Terry Dowdeswell is in the group Blooms on Bastia, who are trying to secure the property to become a community asset. Photo / Bevan Conley
Terry Dowdeswell is in the group Blooms on Bastia, who are trying to secure the property to become a community asset. Photo / Bevan Conley
A group of Whanganui locals want an investor to swoop in and save their attempt to retain for the public a historically significant property in the city.
The property at 115 Mount View Rd was home to world-renowned plant breeder Jean Stevens, then her daughter Jocelyn Bell and Jocelyn's husband Ian Bell.
The late Jocelyn and Ian Bell left the property to their sons, who are now selling the 10,000 square metre property.
Blooms on Bastia is a group hoping to retain the land and make it a new community space.
Blooms on Bastia put a successful offer on the property, and now need $1.5 million from an investor before the contract goes unconditional on June 24.
He said they should be able to raise the finances to pay back an investor, who he said could be an "angel investor" within 12 months.
"What we're wanting is time."
An angel investor typically uses their net worth to back a project and can often be a quicker source of funding.
Once finances were secured, Dowdeswell said the property would be placed into a trust created by Blooms on Bastia and accessible to the public in a variety of ways.
The property was home to Jean and Wally Stevens, who bought six acres of the land in 1945 and transformed it from paddocks and farmland to a garden surrounding the farmhouse.
It also became home to Jean Stevens' iris breeding, which became so well known the Queen Mother visited the garden when she was in Whanganui in 1966.
Stevens was a self-taught plant breeder and discovered new calibrates through breeding beyond what is called the "infertility stage", which the science at the time said was not possible.
She bred nearly 400 new iris breeds and won awards for iris breeding in Florence, the US and the UK.
The nearby Iris Place on Bastia Hill was named because of the iris breeding at 115 Mount View Rd.
Karen Wrigglesworth and Terry Dowdeswell looking at a Cadellia pentastylis, one of the many vulnerable plants grown in the garden. Photo / Bevan Conley
"We just want to save the story, the plants and the property," Blooms on Bastia member Karen Wrigglesworth said.
The group still had to confirm how the property was going to operate, but they were sure it would involve cataloguing plant material and community education.
They also planned to have a "gardener in residence" who would live on the property and tend to the area.
Phil Thomsen is on the team for Blooms on Bastia and said a gardener in residence was possibly the biggest educational, promotional, and economic opportunity of all.
"This could be a major role encompassing botany, conservation, education and the Gardens themselves," Thomsen said.
He saw the gardener in residence plan as an opportunity for Whanganui to become a significant horticultural centre of innovation.
"We're trying to keep the vision broad at the moment because that allows us to figure out what's going to work financially and for the community.
"But we want the area to be enjoyed by everyone," Wrigglesworth said.
In September 2021 Te Papa went to 115 Mount View Rd to collect plant specimens for its collection, as the property also homed many endangered and exotic plants, especially from South Africa and Australia.
Ian Bell developed the popular Safari Sunset cultivar of Leucadendron, which now sells 50 million stems every year.
Because of this, Ian received the prestigious Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.
Whanganui mayor Hamish McDouall said he was delighted to support the initiative, and said the project fitted with the Whanganui District Council's parks, open spaces and climate change policies.
"It also has the added benefit of enhancing Whanganui's focus on heritage and feeding into our growing tourism markets," McDouall said.
