AN AUCKLAND GARDEN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21297, 26 September 1932, Page 6

AN AUCKLAND GARDEN

THE JOY OF FLOWERS SPRINGTIDE BEAUTY ROCK-GARDEN TREASURES V From (hp roadway you get nn idea of the wonderland of bluebell glade, fernfringed pond, Alpine rockery and springtide loveliness that- lies beyond high walls and sheltering hedge. " .lust an Auckland garden," you giurmur, catching a glint of rose-rod, a flare of gold, or a wisp of blue edging: wide green lawn.

Rut when you have passed inside the wide gates, sauntered up the driveway, fringed with ferns, and then stepped aside to look for the . house, you murmur once more, this time with a catch of the breath, " But—what an Auckland garden!" Twelve acres of loveliness, a garden that must surely rank as one of the most beautiful in all New Zealand.

Throe noble Norfolk Island pines stand gravely in a row. Beyond them, mounting terraco by terrace, are lawns, rockeries, _ flower beds, and set under the dark brow of the hillside is the home of the Master and Mistress of the Garden. It rises above a cloud of rpse-red rhododendron and flowering cherry, and its wide windows command a view that extends from the mist-blue ranges of Coromandel to the green slopes of Mangere mountain. The Bluebell Dell It takes a long while to mount that last terrace and get to the view! It is a quarter-of-a-ihile distant, certainly, but the distance is nothing. It is the garden it-self that lures, captures and holds you - back. First of all, the little bluebell and hyacinth dell, nestling in a bower of ferns, weaving' a carpet of blue beneath the tall pongas, scented rangiora and dark red prunus. Here is a whau tree, thirty feet or so in height—and it was planted as a seedling from a pot three years ago.

From the little glade you wander out to the garden again and follow the bees to the pink cloud that has drifted to the feet, o!: the, giant Norfolk pines. Stocks, magnificent heads of bloom, in exquisite 'tones of beige-rose and ash-pink, raised and planted from seed by the Mistress of the Garden! Beyond the stocks are the pansies, all one shade of misty lilac-blue, with gold centre; they stretch across the wide terrace, keeping it all to themselves, garden aristocrats that they are. Following the same path you pass rock walls, hung with scented herbs, thyme, sage and 'catmint, and in % moment you are standing at the edge of a little pond shaded by tall trees, bordered by primroses. A tiny gnome is fishing there, a stone stork peers with hopeful eye into dim green waters, each exhibiting the immemorial patience and optimism of the born angler.

The lawns here are flanjced not with flower beds but with groves of native trees and exotics. A magnificent oak spreads its branches, with tiny leaves unfurling; a child's swing, sways lightly beneath a gold-green willow, and a grove of pongaa mounts the slope toward the house. Kowhai, totara, puriri, nikau, phoenix palm, Pyrus jagonica, azaleas, syringa—they all have their place in this Auckland garden.

' Passing beneath a long pergola hungwith budding wistaria you come to one of the ferneries. Just inside the door, extending the length of the fernery, is a sunken pond, a masterpiece of crazy-tiling in shades of green, softest mauve, blue and 'pink, and beyond the pond is a bank of primulas, mauve and pink, and altogether lovely. The trellis outside is draped with climbing vines, rose, Argentine pea and clematis. The latter is in bloom, but the full beauty of the garden will not be ldade manifest until the wistaria and other creepers are in ■flower. Treasures of the Orchid House A magnificentj Queensland kauri guards the entrance to ,the orchid house. In that house are treasures known only to the orchid-grower, the Master of the Garden. He alon£ knows its secrets, its heartrending difficulties, its triumphs. One of these gladdens his heart now; her name is Ceres cymbidium, the only one of her kind, it is believed, in any private New Zealand garden. There is one other in the orchid house in the Domain, Ceres cymbidium is a glorious spectacle just now; from sprays nearly five feet, in length droop her delicate blossoms, nearly 4in. across, a faint beige-pink flecked with rose-madder. Another cymbidium, in shades of green and gold, blooms near by, but Ceres is queen of the orchid house. She is one of the best hybrid cymbidiumg grown, and wag raised by Saunders, of St. Albans, England. All orchid growers will know what that means! Another orchid now in bloom is CoeJogyne mooreana, a white and gold creation that needs only wings to complete its impression of ethereal loveliness.

Beyond the orchid house is the Alpine Slant house. Here are treasures from lexico, Burma/'South America, Greece, the Himalaya and the Rockies, all imported by the Master of the Garden, and tended with infinite patience by the Mistress. Some of them are weakly, which is not to be wondered at, seeing the fragile plants have 'travelled right across the world to find a home in this Auckland garden ! "It is like having a lot of children sickening for measles," said the Mistress with a sigh, laying down the spoon with which she had" been giving a gentian from Thibet a cooling drink. " Some of them need a few drops of Condy's fluid, another a taste of salts, sometimes their temperature is too low, sometimes too high; you mustn't get them too moist and they mustn't be too dry." An Alpine Garden

And last, of all came the Alpine garden, rock-walls down which trickled a little stream, a tiny pool where the fantails bathed, a " drip '' for the white-eyes, and a water-lily ponrf for the larger birds. A tiny path wound through the garden, bordered with campanula, gentians from Thibet, a rare white periwinkle, mauve and gold rock irises, gold erysimum, rosepink rock phlox, aethionema (Warling's variety), a mauve-pink treasure from Palestine, mauve creeping linaria, and the new lithospernum, an exquisite Cambridge blue. And lest 'the long names should o'erwhelm one. there were sweet and lovely familiar things like golden dwarf geums, New Zealand wild violets, lachenalia, nemesia,, freesia, giant forget-me-not, primroses, dianthus, and candytuft. In the middle of the rockery grew a dwarf orange-tree from'. China, its golden fruit no Jarger than a ping-pong ball. Such a garden.as this translates for all wb<-> are privileged to visit it, the real meaning of the term " The Glory of a Garden." And best of it is that the Master and Mistress have not left the work to other hands; they have worked themselves, not merely planning and directing, but actively sharing the labour . . . llius, and thus only, mav one win to the honour of that title, the Master or Mistress of a Garden.