Gardening: Golden salute to man of vision

Sir Ian Athfield's remote house at Awaroa Inlet in the Abel Tasman National Park. The blooms look best in the morning and evening. Photo / Meg Liptrot

A sea of primroses surrounds the late Sir Ian Athfield’s Awaroa home.

Wildflowers by the sea
Drifts of yellow primroses are an unlikely and magical sight in a garden surrounded by white sand and turquoise sea. This wildflower vision in pale yellow complements the house, a whimsical white structure evocative of white-plastered villages in the Greek Islands.

This remote house, built at Awaroa Inlet in Abel Tasman National Park, was a second home to one of New Zealand's most distinctive and well-loved architects, Sir Ian Athfield, who died in January. The home was "an experiment in communal living" which Athfield developed with a group of friends in 1972.

On New Year's Eve we were invited to spend the evening with some of the Athfield clan and friends. We were staying the week with our family at the Athfield Boatshed bach (and sometime architectural office/workshop space) next door.

We wandered over in the evening nursing cups of tea, later replaced with a stronger tipple. In the half light, the open blooms of the evening primrose meadow were luminous.

At midday the flower stem of the evening primrose is not at its best. The spent blooms from the day before are withering, the new buds are starting to open. It is in the evening or early morning that they shine.

Athfield's wife, Clare Athfield, said the primroses had self-seeded in the sandy soil, slowly becoming naturalised around the house. When the plants are drying off and going to seed, they are simply mown over. Thus, the seed is sown for the next generation.

At twilight, Ian Athfield (or "Ath" as he was known) showed me down an obscured track to the best spot to view the primroses at the front of the house. He watched patiently as I attempted to capture the scene, juggling with the exposure on my camera in the dwindling light. He said he loved the climate of the area: the wonderful hot sunny days and reasonable rainfall making for perfect, almost Mediterranean growing conditions.

On our last evening in Awaroa Inlet, a full moon appeared at dusk, the pale blooms and white house appearing more magical in the reflected light. The tide was high and the moon danced in the watery mirror. This is a vision and experience locked in my memory.

We had such a special time and, despite spending only a week at Awaroa, we were warmly embraced by the Athfield family and captured by Sir Ian's wild behind-the-scenes stories and welcoming nature.

A note on Athfield's Architecture
My father's first impression of New Zealand when his ship entered Wellington harbour from England in 1961 was a paradise of little wooden "chocolate box" houses perched on the surrounding bush-green hills.

Now of course Athfield's sculptural, iconic white plaster house and office wends itself down the hillside in Khandallah. Its lookout tower was built the year I was born, and the building is still growing. The ultimate aim for this evolving structure was to "accommodate a community". His vision here and for Civic Square in Wellington have helped forge a unique identity for the city. I admire the social thinking that went into Athfield's work. This legacy is clearly evident in the warm, inclusive atmosphere of his Awaroa home.

(In memory of the late Sir Ian Athfield.)

• Further reading: Athfield Architecture by Julia Gatley, Auckland University Press, 2012.

Grow your own wildflower meadow

Site preparation

Choose a site that gets plenty of sun. Wildflowers grow in a range of soil types. For acidic soil, add lime. Remove grass and weeds (use a sharp spade). Adding fertiliser is not necessary as it encourages green growth over flowers, but a little organic compost can be forked into the upper layers of soil. Digging too deeply encourages weed seeds to grow.

Choose your wildflowers
All wildflowers encourage beneficial insects to your garden. Kings Seeds' Beneficial Insect Blend is a collection chosen for its standout performance. Wildflower World supplies seed mixes for height, sequential flowering, semishade, and theme ("lowland meadow", "country road", "cottage garden" or "birds, bees and butterflies"). Both suppliers stock single species wildflowers such as poppy or crimson clover. The latter I've just sown in our front garden for a burst of spring colour, and to fix nitrogen beneath our citrus hedge. Blue lupin is a good looking plant which boosts soil health. After flowering, chop lupins back into the soil.

When to sow
Seed can be sown in autumn or spring when soil temperatures are warm and the soil is moist. Seed sown in autumn will flower in spring. Wildflower World also has a winter-flowering mix.

Maintenance
Pull out persistent weeds before they seed. Allow your wildflower meadow to flower, go to seed and dry off. Mow and leave the cuttings on the surface to set seed for the following year.