Queenstown Lakes District Council regulatory manager Lee Webster told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the council was "working with'' Ms Langbein and her husband Ted Hewetson to ensure their property gained compliance.
At a resource consent hearing in April, the council's consultant landscape architect Marion Read recommended the property owners remove all exotic amenity trees, hedges and fruit, nut and seed trees, on 3ha of land, not listed in a 2011 consent.
She recommended they be replaced by about 300 mountain beech, kanuka, kowhai, cabbage trees and other species.
Dr Read was supported by council planner Nigel Bryce.
The hearing was about the couple's plan to add three new buildings and change the use of an existing building, but much of the argument revolved around the garden and its "domestication'' of an outstanding natural landscape.
Independent commissioners Bob Nixon and Jane Taylor, in their decision last week, said while some of the exotic planting "appears to have been established in breach of earlier conditions of consent, this is essentially an enforcement matter''.
"We have no jurisdiction to consider enforcement issues and it may be that the council wishes to form a view on that matter separately,'' the commissioners said.
They did order some hedgerows be removed.
Mr Webster said the council did enforce consent conditions.
"Enforcement inspections and follow-up are prioritised to ensure most effective use of our resources,'' he said.
Asked to explain what that meant, Mr Lee said: "We prioritise our work. We can't monitor every consent that's issued. That would be a waste of ratepayers' money.''
A near neighbour of the Dublin Bay couple posted on facebook yesterday that she was happy for them.
However, she considered the case made a "farce'' of the district plan.
"Go for it Wanaka and Queenstown, no more landscape plans required, plant what you want.
"Same rules for all.''
The woman praised Upper Clutha Environmental Society president Julian Howarth, who was the sole objector to the couple's resource consent application.
"Spare more than a thought to Julian Howarth, and all the effort he and the Environmental Society have worked at for so many years to protect our slice of paradise, and think of how it would look today without his efforts - trashed like so many other places.''
