Elysium

There are many paths to the perfect garden but it helps to have some advice along the way. So I’ll offer one rule, always keep the dream big. Expand your horizons, make the garden beds 4m deep not 2m. But don’t start big. Start like a garden, one season at a time.

To complete a garden, means it is likely that you might soon be looking for a slightly bigger piece of land or creeping out onto the verge. Having aspirations that extend into valleys, and cricket greens, cut flower gardens and courtyards will keep your eye on the horizon.
You could say this garden started in a small urban back yard in Devonport. It was finished beautifully and promptly. So beautifully that when the house next door came up for sale with an even bigger garden over the fence it grew.

Now down in Queenstown it has horizons big enough for the aspirations of it’s gardeners. The garden dream sat alongside the dream home but the planting began on the edges of the valley softening and framing views, avenues long the winding drive. Years before the first house foundations were laid the setting was quietly growing with annual plantings and planning and thinking.

The house itself followed the same philosophy with the various wings set aside to be built in stages but with the broad vision still aspirational. This philosophy was woven into the pattern of the paving. We created layers connected to each wing of the house layering deliberately overtime. Subtle changes in material and pattern to create a sense of a home lived in and loved rather than rushed for one moment in time.
Because beauty isn’t in one solitary idea. It’s in the layering and editing and the belief in a process. A story that unfolds with patience and gratitude.
One season at a time.