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This farm, this whole area here was owned by the Scandrett family from
about the 1860s and four generations lived here and farmed it. They first of all had
a little house down the front and then they
had this house built. It was a classic New Zealand farm.
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Even in something like the early 1900s they were growing brilliant
dahlias and chrysanthemums which they won prizes with, so it’s always just been a
brilliant garden around a farmhouse.
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They farmed the whole range, and then they had a
full range of horticulture at times. They
were especially known for the apricots which they had an orchard all along the flat, right
close to the sea…and they had honey and I
suppose a classic New Zealand farm…you grew what you could to provide for your family
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This is Cecile Brunner, it’s a classic heritage
rose, and I planted it maybe eight or nine years ago after I first came
here and began working on the garden. People like Fran Scandrett were such a fanatical
gardener…She was here on the farm and she loved gardening, so there was a chance to
grow a myriad of things and she just loved growing things everywhere. She had a brilliant
garden, so that’s part of what I’ve repeated or continued, that traditional garden
that was there for masses of flowers if you wanted them.
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Because of this bowl shape here of the farmland, and the high cliffs along
there, if we get a southerly it goes right over the top. And there’s a microclimate
down here, we can be three or four degrees warmer
than anywhere else without the wind, so we can sit here in the sun and everyone else
is inside staying out of the wind. And it does make growing things brilliant, that’s
probably why the Scandretts practiced horticulture along with the classic cows and
sheep and pigs and everything else they had.
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When I first began volunteering here and took on the garden, I followed
the basic shapes that were already here. You know there were still a lot of quite mature
trees, there’s apples, there’s feijoas, there’s grapefruit, persimmon, all sorts
of things even in this smaller front area. So it’s
easy just to follow someone else’s pattern and
filled things in…and I try to put into the garden older cultivars…so I sort of expand
on what I find…but the cultivars I’m using
are from my mother’s garden so they’ve got
probably fifty years as a cultivar, they’re not the newest modern hybrid. And I’ve
followed that through with the garden, if I’ve found or seen things then that’s
what I’ll try and grow. There’s also some things I
haven’t found like rhododendrons and camellias which they may have had, but they
hadn’t survived til the point where I started again.
Over towards the front here there’s what’s been labelled a lime tree, but
the Scandrett children used to trick other children into trying to eat it, because in
the middle of winter it’s covered in all these
little orange fruit that look very much like mandarins, but one bite tells you it’s not
– it’s just intense, it’s beyond sour it’s just such
an intense. That’s why I think it was classed as a lime because two slices in a jug of
water and you’ve got all the flavour you need. Here are all the new fruit, they’re
going to be brilliant this winter, smothered in
little orange mandarin-looking fruit, but as sour
as they come. Here this one’s just on ready it’s actually, I’ve pulled the center
out – so just ready for eating!
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As I say, most of this garden was Fran’s, you’ll find things like little
patches of freesias stuck here or there, just as little bright yellow surprsises. But also
there’s several grapevines in the garden, probably about five or six that were here
from Ray Scandrett’s time. This is an Albany
Surprise which is just the classic Auckland dessert grape, like they’re the ones that
people have in their garden and they’re nice to
eat. Ray Scandrett used to make wine from them, and he’s almost infamous for how
abysmal this wine was, until finally he got someone to be honest with him and say:
“No, it tastes awful!” and he said “thank goodness you’ve said that, I was always
thinking this is horrid wine but everyone was telling me something different!”
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This tree I’m standing beside is a mountain pawpaw and I purchased it
particularly to come in the garden mainly ‘cause of some photos of Fran Scandrett
up here in the garden over there and there was
a couple growing. So I thought “Oh I’ll get
one!” They’re probably from the time in the 1970s where Fran and Ray were trying out
all sorts of what were then exotic tropicals, like the bananas, but there’s also tropical
guavas and cherimoyas and avocados. All these things in the 1970s were really quite
radical plants to have whereas now they’re becoming more common in a garden.
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In the back of the garden there’s this big group of plants which are
criniums. I imagine they’ve been here since the 1920s or maybe earlier from the time of
Lucy Scandrett, Ray Scandrett’s mother who continued to live with them when Fran
and Ray were here. ‘Cause I know they were quite fashionable or growing in gardens in
the 1920s and probably earlier. It’s a very prolific plant and it looks stunning. This
is mid-December when it’s just at its best
so it’s stunning for the moment.
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This is obviously a lily pond, or it is now
but there’s also some goldfish down here in the pond and they were really
quite small eight years ago, but they’re very, very healthy. And we also have some
little frogs in here in summer. And if you go
by a child’s assessment this is a frog pond with goldfish and lilies…you know, reptiles,
fish, plants…Whereas to a gardener, you put your lilies first, and the goldfish and
the frogs are the accessories. It’s also, this
area here is to do with…this funny shape over
here was a honey shed, because that was one of the things that the Scandretts
produced. They had major lines of beehives over on that hill, this is before there were
roads and everything there. It was a bit more rumpty when I first came with more lumps
of concrete which we took off, and cleared the soil out and found it has a concrete
floor. And the soil was so consistent that I imagine at one time it was used as a
vegetable garden, I mean once the proper structure had fallen over.
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Because of a garden your planning is always a year, or even a
season…Fran was a brilliant gardener and living in a somewhat isolated place it was
just a great personal activity. For people that garden you just don’t think week by
week, you think season by season.
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