The Jarvis family homestead once boasted a massive garden bed of poinsettias so vividly red that a pilot told the family he used it as a navigational marker when airborne. That floral display may be history, but the quaint tales about the family's 70-year ownership of the property still flourish.
Jack and Kathleen Jarvis owned the large property and now the couple have both passed away it's being sold by their four adult children, John, David and Raymond Jarvis and sister Rosemary Griffiths (nee Jarvis). John and Rosemary say the rare type of tea plant still growing in the front garden was grown from seed by the property's original owner, who ran a Ceylonese tea packaging business on site. Scientists visited to study the plant but couldn't establish it properly elsewhere because of New Zealand's climate. Suitably impressed, the kids were about 7-years-old when they tried to boil its leaves up for a cuppa. "It tasted awful," Rosemary says. "It's a wonder we didn't poison ourselves!"
When the family bought the property from its original owner in 1942 it was Jack's mother Daisy and her daughter-in-law Kathleen who chose it, as Jack was stationed up north with the army guarding against Japanese invasion.
Another big attraction was the property's large timber-floored workroom incorporating two garages, which has three-phase power and is still suitable for a business. The family ran their picture moulding business from it with Nana Daisy happily doing finishing work such as gilding until she was 94. The family also bred dachshunds and supplemented their income by selling cut poinsettias to florists.
