My Garden Story

In 2011 when my sister Sue announced her intention of visiting Australia, she asked if we could go to New Zealand. Would I make some bookings? About five or six days and she wanted to stay in one of the famous resorts for a couple of nights. This was my gardening sister. At 81 she was still travelling the world, and I knew she’d want to see gardens as well at the amazing sights New Zealand has to offer. I thought we could drive the length of the North Island, ending up at the Bay of Islands where there was a resort called Kauri Cliffs which looked luxurious and expensive, It was both and Sue loved it.  To get there, I decided to start at the south end and drive for not more than six hours a day. We spent a night in Auckland and then drove south to a charming cottage B & B with a rose garden. I’d planned the next day to go to Tikorangi, the Jury Garden, on the west coast in the Taranaki region, famous for camellias and magnolias, and open to the public.

I had been following Abbie Jury on Facebook where she had a weekly article with photos. I looked forward to reading whatever she wrote, and the photos were lovely. It was a day of light drizzle, not enough to bother about, and we arrived at Tikorangi about midday. Abbie came out to meet us and said we could look around on our own. Was there anything to pay? $10, she said, there’s a box, and disappeared. It soon became obvious that the garden was huge – in fact it is ten acres (four hectares) - and there was no defined path. We looked at the sunken garden near the house, and the magnificent old avenue of rimu trees underplanted with ferns, orchids, clivias and palm trees and although I would have gone further, I noticed that my sister was not walking at her usual brisk pace. She also didn’t want to drive and was tired most of the time. This was very unusual. This was a person who always did the driving, ran over ploughed fields in pursuit of beagles and had enormous energy. I didn’t know, and neither did she, that already the kidney disease that would kill her two years later was kicking in and causing problems.  We left, and I swore I would go back to the garden again and see it all. Preferably on a fine day. Eleven years later I did during the annual Taranaki Garden festival when the Jury Garden was open to the public for the last time.

The holiday was a success, and when I came home, I looked up more about Tikorangi and started responding to Abbie’s posts. It seemed that our climate in the southern highlands of New South Wales was somewhat similar to hers so although the South Island is further south latitudinally, Taranaki is at sea level whereas we are above 2,000 feet so it balances out somehow, and we might be a little colder and hotter but basically much the same. The Jury Garden was started in 1950s by Abbie’s father-in-law Felix who, together with his brother Les and wife Mimosa, bred camellias, magnolias and rhododendrons for all which they were famous, as well as host of other plants. There was a nursery, and plants were sold by mail order. In the 1970s Abbie and her husband Mark Jury came to live at Tikorangi. Mark carried on hybridising camellias and magnolias, and winning awards. I’m not certain when Abbie started writing both on Facebook and for a local monthly magazine, but I have followed her religiously. She is a joy to read, literate, entertaining and instructive. For her it is a story, she doesn’t tell you what to do, but what she does. The gardens, and close-ups of flowers illustrate every post, with photos of excursions to the local cemetery loving tended by volunteers, and roadside magnolias. Every year, when the great mountain known as Taranaki Maunga receives its first snowfall, Abbie takes a photo from her garden, in the foreground a magnolia is just coming into flower. I wait for this picture; it is pure magic. Also included are photos of disasters, giant trees felled by a storm, their helpers Lloyd and the strong young Zac, and a rescued dog called Ralph.

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