A fundraising evening has brought a Katherine Mansfield-styled addition to the Hamilton Gardens closer to becoming a reality.
The event raised $9750, just shy of its $10,000 target. Items up for auction included a dinner for eight, a bottle of 1992 shiraz valued at $300, season tickets to the rugby and four lion statues which used to sit at the base of the Italian Renaissance Garden.
The Katherine Mansfield garden takes inspiration from one of the author's most famous short stories: The Garden Party.
Everything from the position of the tennis court, white roses, Karaka tree and design of the house facade will be modelled from information in the story.
The designers have even taken the advice of one of the fictional workman on the positioning of the marquee.
"You see, with a thing like a marquee, you want to put it somewhere it'll give you a bang slap in the eye," he said - and just as Laura decided in the original, it will be positioned in a corner of the tennis court.
Hamilton Gardens director Peter Sergel hopes to have a fake piano, bass and violin arranged in an opposite corner to mimic the band that played at the fictional party.
Mr Sergel said he was hopeful of getting his hands on a book of Katherine Mansfield plants to help inform the garden and a replica seat made to match those at Katherine Mansfield house in Wellington.
He said it was exciting to create a famous fantasy garden that never existed.
"It's also a good excuse to make an early twentieth-century New Zealand garden."
The first Katherine Mansfield-themed garden party was held in the gardens last February and Mr Sergel hoped future parties would be held in the themed garden. He said he was very pleased with the turn out and surprised at the variety of 1920s outfits on display.
"It was the same with the Tudor Garden party - people just come out of the woodwork with Tudor outfits. Do people just have Tudor outfits? I don't know," he said.
Friends of the Hamilton Gardens chairperson Marilyn Yeoman said party goers would be served a range of era-authentic sandwiches and, of course, cream puffs. She said the organisation had pledged $100,000 and were sponsored the lily pad lawn, another feature from the short story.
"We are community based and very proud of the New Zealandness of these gardens, and by contributing $100,000 we are hoping it may encourage others to do so."
Mrs Yeoman confessed to being a big Mansfield fan herself and hoped to have a white lamp placed in a bottom corner window of the facade, a reference to The Doll's House, another of Mansfield's works.
Future fundraisers are set to include an opportunity to purchase a metre of the Mansfield Garden and a competition to find $200 of buried treasure.
Mrs Yeoman said entrants would be able to buy white flags. The flag planted closest to the treasure would win.
The Mansfield Garden is part of a three-year development programme which will cost $7 million overall and includes a Mansfield Concept, Picturesque and Surrealist Garden. The programme will also include the first stage of a car park extension, a new playground, an information centre upgrade and a jetty below the Italian Garden Renaissance Pavilion which would improve access from the Waikato River and may even provide a new tourist attraction. The funding boost comes in the wake of the Lottery Significant Projects Fund Committee announced a $2.5m grant to the Hamilton City Council, a council contribution of $2.42m funded by a targeted rate of $10.