The Dunedin Rhododendron Festival opens on Sunday and features a strong line-up of gardens to visit. Gillian Vine previews one of them.
Some 20 years ago, when farmer's wife Mary Hellyer thought she would like to extend her Macandrew Bay garden, she asked her husband, Snow, if she could have a little piece of steep bank alongside the house and was told, "No".
"He said if I wanted it, I'd have to take it all, as putting a fence where I planned would mean the sheep could run into the corner and smother," Mrs Hellyer says.
Having got much more than she bargained for, Mrs Hellyer set to work and has transformed the unpromising hillside into a thickly planted woodland which, in spring, is bright with flowering cherries, crab apples and dozens of rhododendrons.
Last weekend, she was taking advantage of the dry weather to improve the path to the top, once a sheep track, so it would be fit for visitors.
In one spot, a kowhai in full bloom leaned over a wishing well, a surprise gift from one of Mrs Hellyer's two sons.
"He came home with it on the back of a truck," she recalls, saying she added an old calf bucket - "This was a dairy farm way back" - to complete the picture.
Developing the bank and a flatter area between it and the original garden boundary could be described as the second stage of development, for when Mrs Hellyer came to live here, the garden consisted of a rata, two old apple trees, a pear and a walnut.
Those trees are still there and although growing things under the walnut can be difficult - although deciduous, walnuts are notorious for killing plants under them - she has persevered, with better-than-expected results.
One shrub that has not taken kindly to being sited near the walnut is the lovely white rhododendron, September Snow, bred by the late Bruce Campbell, of Dunedin.
"I'll just have to move it," Mrs Hellyer says, and looks thoughtfully at the bank, obviously working out where to replant it.
When the spring-flowering shrubs have finished, roses take over.
Between the bank and the house, Mrs Hellyer has a bed of David Austin roses and on the other side of the house, a bed of hybrid teas, while other roses are used in mixed plantings elsewhere.
This winter, Mrs Hellyer pruned the roses hard back.
The David Austins were almost 3m tall, "so I have let rip and Sally Holmes was crowding other shrubs so I gave it a good hiding".
Strong new growth shows that the radical pruning has had no ill-effects.
One of the biggest challenges is water, either too much or too little.
Mrs Hellyer shows two photos taken in the mid-1980s.
The first shows a February drought, with everything parched; the second of the same area resembling a lake was taken the following winter.
Clever drainage and using "the dreaded Gunnera" in boggy spots helps but small springs are liable to pop up unexpectedly.
Mrs Hellyer just takes them in her stride.
See it
The Hellyer garden is open this Sunday as part of a Dunedin Rhododendron Festival tour. For details and tickets, contact Sequel Events, phone (03) 477-1092, or email victoria@sequelevents.co.nz
