‘Beautiful and incredibly productive’: Marlborough’s Barewood potager garden is a must visit

Photographer Juliet Nicholas and journalist Rosemary Barraclough traveled from the top of Aotearoa to its southernmost regions to track down more than 50 captivating private and public gardens in New Zealand Gardens to Visit.

The below is an edited extract from the book, published by Penguin Random House NZ, $55.00.

Barewood Garden

Awatere Valley, 40 minutes’ drive from Blenheim.

Visits by appointment only, from the end of September to April: Barewoodgarden.co.nz.

Everybody loves Carolyn Ferraby’s potager garden at Barewood in Marlborough. Brick paths lead visitors through a glorious mix of fruit, berries, vegetables and flowers, all enclosed by a hornbeam hedge.

After visiting Rosemary Verey’s potager at Barnsley House in England, Carolyn came back to Marlborough with copies of the plans the celebrated garden designer had drawn up for medieval-inspired vegetable gardens. They had symmetrical layouts and ‘little narrow paths for the weeder women to work from either side so they didn’t need to stand on the gardens,’ says Carolyn, who went on to create a potager that’s both beautiful and incredibly productive.

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Paths are fringed with lavender; lupins, sweet peas and poppies are dotted among raspberries, boysenberries and rows of leeks and lettuces that keep the Ferrabys and friends well-fed. Carolyn’s husband, Joe, created arches for pears and apples—old-fashioned varieties such as Peasgood’s Nonsuch, Liberty and Discovery—and the couple were picking fruit within three years.

But the potager is only one element of this well-loved garden, which combines colourful, colorful perennial borders, restful green spaces, a woodland area and a pond. Barewood is one of the key attractions of Garden Marlborough, the Carolyn festival helped establish nearly 30 years ago.

From the outset, Carolyn adored Joe’s family’s century-old homestead and wanted to create a garden that would do it justice. Visitors are always welcomed onto the wide verandah, which is curtained in white wisteria in spring.

Beside the house are wide perennial borders where Carolyn, trained as a florist, plays with color combinations. Repetition and plenty of foliage are the keys to keeping the look serene, says Carolyn, who’s added fashionable dahlias to the mix in recent years, despite remembering the years when dahlias were distinctly ‘non-U’ and no self-respecting florist would have allowed one in a bouquet.

Then it’s on to the shady hawthorn walk, which is a cloud of white flowers in spring.

‘Avenues are a lovely way of leading you on through a garden,’ says Carolyn, ‘but I wanted something that was appropriate to a farm garden, and we’ve got hawthorn wild on the farm, although this is a double-grafted special. one.

A mawn path under the hawthorns leads to a summerhouse and a pond. In fact, it’s really two summerhouses, because when the first one was built Carolyn realized it didn’t offer a view of the pond. A design-savvy visitor came up with the solution – knock the back off the first one and add on another – and Joe obliged.

Although a farmer and businessman first and foremost, Joe, Carolyn says, is a ‘beautiful builder’, and has created all of the structures in the garden. Those summerhouses, seats and pergolas are important to the garden’s success, she says. ‘At the end of an avenue you should have a full-stop.’

Visitors exit the bright and busy potager into an avenue of Malus tschonoskii, designed to feel like a cathedral and offering visitors dappled shade in summer and brilliant color in autumn.

Over the years, Carolyn has persuaded Joe to give up grazing space, increasing the size of the garden. ‘He says I have a degree in nagging,’ she jokes. She’s happy with the size now, though, and spends her time editing the existing planting.

She’s currently finessing the woodland area, adding unusual plants she loves. She’d spotted hard-to-find stewartias at a garden conference in Wānaka. ‘They’re the most beautiful trees, with lovely autumn color and wonderful peeling bark.’ Carolyn put the word out, and two months later a nursery contact phoned. ‘Now I’ve got two little plants; they’re gorgeous,’ she says.

Carolyn loves the community of gardeners she’s surrounded by. ‘Last year I came home in the middle of winter and there was a box of bulbs – one half was alliums and one half was camassia, which I’ve been mad to get [they have large spikes of purple and blue flowers]. A friend had dug them up and thought I would appreciate them. I’m so excited. I’ve got them naturalising in the grass.

‘That’s the joy of gardening,’ she says.

‘Gardeners are sharing, generous people.’

A favorite plant:

‘I’ve got every viburnum that I’ve been able to find,’ Carolyn says, including ‘Roseace’, ‘Molly Schroeder’ — which, unlike some viburnums, has flowers that stay pink all through the season — and all the large -flowered plicatum varieties.

The original cob house:

Besides the homestead, the original cob house can still be seen. It’s tiny and about 140 years old; hard to believe that a family of eight once lived in it.

A design idea:

As you walk through the garden, consider how the various gates and paths lead you to views that open up before you. Carolyn gives visitors a map so they can journey around the garden the way it was designed to be viewed.

Best time of year to visit:

Spring is a special time. Bulbs start in September, with the hawthorn walk and wisteria out in October, looking good for Garden Marlborough.

Text © Rosemary Barraclough, 2022 and Photography © Juliet Nicholas, 2022