Gillian Vine visits a six-star garden with the "wow" factor in spades.
No matter how many gardens I visit, there’s always another cracker to see.
Broadfield Garden, in Rolleston, is one.
It was justifiably given six stars by the New Zealand Gardens Trust, and that rating means Broadfield has been assessed as a garden of international significance.
Rather than attempting to emulate an overseas design, owner David Hobbs says originality has always been a priority. New Zealand plants, both natives those bred here from imported species, are a vital aspect of that approach.
In 1992, landscaper Robert Watson drew up plans for a 3ha garden on the bare, flat site on the outskirts of Rolleston, "but the plant choice is mine", David says.
The first step was cultivating the ground "half a dozen times" to clear it of weeds, then came the hedges, about 1.5km of them in native totara, miro and Corokia Frosted Chocolate. David cheerfully admits to getting the sequence wrong, as shelter should have been the priority but it was not a huge issue.
The landscaper wanted the twin 6m-wide borders to be planted in the English style. David rejected that, saying the 120m-long beds had to be easy to maintain by himself with one full-time helper, so he chose natives.
The result is stunning: it is worth visiting Broadfield just to see how numerous species and cultivars come together in shades of green, bronze and gold.
Less-usual species include Stephens Island pittosporum, the D’Urville Island form of toothed lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox) and the threatened Pittosporum dallii from the Nelson region, as well as bronze and variegated coprosmas, the latter slightly frost tender, David says.
Giving what he describes as rhythm within the borders are poles of totara, while sculptures add elegant touches or little bits of whimsy in a limestone buzzy bee and a "bedding plant" where Clematis Sweet Hart scrambles over an old bed end.
"I’m a hoarder [of plants] and I’d buy anything that took my fancy," David says, when complimented on the array.
As a result, it would be easy to spend an entire visit in these borders, but there is much more to see at Broadfield, each area screened from the next by the beautifully maintained hedges.
On either side of the grassy path at the end of the New Zealand borders is another double feature, a twin grove of kauri, best appreciated from the viewing mound made from the material dug out to create the circular pond enhanced with elegant swamp grass (Carex secta).
From the pond, a long canal has its edges planted with an enviable selection of rushes, raupo and bush lily (Astelia fragrans). Water lilies have made the cut only because David cannot find a suitable New Zealand alternative.
Like the rose garden, the rhododendron section is devoted to New Zealand-raised varieties, with about 420 of the shrubs. An absolute beauty which, like its parents, flowers early, is R. Cornubia x grande.
Californian quail scatter as we walk towards the perennial garden where, in early spring, an unusual weeping japonica shows off its orange-red blooms against bare branches.
Daffodils — no double or split corona varieties for David — abound here and in the New Zealand conifer walk. Again, the emphasis is on New Zealand-raised varieties from the likes of Spud Brogden (whose gladioli are also grown at Broadfield), Colin Crotty and David Campbell.
I fall in love with a Hayes windmill, circa 1900, sourced in Invercargill; and with an Asian-style pagoda whose roof tiles cost $100 from a recycling depot and whose radiata posts were $400; and I learn that wisteria will twine only in one direction up a pole.
Add immaculate maintenance to the amazing plant variety that, as David says, are "relevant to our time and place" and it is no wonder that Broadfield is a six-star garden.
Visit Broadfield
Open from Wednesdays and Saturdays from 8am to 4.30pm (other days by prior arrangement).
Broadfield, 250 Selwyn Rd, Rolleston, is dog-friendly and visitors are welcome to picnic in the gardens.
Admission is $15 for an adult, children free.
