At the Wairarapa garden Lyn Eglinton shares with her husband Hop, a rill
leads up to the traditionally styled marine board-and-batten house,
which Lyn designed herself; layered buxus hedges and topiary edge the
lawns and, to the left, a grid of 15 European hornbeams, Carpinus
betulus ‘Fastigiata’, add height and a play of shadows to the garden;
carefully trimmed, they will at once screen and reveal tempting glimpses
of the spaces beyond: they’re classic trees that “hold their secrets,”
says Lyn.
To the left is a classic lime walk of pleached lime trees (Tilia
cordata): “Like a hedge on stilts,” says Lyn; to the right are two knot
gardens – the far one is Buxus sempervirens punctuated with a topiary
ball; the closer one is silver germander (Teucrium fruticans) with an
umbrella maple in the centre,an uncommon but “very well-behaved tree,”
says Lyn; she plans to clip the shaggier box variety in the foreground
to echo the rolling shapes of the Wairarapa hills, “like lumpy
sausages”.
How would you spend a romantic holiday in Paris? Swanning round the
shops, oohing and aahing at some of the world’s loveliest museums and
art galleries, wandering beside the Seine? Lyn Eglinton’s husband found
her down on her hands and knees on the traffic islands outside the
Louvre, weeding the convolvulus out of the box hedges. He’s got the
photo to prove it.
Landscape designer Lyn still sounds indignant at the effrontery of
that luckless weed. “Convolvulus! Among all that beautiful box! In
Paris!” You get the feeling she just couldn’t help herself.