Private grounds feature in mystery garden tour

Green-fingered junkies can look forward to a mystery garden tour revival with a glimpse at some of Masterton's most alluring private grounds come November 15.
One of the featured gardens Woodchester, owned by St Andrew's Upper Plain Church pastor Liz Greville and dentist Paddy Greville will be open to the public for the first time in a tour that takes in six other distinguished gardens around the town.
The tour is part of a fundraising effort to accommodate the church's swelling congregation with proceeds going towards a new community hall.
Tickets cost $10 and the tour springs in to life at 10am on Saturday and can be started from either Woodchester at 80 Cole Street or from April Bamford's garden at 13 Cody Crescent, which has been designed to compliment the NZIA award-winning Georgian-style house it surrounds. To add an element of intrigue, the locations of the other five "secret" gardens will be revealed on the day four of which have never been open to the public.
In the late 1970s the Grevilles bought an overgrown Woodchester, raising four children at the house. "When we first arrived in 1979 the grass on the lawn was five-foot tall, I didn't know we had a rock garden until I stubbed my foot on it while walking through the jungle the kids thought it was heaven," Mrs Greville said.
Borthwicks freezing works general manager Ted Norman built Woodchester in 1931 two years after he arrived in Wairarapa from his native England.
Currently the grounds are tended by Kris Porter, whom Mrs Greville protectively describes as, "a fabulous gardener who no one's allowed to nab".
Over the years, Woodchester has played host to numerous friends and family for weddings, parties and intermittent New Year's Eve gatherings that last for days, dotting the garden with tents and campers in a scene reminiscent of a summer slumber party.
The residence is perfectly suited to fun and games featuring a swimming pool, a defunct grass tennis court (which will feature a mower-cut labyrinth on the day of the tour) and an ad hoc mini-golf course designed by Mrs Greville's son-in-law. Apparently when tennis does get played on the old court strategy is simple force your opponent to the back end of the court, made soggy by the nearby creek, where they invariably "tend to go for a gutser".
However, the garden is not only a site of leisure but also one of spiritual reflection. "You're witnessing creation at every moment," Mrs Greville said.