking to come out. We also did fundraisers for groups. Then individuals wanted to come.
“We were one of the founding members of the New Zealand Gardens Trust about 20 years ago. We have an honesty box and were advised to charge $10 per person for visits, so we are doing that.
“Thirty years ago the garden was very young. But gardens have a charm right through their evolving state.
“A passion has developed for cycads, succulents, cacti, and orchids, it goes on and on. Clive loves bromeliads (pineapple family), epiphytes in the trees, kiekie, colospurmum, ferns, orchids, and cacti. And there’s the pottery walk.
“Since the 1990s, we’d been giving each other pottery presents for birthdays, such as by Rotorua potter Barry Ball. We put it in the garden where everyone enjoys it, and it snowballed.
“Our house is small, so anything of a reasonable size, we’ve put outside in the garden. The Pottery Walk is about 100m, we love it.
“There are many different reasons why people come. Some for the gardens, some for the motorbikes, some for a place to relax, and some for the art in the garden, as we are on the Coastal Arts Trail. You can see different people focus on different things,” said Nicki.
■ Moto 71
“In 1971 I was 18 and bought a brand-new Norton Commando, it was a turning point in my life. Moto - the French and Italian meaning for motorbike. I sold my Norton to buy a car for when we married, then in the 1990s, I bought another road bike, and the collection slowly mounted up.
“In the mid-70s, we went to Europe, Nicki had lived there. We had a Kawasaki Z400, we went through Europe and a lot of England on that,” said Clive.
“The people we were working for bought it, so they could lend it to us,” said Nicki. “When we came back, they sold it, they were lovely people.”
Clive remarked: “We were cruising along in France, and all these big bikes such as BMWs, cruised by at 100 miles per hour. Our little Z400 could cruise at 100km/h. I remember thinking ‘One day I want to have a bike like that’, and so we did in 2012, and brought it home.”
“Travelling on a motorbike was seen as a bit different for many people, and there was a lot of goodwill toward us.
“In Turkey, they love Kiwis, and in the rest of Europe too. We never went anywhere that New Zealanders had a bad name,” said Clive. “When I was in my early 60s, we started planning for a motorcycle museum. As my retirement project, we built Moto 71, it took two years to complete. We opened it two years ago, at the end of May 2021 - it’s just had its second birthday.”
“Clive was determined to have the bikes arranged so that they could be walked around and each one easily ridden, not all squashed up,” said Nicki. “It’s a gallery, not a museum, bikes as works of art, on their own without much memorabilia.” All three production transverse six-cylinder motorcycles ever made are on display: Honda CBX, Benelli Sei, and Kawasaki Z1300. “There are not many groups of all three around, they’re really nice bikes,” said Clive.
“When we bought the bikes, it was just before their value shot up in the last five years, particularly post-Covid.”
