Te Kainga Marire

After our second delicious breakfast in downtown New Plymouth at a café called Chaos, we were on the road north. Just before we left town we called on a private garden on Sunday morning no less, known as Te Kainga Marire, Maori for “Peaceful Encampment”. Nestled in a suburban setting this is a small garden that is not to be missed. The gardeners that created this primariliy native setting, from a vacant and disturbed lot, were delightful hosts for our stay.





Valda in her mid 60’s and a surfer, said our visit today was fortuitous, as she and an old friend were surfing just south of New Plymouth yesterday, at what she rerers to as a “Ladies Break”. Had we called then we would have missed her. Valda seems to be the real energy behind the garden development and David appears to be more involved in the margins of the property as it is connected to a city bush preserve, with a public access trail that borders their property on one side. Their intent from the beginig was to utilize native flora and use exotics merely as accent. I say exotics, remembering that many New Zealanders are proud to be Kiwis, yet still have ties to there primarily British roots, this is often manifested in their gardens. Most gardens with any real intensity here appear to be overextended attempts at English cottage gardens that in the high light levels and dry conditions here, simply bleach, burn and otherwise suffer in this often intense climate.
Not so here.




Valda and David have created a sustainable yet completely comfortable environment, shabby chic without the shabby.
Gravel paths wind you through the front dry garden with ground covers and boulders placed so that you can peer onto, or crowch down to inspect treasures, nestled in the garden. Upon entering a canopy of tree fern, a structure of Ponga, Black Tree-Fern trunks that are used extensively as a building material, forms what turn out to be a fernery, by which one exits through a deep dark grotto. Actaully a bit disconcerting for a novice like me this early in the morning.





Bird feeding troughs set into native trees encourage already precocious birds even closer into the garden. Young Tui’s call for their parents to feed them, Wood Pigeons clumbsily forage in the brush. Fantails exploiting your visit because of the insects that we stir up, not because we’re that interesting, as first thought.
As we were about to depart, another couple enters the garden, touring as well. We come to find they are from Vancouver, she a volunteer at Van Dusen, living at the seam of Stanley park. Again that small horticultural world.
Cheers!, David and Valda, for giving not only us but to all who visit a wonderful last memory of New Plymouth.
Don’t miss this garden.