Tulip tree tells Tupare story
By Mitch Graham
In 1931, Tupare was about to be sculpted from steep slopes leading down to the Waiwakaiho River. It's sobering to imagine just how rough the land was when Russell and Mary Matthews purchased the property.
Often I look over photos taken in the early years, when the Matthews family embarked upon fashioning the landscape. They help me to understand the dream in 1931 that led to the creation of today's sylvan treasure.
For example, today a majestic North American tulip tree towers over a brick archway; in the early 1930s, the newly planted sapling kept company with farm animals grazing and lazing in the same paddock.
Over the following decade, as the tulip tree established its roots and began to spread out, the cows moved on and the paddock became a glade of many other thoughtfully selected young deciduous trees.
An aerial photograph, possibly taken in the early 1940s, hangs in the main house and shows the tulip tree eight metres tall, dominant among all the trees on the glade. Just beyond the tulip tree was an extended shelterbelt of Lawson's cypress, offering protection from the strong southerlies that occasionally funnelled down the river valley.
A closer look at the photograph reveals a vegetable garden stretching from the tulip tree to the glasshouse - enough veges to feed a village. It was the end of World War II, and the Matthews and their gardeners would grow and deliver the fruit and veggies for those in need, particularly orphanages.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the gardens around the tulip tree were furnished with a mix of favourite shrubs, Mary's roses and flower beds, as well as a handful of edibles. Tupare's distinctive brick walls and sealed paths were completed by Sir Russell's roading crews whenever there were quieter times on the roads. Any shrubs at the foot of the tulip tree soon found the going tough with competition from the hungry roots feeding a tree with lofty aspirations.
From 1956 to 1984, when the Matthews decided to sell the property, the gates of Tupare would swing open to garden visitors on October's Labour Day weekend. Each spring, a fresh green livery emerges from the branches to clothe the tulip tree, providing dappled shade for visitors strolling beneath the boughs.
Now we're into the tulip tree's eighth decade, garden visitors can admire it any day of the year. We can be with it as it changes through the seasons, and, courtesy of the tree, enjoy a garden of restful light and shade.
With summer here and picnics to be shared, lay out a rug under the leafy canopy and see the native orchids and ferns at home on the boughs. Perhaps you may hear the same elusive shining cuckoo that sings as we tend the gardens under Tupare's majestic tulip tree.
 |
Mitch Graham (left) is Garden Manager - Tupare for the Taranaki Regional Council This column was published in the Taranaki Daily News on 17 December 2010 |
