Waimauku: Riverside

790 Old North Rd, Waimauku.

More than 30 years of hard yakka has turned a 4ha property into a park-like estate.

Having been out of the country more often that not in the past 20 years, you wouldn't think Dave Allen would want to spend his semi-retirement travelling.

Still, that's exactly what he's planning to do. But this time, instead of travelling for business, he's going to be doing it for pleasure, with wife Wendy Brindle.

And that's the reason they're selling their home of 32 years - so they can take off for months at a time without worrying about their 1920s kauri home and "the fabulous botanical park" around it.

Dave's consultancy work as a globetrotting chemical engineer has kept him away from home for 180 to 200 days a year for the last 20 years.

"Because of that," says Dave, "the property had to be designed so that you could walk away from it for three weeks at a time. But what we're now planning to do is travel at a more leisurely pace that could keep us away for three months at a time and it just wouldn't be possible to stay on top of things."

When Dave and Wendy bought their home in the 1960s, it was "a removal house sitting in a sea of clay".

Over the years they have updated and repainted the weatherboard house, which sits well back from the road, and added a guest wing with a bedroom, office and bathroom, with its own entrance. They also put in a swimming pool 10 years ago for their daughters Francisca and Gabriella, now aged 18 and 16 respectively, who were adopted from Chile.

But the grounds are where they have made the biggest difference. Early on they hired a garden designer with experience in England to plan out plantings on one half of the 4ha section which is bisected east-west by a stream. The other half of the property, accessed by a suspension bridge, is native bush with mature kauri, rimu, titoki, nikau and kahikatea.

The garden designer came up with a look that has "English park-type trees with a semi-cottage garden around the house", says Dave.

"From my office I think that I have the best view in the world because I sit looking over the swimming pool and across this humungous landscaping that we've done over the past 32 years."

Dave says while the landscaping has taken a lot of work over the years, it's now at a stage where the trees are self-mulching and upkeep is minimal.

"The lawns take me one-and-a-half hours on the ride-on mower and that's hardly a chore because you get pleasure from riding around and looking at all the trees and plants."

The property not only has rights to take water from the stream for irrigation, the irrigation is also automatic. Dave and Wendy will leave behind a complete planting manual to help out the new owners.

And if the new owners still have any questions, Dave and Wendy will only be just down the road at their new home - that's if they're not off overseas.