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Historic gardens in the Bay of Islands

© Lynda Jardinet

All this plant-hunting was making me hungry, so we stopped in at a waterside cafe for coffee and cake. Ah, what a wonderful life! But time was short, so soon we were back on our feet for the leisurely stroll to Pompallier House (and its historic garden). In 1841, French Roman Catholic Marist missionaries used rammed earth to construct the two storey building, in which they were to house their newly purchased printing press.

The garden was first planted in about 1880, when the brothers had long since departed. For many decades the house was converted into a home, before New Zealand's Historic Places Trust bought the property and restored it to its former glory. The garden is also being restored, although several of the original plants remain. This remarkable Poor Knights Lily is just one of the rare and interesting gardening goodies brought to Russell on early ships. Pomallier's Xeronema callistemon was planted in 1929, not long after it become known to science. It's a real beauty!

If I hadn't spent so long admiring the delicious floral treats of Russell, we might have avoided the unpleasant surprise that greeted us on our return to Paihia. A rotten parking official had slapped us with a 30 dollar fine for over-extending our welcome at the local wharf. Thirty dollars - think of all the plants I could have bought!! Grumpily, we said goodbye to Paihia and headed off to the citrus capital of New Zealand, Kerikeri.

Kerikeri is a dream come true for the horticultural tourist. The roads are lined with stalls selling fresh fruits and all sorts of preserved pickles, chutneys and jams. Behind the shops lie scores of neatly laid out orchards boasting bright orange mandarins, and vines laden with kiwifruit. We headed straight down to the water, to the Kerikeri Mission House. Kemp House is New Zealand's oldest standing European building. The elegant wooden house was built for the Reverend John Butler in 1821, with the garden dug a year earlier.

The Reverend must have had grand gardening plans - for in the first weeks 185 fruit trees and 100 grape vines were planted. The gardens were soon overflowing with vegetables and flowers. In 1829, Mission house resident George Clark wrote home to his sister - marvelling that in the heat of summer "our peaches and apples are coming to perfection, we have cucumbers and almost every other vegetable in abundance".