Transforming a grand Dunedin property has been a labour of love for a former Australian couple. Kim Dungey reports.
When Jacqui and David Reith bought this Dunedin property, old overgrown rhododendrons almost hid the bluestone mansion from view.
A cracked, curved path ran from the front door to the letterbox, dissecting the lawn and clashing with, rather than enhancing, the home's symmetrical design. The whole look, they say, was dark and depressing.
Sixteen years later, the couple has restored the historic house in Highgate and created an old-fashioned, English-style garden with formal lines and informal plantings.
And the work has not gone unnoticed by the hundreds of people who pass daily.
They once heard two elderly women arguing about what was new and what wasn't. They have even had a note in their letterbox saying, "I love what you're doing''.
It's a far cry from the 1970s when Renfrew House was under threat of demolition. Leadlights, carved bannisters and a white marble fireplace had been removed in the name of modernisation. A developer was reportedly interested in building ownership flats on the site.
However, the Dunedin City Council refused to allow the house to be removed from the heritage schedule protecting it from destruction or alteration and by 2001, when the Reiths visited from Brisbane, it was once again on the market.
These days Dr Reith is an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Otago, but back then they were checking out the city where he had just been offered a joint clinical/academic posting.
"We were having our first holiday ever without our three children,'' Mrs Reith says, laughing. "If we'd gone anywhere in the world, we would have thought it was an amazing place and Dunedin in February was lovely.''
Dr Reith says they liked the home's character, size and location but other potential purchasers might have been put off by the cost of heating the five-bedroom house (which they believe was named after a town near Glasgow).
Their first priorities were to install central heating, take out and double glaze almost every window and add two layers of wool insulation to the attic ceiling.
With scaffolding up, workers replaced the iron roof, added copper gutters and downpipes, re-pointed the stone work and rebuilt the partially-rotten verandah.
They also removed glass that had been added to the top verandah. A flat-roofed extension containing the kitchen, laundry, downstairs bathroom and sunroom will be demolished and rebuilt in a more sympathetic style late next year.
The aim in the garden was to create something that would complement the house and look like it had always been there.
With only a large, listed red beech and the steps, pillars and walls immediately outside the front door retained, the couple began with an almost blank canvas.
Christchurch landscape designer Robert Watson came up with the parterre design, with triangular-shaped beds connected by gravel and paved pathways.
Edged with 500 buxus, the beds are filled with snowdrops, lilacs, herbaceous perennials, old-fashioned roses and more than 50 varieties of heritage daffodils bred before 1940.
In summer, the climbing roses, Madame Alfred Carriere and Madame Legras de St.Germain, cover the diamond-patterned obelisks and arbor.
In shaded areas, primulas, hellebores, meconopsis, thalictrums and dicentras flourish.
Diminutive primrose auriculas are showcased for maximum impact in an "auricula theatre'', a wooden shelving unit of the type used by Victorians for display purposes.
Pleached lime trees line the drive and a yew hedge will eventually reach the top of the front fence to provide a little more privacy.
Repeat plantings and a limited material palette ensure a cohesive look, but just for fun, Mrs Reith recently created a dahlia border. She is also raising alliums, fritillarias and English bluebells from seed, unfazed by the three to five years between sowing and flowering.
The fan of traditional plants and designs has embraced modern technology to achieve her vision, often turning to the internet to ask questions, research heritage plants or order seed from England. A weather app on her smartphone helps her plan her week's work while English and European gardeners on Instagram provide inspiration.
The property's hard landscaping includes heritage-style lighting, old cobblestones from a freezing works, new iron fences, gates, arbors and obelisks made by Zeal Steel and stone walls created by Stuart Griffiths.
"There's a lot of artistic people in Dunedin. That's one of the advantages of living here and a lot of their skills have gone into this garden,'' says Dr Reith, adding that the property is both high pleasure and high maintenance.
Nine compost bins containing garden clippings and alpaca or sheep manure are turned with the help of a gardener who works on the property once a fortnight. The beds also benefit from mushroom compost and ash from their combustion stove.
Pruning, deadheading and division of plants are all completed without anyone standing on the beds. Instead they put down planks so the soil is not compacted.
Though happy with what they have achieved, the couple say it is the sort of garden that will improve with time. In a few years, the yew hedge and pleached limes will have grown, giving the garden a different look. As the plantings in the parterres establish, they will spill over, softening the edges and creating a more informal, romantic profusion of colours, shapes and textures.
Both enjoy gardening, often planning holidays around visits to famous English properties, such as Sissinghurst and Great Dixter.
But Mrs Reith is the self-professed "garden geek'', studying horticulture under Larnach Castle's Fiona Eadie and quitting her book club because she had no time to read anything other than gardening titles: "I like to say I'm passionate about my garden. My husband says I'm a bit obsessive.''
Next year, they will create space at the back of the property for vegetables, espaliered fruit trees and flowers for cutting.
When the main garden has matured in a few years' time, they would like to open it to the public and sell plants, donating any proceeds to the Otago Community Hospice.
Mrs Reith says they have no intention of moving.
"We thought we'd be here two to five years. That was our plan. But we fell in love with the South Island and Dunedin and when my Australian passport expires, I'm not renewing it.''
It's not only that the home has views of harbour and hills, she says. She also loves the Dunedin climate and the fact that almost anything will grow in it.
"The heat and the lack of rain in Australia make gardening such a struggle. I couldn't grow lilacs, snowdrops and daffodils in a hot climate, and they're the plants I love.''
Want to see more?
Visit the Reiths’ Instagram account, @renfrewgarden
Renfrew House
• Described as one of Dunedin’s finest examples of classic Victorian architecture, Renfrew House was originally a single-storey cottage built in the mid-1860s.
• Extensive alterations were carried out in 1881.
• A category 2-listed historic place, the house has intricate wrought-iron lacework and rock-solid walls. The exterior ones were built of double stone and are more than 70cm thick. The interior walls were built of double brick.
• The home’s first owner, Andrew McFarlane, was born in Scotland in 1842 and emigrated to Dunedin with his brother, John, at the age of 20. Together, they ran a successful grocery business in Maclaggan St and were involved in dairying on the Taieri.
• Andrew McFarlane chaired the Otago A and P Association, helped launch the Roslyn Tramway Company and was a Roslyn borough councillor.
• He married Jane Wilson in 1868 and had seven children.
- Source: Susan Irvine, Heritage New Zealand
