Flowers from an abandoned garden

 A bouquet of late spring flowers gathered from an abandoned historic garden

Recently I took a stroll in the garden that used to surround Godley House in Diamond Harbour. The house was built in 1880 and the painter Margaret Stoddart lived there with her mother and sister between 1907 and 1913, when the house and its surrounding land on Stoddart's Point were sold to the Lyttelton Borough Council. Later the house was used as an hotel, and was a popular summer weekend destination for many years. That included 2010, until the earthquake in September damaged it badly. The quake in February 2011, which was centred on the other side of Lyttelton Harbour, did even more damage. The  house could not be saved, and was eventually demolished. Before demolition the community held a wake for the house, with a big gathering for music and reminiscing in the nearby community hall, and then a march to the house site to take one last look at the building that held so many good memories.

 The west facade of Godley House in September 2011, just before demolition.

Now all that remains is a fenced-off area of foundations and remnant flower borders. Margaret Stoddart's painting of the house and its garden in 1913 

in the Christchurch Art Gallery shows the lovely informal garden borders that surrounded the house then. The daisies in the picture are surely the ancestors of the daisy bushes which have naturalised in some parts of Diamond Harbour.

Today other flowering plants from the gardens of Godley House are showing that they too can survive without constant tending. The roses rambling over the hedges at the back of the garden look like they will last a long time yet, and so do the little yellow, white and purple violas that have self-sown into the rough lawn near the house site. Granny's bonnets (also known as columbines or aquilegias) are great self-seeders as well. I will come back in late summer to collect the seeds from this fine specimen which jumped the fence.

The view of the harbour from the garden remains as appealing as ever, but I hope that the site will not be abandoned for too long, and that an even more attractive building and garden will one day take the place of those that were lost. 

 The view from Godley House garden