Low maintenance key to pleasure

Carol and Roger Fleet never meant to buy property near Katikati - they were content with life in the Auckland suburb of St Helier's - but a chance meeting at Golf Pacifica changed their lives.
"We'd stopped at the club in our motor home to have a hit round, we're not really golfers," Carol says. "We got talking to the pro, he introduced us to Bruce Smith who was club captain ... and a real estate agent."
When Bruce offered to show the couple around, Roger took it with a grain of salt. And when Bruce offered to show them a property new to the market in Lund Rd they were even more sceptical, having no plans to leave Auckland.
"It had a terrible old cottage on it, really rumpty," Carol says. "Roger didn't even want to go inside."
But when they saw the views ... the Pacific Ocean and Mayor Island form the horizon from the front of the house and the bush-clad Kaimai Range at the side and back.
"I can't tell you which my favourite vista is," Roger says. "I love looking at them both."
The cottage was eventually sold to its tenant for $1 and moved and five years ago the Fleets began building a Landmark home, but with a distinctive Spanish-Mexican flavour.
"We pushed the builders with some of the things we wanted, it wasn't part of their package designs," Roger says. "But now they use some of our ideas."
When it came to the garden, however, the Fleets were at a loss.
"We were used to much smaller gardens, gardens that had a definite start and finish with fences," Carol says. "We couldn't conceptualise what we might do here."
They chose to work with Trish Waugh and her late husband Doug, partly because they were local, to come up with something that was structured, that complemented the house, not only in colour but also with "sharp edges", and was low maintenance.
"The Waughs did the design and we did all the planting," Carol says. "We were really ambitious because we did the hard landscaping and the soft landscaping all at once - it was a bit of a mess."
Much discussion centred on whether to keep the Norfolk Island pine in the front of the house.
"It's the only thing with a bit of age on it," Carol says. "It anchors the house, casts some nice shadow over the outdoor eating area, and in the morning I enjoy watching the birds in its branches."
Two years ago the decision was made to keep the tree and a second retaining wall was built below it to incorporate it into the garden.
The level house site gives way to terraced planting boxes, plastered to match the house, a tumble of rocks and a large expanse of gently sloping lawn.
Roger, a former panelbeater, has built two water features, one in the front terrace and one opposite the front door, which is at the back of the house.
The garden features interesting pots to add focal points and includes drought and wind-tolerant plants such as Agave attentuata, yellow-flowered Aloe thraskii and orange-flowered aloes, rosemary, coloured flaxes and lavenders.
However, Carol isn't worried about making changes - a planting of orange gazianas "that looked spectacular" were replaced with a prostrate grevellia when they began to look straggly, and a large planting of mondo grasses is to be replanted with a single species.
"It's got to be about what works for us," she says, "and I'm not kidding when I say it's got to be low maintenance."
"But I never realised that you could put people into a garden. I've got things here from my mother's garden, cuttings that my sister has given me, plants from my boss.
"It's so nice to walk round the garden and think of them."
The Fleets garden will be open for this year's Garden and Artfest in November.