A welcoming scene awaits as you enter Tina and Beven Shaw’s garden through its big barn door. Their cosy outdoor living space is set against a vibrant backdrop of tropical style planting complete with a tranquil waterfall. The lawn, under the dappled shade of a large Gleditsia tree, was the setting for their wedding.
But this is just the beginning of the magical terraced garden they have created. As you zigzag gently down sheltered pathways there is a deepening sense of serenity and a surprise around every corner. Pictures of what they started with show how far they have come in a short time and the hours and hours of toil in what has been a true labour of love.
Five years ago, other would-be buyers would have run a mile when faced with the large overgrown hillside. But Tina and Beven saw its potential on their first visit, even though it was pouring with rain that day. Grateful to previous owners for the wide stone staircase and tall retaining walls of the top terraces, they could see past the towering weeds and were excited by the shared vision of their future garden.
“Friends thought we were mad and we’ve certainly had our moments asking what have we got ourselves into!” Tina confesses.
Around 5500 square metres in size, the property is for the most part a steep north-east facing slope, which over the years had become swamped in ginger, privet, tobacco weed, moth plant, Taiwanese cherries plus huge paulownia, macadamia and gum trees. A digger was needed to remove vast swathes of agapanthus.
A digger also came in handy when it came time to sculpt the bottom terraces, with new retaining walls and interconnecting stairways, all built by Beven. Everything had to be carried down by hand initially but now he can get the ride-on mower in and fill a small trailer.
Tina is happy about that, “A couple of times a year it’s full-on, cutting everything back. There is so much green waste to deal with, I just put it in a big pile and then my magic fairy comes along with his trailer!”
It’s a work in progress with still more steps and pathways planned. “The idea is that we will be able to walk right down to the bottom gate, but with different ways to go so your walk around the garden loop is never the same,” explainsBeven.
He has also built a series of garden seats ‘to rest while we work’. To highlight the view from one favourite sitting spot he has added a large timber picture frame.
Beven’s strategically placed garden sculptures provide charming points of interest on every level. Some he has sourced second hand. Others he has built himself from found materials, such as his spiralling totara sculptures, one at the bottom of the garden and another hanging in the gleditsia tree. Sometimes he finds inspiration online or is inspired by quirky finds in the op shop. “I’m a bit of a magpie - always looking out for bright shiny things,” he laughs.
It’s been a lot of work getting this far, but they feel like they’re on top of it now and enjoy the fact there will always be something more to do. But, both have full time jobs so they are realistic about what they can achieve on their days off.
“I’m learning that we can’t have a garden this big and for it to be perfect. If I don’t feel like gardening I don’t. I just do it for the joy,” says Tina. “I start my day out here, watching the sunrise with my coffee. It’s the perfect way to get ready for my work day. It’s easy to be grateful isn’t it!”
While Beven is builder, craftsman and cleaner-upper of Tina’s weed piles, she is the planter and pruner. Her favourite place to potter is in her vegetable garden which basks in the warm shelter of the tall rock wall on a wide flat terrace just below the house. It’s entered through a gate Beven has made from rescued totara posts. A plaque underfoot reads ‘trespassers will be composted’.
Beven installed Tina’s waist-high vegetable beds and a little greenhouse for seed raising. Over the pathway, arched pergolas he has made from steel reinforcing mesh carry grapes, pumpkins and beans.
Tina is a fan of permaculture principles. She followed the ‘Hugelkultur’ method to fill her planting beds, using waste wood as a base layer - a material she's had plenty of. The planting layer on top is continually plied with compost,although she admits this was one of her ‘brain waves’ that creates work. “Everything to fill the beds has to be carried up or down stairs!”
She is glad though that the vege garden is close to the house, as this is the area that takes most of her time. She loves flowers that self-seed, meaning less work for her and more food for the bees. Cornflowers, nasturtium and poppies tumble over her path edges in summer.
Beven’s man cave perches neatly on the terrace below. “A man cave is what you need when you have such a clever husband,” Tina quips.
Across from the man cave is her own ‘she shed’, complete with a stainless steel potting bench. Also in Tina’s snug end of this terrace a berry cage which protects every kind of berry from the birds.
Just below, eight happy hens reside in an enclosed Food Forest, which was until recently a dumping ground overgrown with macadamias and weeds.
Stage two of the food forest is on the to-do list this spring, with turf ready to lay on the stepped pathway that traverses the food forest between mountain pawpaws,figs, citrus trees, bananas, tamarillos, passionfruit, pomegranates, herbs, and colourful nasturtium flowers and more.
“As long as there is somewhere for the chickens to scratch they won’t harm the turf, but we can’t successfully sow grass seed in here,” explains Tina. Underneath the hen house is their favourite dust bath, and she cordons off new plantings as needed.
Beven built the hen house with a clever trap door in the floor, so all the wood shavings and chicken poop can be swept straight out onto the ‘forest floor’ below. “The chickens help me spread it around,” says Tina. She cuts and drops all the prunings as she goes, continuously building healthy soil with all the organic matter.
Leading from the Food Forest, the path zigzags on through an older orchard with a row of blossoming plum trees and some impressive old espaliered pear trees that were planted in 1987. There are apples, nashi pears, five named varieties of avocados, a Black Boy peach and an orange grove. Beven is re-working a very old kiwifruit vine to grow over an old rotary clothesline, umbrella style.
Needless to say, they never buy fruit and give plenty away. Do they also get into preserving? “Martha Stewart here,” jokes Beven.
Tina agrees gardening on a slope can be great exercise. “But not so good when you leave tools or your phone down the bottom of the garden!”
Still, she loves the sense of descending into nature. “The further you go down the hill, there is less of the pretty stuff, more trees and native shrubs.”
She prefers the sound of nature to gardening with ear pods in and would much rather garden than listen to the news. “I can’t change what’s going on in the world. What I can do is come out here and make our little piece of the world a better place. That is something that I can change and I love how that makes me feel.”
One of Tina’s most cherished parts of the garden is on its lowest slope where she has planted native shrubs and groundcovers in a tapestry of colours and textures. “I’ve really enjoyed this bit because I’ve done it from scratch. Everywhere else I’ve had to fit my planting around what was already there.”
When it comes to making a large hillside garden easier to manage Tina says, “I’ve learned that groundcover is your best friend!” Mass planting of ground-hugging evergreen shrubs, especially those that have thick leaf cover on low spreading branches, shields the soil and blocks the weeds. Two of her favourite weed blockers are Coprosma kirkii and Grevillea ‘Bronze Rambler’.
Mass planting is quick and easy with her ‘PowerPlanter’, an auger attachment for the battery powered drill.
She accepts that weed control without some spraying is impossible when you have so many pathways and has placed wire netting cages around the lower garden where weeds can be left to compost, instead of being carried back up the hill. “I wish my carrots germinated as easily as those Taiwanese cherries,” she laughs.
