In this extract from A Guided Discovery of Gardening, New Zealand designer, artist and writer Julia Atkinson-Dunn pays a visit to The Blue House in North Canterbury, a romantic and invigorating garden that has inspired her own style of gardening ever since.
I had planned for my first visit to
I had heard the ‘Blue House’ murmured through the crowds over the four-day event, and on visiting, in the low, late glow of the spring dusk, I felt like screaming in delight. The incredible creative refuge I had found myself in was deserving of far more than murmured praise and a fleeting visit. Here was a garden, hidden from passers-by, that answered my long-held lust for witnessing naturalistic-style planting locally. I was instantly inspired by it and remain so ever since.
I finally found the opportunity to return and spend more time with the gardener/visionary Jenny Cooper, holding her wisdom and wit hostage until after dark. As I have come to know Jenny I’ve found a deep connection to her planting decisions and aesthetic. Her own journey in creating this garden was not evident to me at first, as I simply drank up the invigorating treats she offered at every corner of the property. But hiding behind the romantic result is a long journey of grit and discovery that saw Jenny bend to the environment she was creating in and learn an entirely new approach.
“My previous gardens were town gardens with fences, endless free water and established trees on around 800 square metres. I took those things for granted, as it was not until I found myself without them that I really had to sit up and take notice,” relays Jenny. “I used to mulch and feed to the max with six inches of beautiful homemade compost every year. The garden beds would eventually rise up out of the ground and tumble forward onto the lawn because there was so much mulch.”
In 2013 Jenny and Chris purchased this bare property, all 4600 square metres (just over an acre) of it. They had arrived to an average rainfall of just 650mm per year, and the infamous heat, cold and treacherous nor’west winds of North Canterbury. They were confronted with the challenge of making a new home and garden out of a lean sheep paddock with wire fences and a single sheltering hedge on the eastern side.
In an intense demonstration of gardening being a continuous learning curve, Jenny was brutally punished for applying her formative growing approach to this unforgiving section. She took on the back-breaking work of hand-digging the beds, removing vigorous grass, working in compost, mulching with compost, staking and watering to assure her plants survival.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.Her preferred palette of shade-loving plants got blown away or burnt to pieces (given the extreme lack of shelter), with the rich ground she’d created making everything too lush and too soft.
“The old way was exhausting and unrewarding,” she says. “And yet I was vaguely aware of other gardens that survived in these harsh conditions. So began a journey of discovery which I am still on, and which is one of the most enjoyable and valuable things the garden has given me.”
Turning to the internet and the library, she scoured the world for information on gardening in the wind and dry. She took a deep dive into horticultural research on water uptake, how to plant effective windbreaks, no-dig methods, plant nutrition, gravel gardens, bare rooting and mycorrhizal fungi. Even now, during our regular dialogue, my mind swims at the extent of her knowledge and her ability to adopt it in the building and care of the garden we see today.
Jenny and Chris undertook an enormous programme of shelter planting with seven mixed-species windbreaks fanning through the property. Trees are also dotted through all the garden beds; she learned that if you can’t give a plant water, give it shade.
Invested in the long game, all trees (and perennials) were planted as small as possible to ensure they adapted and grew to withstand their environment early on. Seduced by articles and photography featuring the work of Piet Oudolf, Olivier Filippi, James Golden, Charles Dowding, Dan Pearson and New Zealand’s own Jo Wakelin, she became familiar with a relaxed, alternative approach to create a beautiful garden in contrast to her initial traditional ideals.
Where her former garden style was neat and tidy, the Blue House beds reflect her pursuit of planting that isn’t constantly bothered by the gardener. There is a wildness, with plants left to express their natural character with little disease or need for staking. This has been achieved by ruthlessly planning and sustaining zones within her space, planting plants with similar needs together and culling the instant one doesn’t cope.
In taking the resource of water seriously, she is in constant pursuit of reducing her consumption and has succeeded in needing to water only half of the beds she has planted. Given the scale and abundance of her space, this is truly inspiring!
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Despite this critical planning, aesthetics reign supreme and a less knowledgeable visitor wouldn’t believe the science behind the creativity on display.
Where Jenny speaks about seduction, I too can relate in my own reaction to the Blue House. I chose to photograph in the magic of the late-summer gloaming, seeking to capture the sense of the place she has created. Light shimmered through the soft grasses, spiky globes and gentle washes of colour, pulling the eye through leafy frames created by the trees.
As an award-winning illustrator, Jenny’s planting zones reflect her eye for colour and texture. They range from lush, glossy beds shaded by her maturing trees to wings of sun-drenched mixed perennials, gravel beds of architectural succulents and a pool of bronzing grass that shifts in the wind.
Like all gardens, the Blue House is a work in motion that provides any visitor with a sense of calm, underpinned by the possibility that these ideas can be translated into our gardens of the future.
Extracted from A Guided Discovery of Gardening by Julia Atkinson-Dunn. Published by Koa Press. $50, from all good bookstores.
