Otahuna - a classic garden restored

The Potager at Otahuna,

showing the central grape arbour, left, and the paths edged with thyme

and marigolds, below.

Mulching with straw, compost and green manures is done 

regularly in The Potager

Last Sunday I visited the gardens of Otahuna Lodge in Tai Tapu, near Christchurch. The Otahuna property includes a Class A historic building (built at the end of the nineteenth century, and now totally restored and used as luxury hotel accommodation), and a garden of national significance. The extensive Edwardian era garden was not well-maintained after the death of Sir Heaton Rhodes, the original owner of the Lodge, back in 1956. However the current owners of the Lodge have hired expert gardeners who are working on bringing the garden back to its original magnificence. Or as close as possible, given the passage of time, the loss of plants and plans, and the needs of a very different century. Judging by what I saw on Sunday, they are doing a fantastic job.

I did have a 1950s baseline with which to compare their efforts, because twenty-one years ago I was lucky enough to be a neighbour of Sir Heaton's youngest gardener from the 1950s, Derek Hindle. Derek was a very impressive home gardener, clearly a cut above the amateurs in our street. When I found out that he had been a gardener at Otahuna in its heyday I interviewed him about his experiences and wrote an article about them. This was published in the journal of the Historic Places Trust ('Memories of a Classic Estate', Historic Places, December 1991, pp 38- 41)

The Otahuna garden was modeled on the classic English country estate garden, and includes all the design elements of those gardens – sweeping lawns for outdoor recreation and vistas, woodlands and shrubberies for strolling, large ponds or small lakes for water plants and birds and swimming or boating, herbaceous borders, and a 'geometric' garden. These last can range from a grand parterre which is best viewed from an upper story of the house to much more modest groups of beds with clipped box edging and narrow paths around them (represented at Otahuna by the Dutch Garden). 

 A gorgeous Pacific Madrone

(Arbutus menziesii) growing in

the Dutch Garden at Otahuna

 The herbaceous border on the other side of the Potager wall.

The traditional country estate garden also included an extensive kitchen garden, an orchard, a melon house and other specialist growing houses, purpose-built sheds for storing produce, and a cutting garden for flowers for the house. This productive side of the estate garden is now increasingly rare even in England. The English garden and food writer and illustrator Susan Campbell, author of Cottesbrooke An English Kitchen Garden (Century Hutchinson, 1987), says that after three years of research throughout Great Britain in the early 1980s she had given up hope of finding a traditional kitchen garden still in full working order and providing all the produce eaten by the family who owned the estate and their guests. Then she found the three acre (including orchards) kitchen garden at Cottesbrooke, and her month by month account of a year in the life of this garden is a treasure trove of information of how this sort of gardening is done when it is done properly.

The restored melon house

at Otahuna, and some 

of its tempting fruit

Sadly, while the current owners of Cottesbrooke have put lots of effort into its ornamental gardens, (as recorded by James Alexander-Sinclair in the Daily Telegraph in June 2011), they have let the kitchen garden go. With this important tradition in danger of dying out in its homeland, how fortunate that it has been revived at Otahuna, where (to the best of my knowledge) it is the only existing New Zealand example of the tradition being applied in practice on an old estate.

 

Steve, the head gardener 

at Otahuna, demonstrates how he grows oyster mushrooms in what used to be a shed for storing apples through the winter.

 Yet times have certainly changed, and it is no longer desirable (or necessary) to follow old ways to the letter. It is, however, important to adhere to their spirit, and this is what is being achieved at Otahuna. The current kitchen garden, which is almost half an acre in extent, is not in its original position, but is now well-sited to take advantage of sheltering trees and stone walls, and to catch the sun. It consists of four large beds, bisected by wide gravel paths that meet under a circular grape arbour. Three of the beds are kept in continuous production from spring to autumn, while the fourth bed lies fallow until late summer, when it is planted with winter crops. 

The vegetables, fruit and herbs grown include a good selection of choice varieties of common veges and fruit, and some rare specialities. The mouthwatering list of what is being grown this year is on The Potager's webpage. The choices on what to grow are undertaken jointly with Otahuna Lodge's chef, who prepares gourmet dinners for guests and equally tasty staff lunches with what comes from the garden. Also on the menu at the Lodge is the meat from the pigs, chickens and sheep raised in the paddocks around the gardens. In turn, the pigs and chickens grow plump on surplus produce from the garden.

This 'short-chain', circular relationship between people, plants and animals is the basis of sustainable food systems. It is exciting see it happening at Otahuna today as it used to happen there and on all other traditionally-run country estates in the past, but - as I hope this blog illustrates - you don't need to own a large garden and hire staff to do this at home. The principles of sustainability are scale neutral – you can keep that circle turning whether you have a quarter acre or a quarter of a million acres (although you will need more help with the latter).

The Potager at Otahuna is the domain of Vickie Cowie, an experienced organic gardener, who works there for 20 hours a week, with occasional help from other garden staff as required. Her main pests are rabbits, birds and cabbage butterflies and she has to net her vulnerable crops to stop them being gnawed full of holes. Everything else grows beautifully in the deep, rich, fine soil, which is so soft that the only garden tool that Vickie uses every day is her Dutch hoe, to keep the weeds at bay and to mound up soil around plants. She plants small amounts often (a good tip whatever size garden you have) and rotates what she grows around the garden (also a good practice to keep disease at bay).

Otahuna is usually open to the public on only one Sunday per year - in September, when the magnificent daffodil lawns are the main attraction. Last Sunday was its first summer open day. I do hope there will be more, since the chance to see the productive gardens at their peak of the year is as thrilling to me (and I am sure to many others) as any host of golden daffodils.