For Wellington garden designer Sarah Norling, the cheerful sight of red hellebore flowers on a bleak mid-winter day helped swing the deal when it came to deciding where she and her family were going to live when they returned from Sydney in 2005.
Paul McCredie/NZ House & Garden
Sarah Norling and the family dog, Sinbad, on the deck of her Wellington home; the bluebells were a gift from a client and they have now spread throughout the garden, including in the lawn.
“We’d come over to Wellington to look at houses and we came to this house; I couldn’t believe it when I saw all these hellebores flowering in the garden,” she recalls. “We’d been living in Sydney for 16 years, where hellebores were something that would have been nice to grow – but you wouldn’t have had much luck.”
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She also loved the fact that there were so many established trees, including a row of ornamental cherry and crab apple trees separating the upper and lower lawns, as well as a big weeping elm on the boundary.
Four of the cherries and crab apples have since died although those remaining have mostly spread out to fill the gaps. And most of the garden’s hard landscaping is still intact, including the deck and several brick courtyards. In 2007 Sarah added a circular brick pond featuring a bronze statue of a girl reading that sits against the back fence.
Paul McCredie/NZ House & Garden
Sarah installed the pond and meditative bronze statue in 2007; the bird bath is situated in the middle of the pond to make it a safe place for birds: “It gives us great pleasure as it is frequently used… we sit and watch while having our morning coffee.”
“I positioned it so we have a direct line of sight to it from the kitchen and family rooms, and it’s also off-centre so it doesn’t compete with the view of the hill.”
As a garden designer Sarah often works with clients who are establishing their gardens from scratch, sometimes on the sloping, clay-filled, windswept sites for which Wellington is famous. But her own garden was already well established when she and her family took ownership, with the existing trees and shrubs providing good shelter.
However, while it had excellent bones, the garden had gone through a period of neglect which meant there was plenty of opportunity for her to make her own mark.
“I liked that it had all these mature trees which created a sheltered microclimate, but I was also able to renew a lot of the understorey plantings, the lower layers and the mid-layers.”
Paul McCredie/NZ House & Garden
In an ongoing dialogue with her foxgloves, Sarah always plants white ones then watches them revert through pink to purple over a couple of seasons; they sit behind a ‘Lem’s Cameo’ rhododendron.
The result is a garden that she describes as a “biggish suburban garden with a woodland feel”.
Additions over the years include more maple trees, an eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’) – “A lovely small tree which is very popular at the moment so I thought I’d better conduct a field trial” – a fig tree, a calico bush, a tree fuchsia (Fuchsia aborescens) and some rhododendrons.
She bought one of the rhododendrons, called ‘Lemon Lodge’, after seeing it at the Taranaki Garden Festival: “Quite a lot of my darlings come from the festival.”
Other festival finds include the Poor Knights lilies growing in pots on the deck which she first saw at the well-known Oakley garden in Taranaki.
At first glance Sarah’s garden may appear to be mostly exotics but it features many native plants including rengarenga, ferns, ponga, kawakawa and a towering kōwhai.
“There really is a native plant for every situation and it’s interesting how well they blend in with this type of garden style.”
Paul McCredie/NZ House & Garden
Trailing plants tumble down the stone wall which is part of the garden’s original hard landscaping; once the forget-me-nots stop flowering, the hostas come up.
At the heart of her gardening philosophy is the belief that gardens aren’t just there for people; they also exist for the organisms that rely on them – the more visible ones like birds, as well as insects and soil microbes which all need a healthy environment to thrive.
“It’s very much about having flourishing ecosystems in your garden because it shouldn’t be all about us. If you’ve got a log lying in your garden, for example, just leave it there because it’s going to be a habitat for wetas and skinks and insects – it all helps.”
Sarah has loved gardens since she was a child. She grew up in Wellington on a property with a little stream at the bottom – and an accomplished gardener living next door.
“I used to go over there and hang over her shoulder. I’d ask her for the names of the plants and of course she’d give me the Latin names and I’d get frustrated because I couldn’t remember them.”
As a student at the University of Auckland, where she completed a BA in music and English, she made a tentative foray into gardening when she grew a crop of leeks in the back lawn of her flat. “My flatmate and I lived off leeks that winter.”
But it wasn’t until she moved to Sydney with her husband Tim in 1989 that she had a proper garden of her own. Two of them in fact – the first one a tiny terrace courtyard garden and then a bigger garden when they moved to a larger house.
While she was living in Sydney she trained as a garden designer, completing a four-year diploma in landscape from TAFE NSW Ryde. Since then she has worked with hundreds of clients and while the conventional view is that Wellington is a difficult city for gardening, she disagrees.
“You can grow a wide range of plants here because we have a temperate climate with no extremes and reliable rainfall. I know there’s wind, and the soil isn’t always good, but it’s possible to address both those things – everywhere has its challenges.”
Q&A with Sarah Norling
Most significant plant: We have a huge kōwhai tree and when it flowers we love seeing a dozen tūī up there, singing and squabbling away.
Favourite new plant: I’m about to plant another daphne – they’re a garden prima donna, but those fragrant flowers are irresistible.
Favourite plant combination: I like my delicate maple trees with ferns, hostas, aquilegia and forget-me-nots planted below.
Least favourite garden job: Trying to keep the ivy on the fence under control, especially where it’s all tangled up with the climbing rose.
Most-used part of the garden: The deck and the courtyard; it has been a great place for family gatherings.
My best edible crop: I planted potatoes once and years later I’m still finding them. Last summer we had coriander come up all over the place which we were very happy about.
My best tip for other gardeners: Be observant, and plant for your conditions. Work on your soil and don’t use weedmat.
The thing I’ve learned about gardening over the years is: Gardens constantly evolve so be patient, be flexible and if something’s not working, change it.
Soil type: Clay loam which I’m always improving with organic matter from the compost bins and worm farm.