Details of the purchaser of the property remain confidential at this stage. Photo / Bevan Conley
Details of the purchaser of the property remain confidential at this stage. Photo / Bevan Conley
After a failed bid to save a historic Whanganui garden, community group Blooms on Bastia says grassroots initiatives are essential to retain important heritage sites.
The property was home to world-renowned plant breeder Jean Stevens, who bred her award-winning irises there. Her work became so well known the Queen Mother visited the garden when she was in Whanganui in 1966.
Although Blooms on Bastia received pledges and donations sufficient to meet the $135,000 deposit to buy the property, it had no guarantee of where the remaining $1.2 million would come from.
Blooms on Bastia member Karen Wrigglesworth said a big challenge with the initiative was how hard it was to get across the importance of saving the garden because not many people knew it existed.
"They had the same issue with the Eden Project in the UK," Wrigglesworth said.
She said the Eden site was a hole in the ground that looked ugly, and it wasn't until the project was completed that people could see the benefits and learn about it.
Now the Eden Project in Cornwall has had more than 18 million visitors, with over a million in 2019 alone.
Wrigglesworth said a different approach was needed to help preserve heritage sites.
"Council and government work more at the policy and rules level, but I'm learning you have to find a way to do things that are important rather than waiting for the rules to be in place," Wrigglesworth said.
"The challenge with heritage sites is how do you make it relevant to the present and future without it just being another old building or museum, and how do you buy enough time to do that."
She said the late Ross Mitchell-Anyon was an example of someone who bought time for the importance of retaining Whanganui's heritage.
"He bought many heritage buildings in Whanganui when no one saw any benefit in them. They were a 'money sink', but what he did was buy time so the community's head space could change and see the value in them.
"That's what we needed for the gardens."
Blooms on Bastia members Karen Wrigglesworth and Terry Dowdeswell looking at Cadellia pentastylis Ooline. Photo / Bevan Conley
Wrigglesworth said losing the chance to save the garden was frustrating and disappointing.
"As much as anything, the frustration is towards not just the sale side of it but the mechanisms in place at all sorts of levels to step in and save these sorts of places.
"We tend to default to buildings for heritage sites because they are pretty and easier to identify, but we need to think more broadly about what important heritage is."
However, she said there were many positives from the initiative and without the Blooms on Bastia group, awareness would not have been raised about the gardens at all.
"Maybe that's the way it has to be, you lose something to realise what you had."
Blooms on Bastia member Terry Dowdeswell said around $17,000 was raised which, after expenses, left about $13,000 to be used for preservation and distribution of plants and production of a documentary, acquisition of Jean Stevens' iris varieties still in cultivation, propagation and an acknowledgment of the work of Jean Stevens and her daughter and son-in-law Jocelyn and Ian Bell.
"The Blooms on Bastia group are working through ways to best preserve plant material and acknowledge the contribution of Jean Stevens to New Zealand botany and horticulture," Dowdeswell said.
"Several possibilities are being explored, and we are confident that these will result in a significant and visible contribution to the heritage of our city, and its public gardens."
He said it was a lot of work, but good things had come out of it.
"We think we have enough plant material saved to find homes for them.
"It's still been useful and it's helped raise awareness in the community of the sorts of things that can happen if you don't have a good policy on open spaces."
The 115 Mt View Rd property has now been sold. Details of the purchaser remain confidential at this stage.
