THE FAMILY GARDEN

- Family life shaped this rural Auckland haven.

When you’ve nurtured the same garden for 40 years, it tells the story of your life. That’s certainly the case with Robin Short’s abundant, colourful and vast garden sitting on the rural property she shares with husband Terry, near Waiuku, south of Auckland.

There’s the pōhutukawa tree, grown from seed, now a towering presence that’s become a popular buffet for local kererū and other birds.

There’s the shade of a mature orchard of apples, citrus and plums lining one side of the driveway entrance, and the cluster of native bush on the opposite side.

There’s Ciggy, Shrimpy and Pauline’s Purple Bush – plants named after (or by) those that gifted them to Robin’s garden. They’re now firmly at home among the roses and dahlias in two levels of cottage garden beds connected by three flights of steps.

There’s the replica bush hut, built by Terry in testament to his family history. And off in the distance is a single pine tree, the last man standing of five pines the couple planted as a shelter against the fierce north-easterly wind that frequently blows up the valley and across the property.

Everything growing in this sprawling garden, from the native trees and the orchard, to the beds of flowers and shrubs, has been planted by Terry and Robin, but without those hard-working pines, it’s likely there’d be no garden to admire.

“It’s so windy here,” Robin says. “When we started planting, everything had to have wind cloth wrapped around it and as soon as they grew past the top of that, the tops got burned off by the wind. That’s why we planted the pines. Once they got to about four years in, they created a shelter and that made it possible for other plants to get established. That, in turn, enabled other things to grow.

“It still started off with plants that were very wind-hardy and salt-hardy. I would never have thought of planting a rose back then, but as it’s grown the garden has become its own micro-climate.”

Gardening and tending to the land are in Robin’s blood. Both her mother and grandmother were keen gardeners. “It’s my memories of the flowerbeds in my grandmother’s garden that have given me a real love of cottage gardens. And many of the natives we planted came from seedlings my mother grew.”

Robin grew up on a farm on the nearby Āwhitu Peninsula where her brothers and sister still farm and garden. She had studied and trained in horticulture before flying the coop for a four-year OE that took her to, among other places, Iceland, Norway and Canada.

Arriving back in Waiuku, aged 25, was quite the culture shock. Knowing she wanted to work for herself, Robin turned her passions for craft, travel and horticulture into a small, local retail business, Robin’s Gift Shop. One day, a young man named Terry “waltzed in and asked if I could