The Garden History Research Foundation

Alice’s Looking Glass Garden

by Peter Sergel

The imaginary gardens described by Lewis Carroll include elements of old gardens, reflect the changing culture of the Enlightenment and, like all good art, they can perhaps challenge our perception of the world.

I’ve always been intrigued by imaginary gardens and had the privilege of turning some of my own imaginary gardens into real ones at a place called Hamilton Gardens. But like many others I’ve always been intrigued by the evocative imaginary gardens described in books. This includes the books of famous authors like: Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Ransome, Walter de la Mare, John Hadfield, Sidonic Gabrielle Colette, Beatrix Potter, Arthur Ransome, P.G. Woodhouse and Oscar Wilde. In some cases a safe idyllic garden provides the ideal setting for grisly discovery and you get the impression that Agatha Christie’s imaginary gardens are littered with dead bodies.

But of all of those strange and fascinating imaginary gardens, probably the most famous and surreal is the garden described in the story called Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, first published in 1871. It was written by Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) who often used the pen name of Lewis Carroll.

In this book Alice enters a fantasy world by climbing through a large ‘looking-glass’ mirror into a room that she can see on the other side. In that reflected world things are reversed, including logic. After she’s left that room she starts running through a garden towards a hill, yet constantly finds herself arriving back to the house she’s just left. That description reflected a new garden fashion for winding, sinuous paths that often doubled back on themselves. This fashion was promoted in the early 19th century by the very influential garden writer, John Claudios Loudon. Loudon and his wife Jane told their readers that you shouldn’t follow fashions, yet for a while they more or less defined garden fashions throughout the British Empire. Another influence was the self-proclaimed expert on China, Sir William Temple. He’d never been to China but confidently told everyone that the Chinese never used straight lines and, since everything Chinese was fashionable, meandering, curved garden paths became a new fashion.

Not everyone approved. Shirley Hibberd told his readers the curved paths were ‘enough to make the butcher’s boy dizzy’. Some other unnamed person apparently said “It’s easy to design a garden these days. You get your gardener very drunk, then get another chap to follow him with a field marker.” There was also a fashion for mazes, and some of these had curved forms. So Alice wasn’t alone in getting confused by curved paths that could direct you away from the feature you were heading towards. For her that feature was a hill, where she thought she might find a good view over the looking glass garden.

The hill Alice is heading for was a regular feature in Tudor and Stuart gardens. They had been created in gardens since at least the 13th century to gain a view over walls and hedges and were generally called ‘mounts’. Another influential figure, Francis Bacon, wrote in his famous essay On Gardens in 1625 that “I would have a Mount on some Pretty Height … to looke abroad into the fields”. Apart from gaining a view, these mounts were often a way to get rid of material from newly dug moats, cellars or fishponds. They often had some form of underlying structure like the remains of a building or unwanted rubble. Henry VIII’s enormous mount at Hampton Court was made in 1532 from more than 250,000 bricks and topped by a three storied banqueting house. Of course his mount was bigger and grander than anyone else’s.

As Alice heads for the garden mount, she comes across a large flower-bed with a border of daisies, with a willow tree growing in the middle. “O tiger-lily, I wish you could talk” says Alice. “We can talk” replies the tiger-lily “when there’s anyone worth talking to”. It was probably inevitable that it would be the tiger-lily that would take the lead ahead of the other rather rude talking flowers that included roses, daisies, violets and delphinium. Tiger-lilies had been introduced to Britain from China in 1811 and like everything else from China they held an exotic fascination. In the Victorian era there was another popular fashion for associating each flower with a symbolic meaning and so the tiger-lily was said to symbolise confidence, pride and a boastful attitude, which you can see reflected in its stroppy response to Alice.

A book published in 2001 by Peter Thompson called The Looking Glass Garden has nothing to do with these looking glass plants. Instead it’s about plants and design from the Southern Hemisphere, including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Chile. The title is inspired by a question Alice asks herself as she’s falling (like Robert Kennedy Junior) down a very deep rabbit hole.

“I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it’ll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards! The antipathies I think… but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please Ma’am, is this New Zealand?”

Rather more pleasingly, to fall through the centre of the world from our part of New Zealand might land us somewhere closer to Salvador Dali’s Surrealist Museum. Dali was directly inspired by Alice’s adventures because he saw them as a journey through the subconscious. The elephants that Alice sees drinking nectar from giant flowers could easily have inspired Dali’s paintings and sculpture of long legged elephants. He illustrated a book of Alice in Wonderland and in 1977, painted the white rabbit with one of his iconic melting pocket watches and created a bronze sculpture of Alice with roses blossoming from her head and hands.

Carroll’s story is full of surrealist details and characters. Alice through the Looking Glass was a sequel to his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), in which many of the characters are anthropomorphic playing cards. In the Looking Glass book the theme is chess. In my 1896 edition the author has added a note at the front to explain how the chess pieces and characters will play out ‘in accordance with the laws of the game’, which he explains with a diagram and a series of chess moves. Each character in the book is associated with a particular chess piece in this introduction.

The first chess piece that Alice meets in the Looking Glass Garden is the Red Queen. The queen gives Alice a sound piece of advice that many have found useful. “Curtsey while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.” In response you’ll generally find that people will frown and ask you what you’re doing. After a brief discussion, the Red Queen and Alice walk to the top of the hill. From there Alice could look out in all directions and see that the surrounding garden was divided into squares just like a large chess board. The squares were divided by a number of little brooks running straight from side to side and the squares defined by a number of hedges that reached from brook to brook. The tradition of large-scale chess-like patterns in gardens were sometimes found in Renaissance and Baroque gardens with the formal layout of parterre or knot gardens incorporating checkerboard-like geometric patterns. There were references to chess board patterns in Tudor and Georgian gardens with black and white chequerboard paving or alternate squares in different coloured mulches, like white limechip, crushed red bricks or black coal.

This certainly wasn’t the first garden to be set out like a chess board. The ancient Indian encyclopedia called the Brhat-Samhita mentions gardens being set out like an ashtapada, which is an eight by eight, sixty four square grid orientated to the four cardinal directions. Ashtapada was a board game that used this grid but there was another 64 square grid game that their ancient culture had invented called chaturanga. We now call that game chess. Both games were older than the 6th century encyclopedia description and were said to have been played by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself.

The Red Queen explains that the entire garden is laid out in squares, like a gigantic chessboard, and says that Alice, representing a pawn, could become a queen if she can advance all the way to the eighth rank on the board. Beyond the hill there’s a stream where Alice rows a boat for a sheep while collecting beautiful scented rushes that immediately begin to fade like melting snow. Later there’s a forest where she meets a very confused knight. Finally she crosses the final brook to reach “a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about here and there”, which sounds as if she’s back in a garden setting.

Since Tudor and Stuart times, gardens sometimes featured topiary figures representing chess pieces. A famous surviving example is Levens Hall in Cumbria, whose overgrown topiary figures partially inspired the Surrealist Garden at Hamilton Gardens. If you Google Looking Glass Garden you’ll come across references to this garden. The explanation, apparently written by AI, mentions that “this is because of its dreamlike, unsettling disorientating atmosphere, distortions of scale, biomorphic topiary and fantasy environment that visitors can walk through’. Proposed further development of this garden using AI to create a metaversal experience may make it far more surreal than Carroll’s Looking Glass Garden. AI’s regular reference to this particular garden is probably because of the number of people writing about their impression of shrinking. Objects in the Hamilton Surrealist Garden like: the wheelbarrow, garden gate, tap, flowers, spade and deckchair are ten times the normal size so a visitor can feel they’ve shrunk like Alice, who experiences a garden as a very small person. She leans against a buttercup to rest and fans herself with one of the leaves. Then she meets a large blue caterpillar sitting on top of a mushroom smoking a long hookah.

Surrealist Garden, Hamilton Gardens. Photo by Johnragla. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

At this point in Alice in Wonderland films, like William Sterling’s 1972 and Tim Burton’s 2010 versions, the garden setting gets quite trippy. Mind altering drugs like opium and laudanum were freely available from places like Harrods at the time of Carroll’s writing, but there’s no evidence he used them. However, he did suffer from migraines and hallucinogenic experiences that have come to be formally referred to as AIWS, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. But the Alice gardens are still weird places, the product of Lewis Carroll’s fantasies that could so easily be interpreted as horror stories.

The Lewis Carroll characters in these books became quite popular garden sculptures through the early 19th century. The best known New Zealand examples used to be the fantastic old stone figures of the Duchess and Knave in the Larnach Castle garden, which had clearly been inspired by the original Tenniel drawings. The Alice stories were very much in fashion when the Larnach children were growing up. When the Barker family took over the Larnach estate they continued that theme with an Oamaru stone Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts throne. There used to be a Looking Glass Garden in the Papamoa Hills near Te Puke that featured fairytale and whimsical detail. It’s apparently fallen into disrepair and the last Tripadvisor post says that ‘the toilet has been taken over by spiders’. That’s quite a Looking Glass feature, especially if the spider can talk. Some major gardens have featured Alice in Wonderland garden displays with Alice themed props, fantastical floral arrangements or have used garden features as storytelling devices, sometimes with interactive mobile phone apps. These include: the New York and Atlanta Botanic Gardens, the Hunter Valley Garden near Sydney and the Alice in Wonderland Garden in Bucharest.

The Cheshire Cat up a tree at Larnach Castle. Photo by Ciell, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Mention has been made of Carroll’s significant influence on literature, garden design and popular culture by subverting Victorian-era expectations, symbolising childlike desire, and inspiring surrealist and whimsical themes. There have been imaginary gardens that have had a major influence on garden design such as: Genji Monogatari, Dream of the Red Chamber and The Decameron, but Lewis Carroll’s stories didn’t encourage a new type of garden. Instead I would argue that Carroll was reflecting changes that were occurring during the Romantic Period (1738-1850). Renaissance and Baroque gardens had been neat, formal and well mannered, with nature apparently well under control. You played by the rules, like the playing card characters who repainted the white roses red to avoid having their heads cut off. But then around the mid 18th century something bizarre started to happen. A new form of garden design became popular called the Picturesque and old garden traditions were turned on their head, a little like a Looking Glass Garden. Instead of neatly trimmed hedges and grass, naturalistic unpruned planting and long grass started to become fashionable. Flat neat paths were replaced with rough uneven ground like the ‘ridges and furrows’ on the Red Queen’s croquet lawn. Instead of gardens that projected complete control and order there were newly created overgrown gothic ruins, dangerous rustic bridges and cliffs. Instead of well mannered promenading along wide walks, there were caves where garden staff would sometimes be required to make the sound of tormented animals or a thunder noise or pretend to be a hermit living in a cave. ‘Now chaps, this afternoon we’ve got visitors so I want you all to stand at the back of the cave and make tormented animal noises.’

Most of the main transformations that have shaped the modern world were reflected in a new form of garden and for the Romantic Period that was the Picturesque. You really need to understand the Romantic Period to understand the Picturesque gardens, but the Picturesque gardens themselves are a very direct way of understanding the Romantic Period. These new forms of garden may have sometimes been strange but they were an indication of a new sensitivity that liberated most of the arts with a reaction against rationality and order. It was replaced with individual expression, risk taking and mysticism that challenged the old order and rules. Emphasis was placed on subjectivity, emotional response and imagination over rationality and reason. This was reflected in garden design and the arts and then, through Lewis Carroll, it was also reflected in children’s literature.

Not everyone can visualise imaginary gardens but most people like having their imagination prompted, which you can see from the numbers who visit the Tolkien hobbit gardens at Hobbiton, near Matamata. With the help of AI, amazing gardens are now being created online where budgets, clients and planning regulations offer no restraint to the imagination. It’s likely they’ll substantially replace the imaginary gardens that have been described in literature, but I can’t help feeling something is missing. If you don’t need to use your own imagination, those imaginary gardens can never be as memorable or personal. Some writers, like the English novelist and playwright Susan Hill, say that their love of gardens started with the garden briefly described in Alice in Wonderland. She mentions that she can always “imagine every detail of that garden and could wander freely among its beds and borders, up and down the broad paths in the summer sunshine.” Yet the description in the book is very brief.

“She knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains”.

It seems that the lack of detail has engaged Hill’s imagination. It’s just a tantalising glimpse of a magical place of brightness, Victorian gardenesque spender and moving water beyond the gloomy inner room in which Alice is trapped, because of her size.

Perhaps the poor and destitute in Gaza can carry on by imagining the garden of Jannah, described in the Quran. A charbagh garden filled with lush greenery, bountiful fruit and four rivers of water, milk, honey and wine. And that’s perhaps the value of imaginary gardens. They’re a place to escape to, as perfect or strange as you want them to be. Albert Einstein said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere”. Through a looking glass into remarkable gardens or perhaps, through ignorance, down a rabbit hole.

References

Anita Brookner, Romanticism and its Discontents, Penguin Books, 2001

Jane Brown, The Pursuit of Paradise – A Social History of Gardens and Gardening, Harper Collins, 1999,

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Collins’ Clear Type Press, 1896

Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Garden – An English Love Affair, Seven Dials Paperback, 2002

Susan Hill & Angela Barrett, Through the Garden Gate, Hamish Hamilton London, 1986

John Dixon Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe, Thames & Hudson, 2002

Peter Sergel, Inspiration in the Garden, Penguin Viking, 2004

Charles Watkins & Ben Cowell, Uvedale Price – Decoding the Picturesque, Bydell Press, 2012

Hamilton’s Garden Place Sundial

By Lindsay Amner

The sundial in Hamilton’s Garden Place has been an iconic fixture in the centre of the city since 1953. Generations of children have played on it, various vandals have bashed it, and thousands of people have gazed at its various dials without the slightest understanding of how it works.

The sundial immediately after its Garden Place installation in 1953. Lindsay Amner collection.

My grandfather, Allan Bryce, designed the sundial and with the aid of my mother Bessie Amner’s research into the Hamilton Astronomical Society, I can provide some of the background as to how the sundial came to be a much loved feature of the central city.

In the early 1930s, the Hamilton Borough Council was discussing the potential removal of the Garden Place hill. The Anglesea Street cutting had been carved through the hill in 1932, and flattening out the eastern, central city part of the hill seemed a good idea to many people.

But to the local star gazers this was a terrible idea. Allan Bryce, a prominent local chiropractor, scientist and astronomer, believed strongly that an astronomical observatory should be built on top of the hill. To push this idea, he and several of his friends formed the Hamilton Astronomical Society in 1933 with the initial aim of opposing the Council’s plan to remove the hill.

In September 1936, Allan Bryce proposed that the Astronomical Society present a sundial as a gift to Hamilton to mark the coronation of King Edward VIII. Allan designed an eight dial sundial – for Edward VIII – and the New Zealand Herald made and engraved the dials in their printing shop for free. The other metal parts of the sundial (the frame, pins, spikes/gnomons, etc) were cast and machined by Robert Alchin. But in December 1936, Edward abdicated, removing the significance of the eight dials and greatly disappointing Allan Bryce.

Allan Bryce with the completed sundial in his backyard in 1937. Lindsay Amner collection.

But in spite of the King’s lack of cooperation, the sundial was largely complete in February 1937 and was offered as a gift to the town. The Council ignored the offer, however, probably because the Astronomical Society was one of the most vocal groups opposing the plans for removing the Garden Place hill.

In mid 1938 the Council voted to remove the hill and a year later it was gone. World War Two arrived about the same time as the hill was shoveled into the gullies around Whitiora, mainly filling in areas between Rugby Park and the Waikato River. Ulster Street runs over what was once a gully, now filled with the Garden Place hill, near where the golf driving range is today, and Beetham Park also sits on a hill-filled gully.

With no interest from Council, with a war raging, with much of central Hamilton an Air Force camp, and with the hill where they wanted to put their observatory turned into a carpark, temporary military offices and air raid trenches, the Astronomical Society sadly put their sundial away in Allan Bryce’s shed behind his house on River Road.

The sundial in the 1970s showing vandalism damage – the bent gnomon on the left. Lindsay Amner collection.

When the war ended in 1945, Hamilton town became a city, the air raid trenches were filled in, the temporary buildings were removed and the Astronomical Society reopened their offer to gift the sundial to the new city. Since the hill was gone and therefore opposition to its removal was also gone, the City Council seemed more inclined to accept the gift. In 1947 the Council eventually voted to accept the sundial but then began to debate where it should be placed, along with the town clock. The two timepieces would logically go together but the Council were unable to make a decision about it, so nothing was done for several more years.

The newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II gave new life to the project in 1953. Her visit to New Zealand that year included a stop in Hamilton over 30-31 December. The Council agreed that this event would be perfect for the sundial to finally become part of the cityscape. The sundial was therefore hauled out of Allan Bryce’s shed and refurbished ready for installation at the front of Garden Place.

Robert Alchin and Allan Bryce with the disassembled sundial in mid-1953. Lindsay Amner collection.

The granite plinth had been damaged during storage and had to be sent off to Auckland to be refinished and the Astronomical Society recorded the plinth design as follows:

“The ten granite segments will enclose a terrazzo surround at base of dial. The granite slabs will form, when placed in position, a 10 sided step up to the platform on which the pedestal stands. Carved in stone on the vertical polished edges of the slab are the names of 10 places of interest to visitors to Hamilton. The top surface of each slab has a bronze plate set into it indicating the direction from Hamilton to the place named on the step, together with its distance in miles. The following places are named – Auckland, Whitianga, Tauranga, Te Aroha, Rotorua, Chateau, Waitomo Caves, Kawhia, Raglan and Waikato Heads.”

Seventeen years after it was first proposed and built, the sundial was finally installed in December 1953, in time for the Queen’s motorcade to glide serenely past it, and for the young Queen to wave at it.

With the sundial now belonging to the city, the Council took on the job of maintaining it. In 1955 they voted £500 for the building of a stainless steel railing around the sundial to try to prevent some of the vandalism which constantly plagued it. The railing was finally installed in 1957 and the last pieces of the terrazzo surround were completed in 1958.

Hamiltonians viewing the sundial shortly after its installation in 1953. Lindsay Amner collection.

The original site for the sundial was centrally on the edge of Victoria Street on the front edge of what was then a carpark. In about 1968 Garden Place was refurbished with fountains and grassed areas, and the sundial was moved back about 20 metres from Victoria Street to a position nicely placed near the fountains and the central areas of the park. Then a further Garden Place remodel in the early 2000s saw the sundial moved again, further west away from Victoria Street, to sit in front of the public library. It is still there today, 72 years after its installation, the longest lasting public art feature in the central city and a monument to a group of scientifically minded men, particularly Allan Bryce and Robert Alchin, whose vision for the central city was never realized, but their gift to the city remains.

The sundial in September 2025. Photo: David Papworth.

Sources

Amner, Bessie M.L., Star Struck: the Hamilton Astronomical Society 1933-2003, Self Published, Hamilton, 2005

A History of Garden Place, A DigitalNZ Story by Zokoroa, https://digitalnz.org/stories accessed 24 Sep 2025

Ship Figureheads as Statuary in New Zealand Gardens, Part 3: the America, the Helen Denny, and others

Ian Duggan

A number of newspaper reports were published in the early 20th Century on the figureheads of ships featuring as items of statuary in New Zealand gardens. In previous blogs we examined the stories of the figureheads of the Hydrabad and HMS Wolverine. But there have been plenty of reports of others that have adorned our gardens besides these. Though not exhaustive, in this final contribution I examine the interesting stories of several more of these, including the figureheads of the America and the Helen Denny.

AMERICA

One of the most interesting remaining stories of ship figureheads appearing in New Zealand gardens is that of one that had lost its provenance. In March 1930, it was reported that an “exceptionally fine figurehead, true to nautical regulations in being one and a-half times life size, has lost her identity. For many years she reposed in the garden of Mr. J. J. Craig’s house, in Mountain Road [Epsom], but after 23-4 years no one remembers where she came from”.^[i]

“This exceptionally fine figurehead, true to nautical regulations in being one and a-half times life size, has lost her identity”. Sun (Auckland), 22 March 1930, P 17

Soon after, this figure – like that of the Wolverine in our previous blog – made its way into the collection of ships’ figureheads at the naval headquarters in Devonport, Auckland. Despite the origin being unknown, it was noted to be “in an excellent state of preservation”. The figure was “that of a girl dressed in Grecian costume. The figure is a particularly fine one, and represents a very high degree of perfection in the art of wood-carving. The features are well-proportioned and the flowing garments have a most realistic appearance.”^[ii]

It took some time to be confident of its origin, but it was “solved after four months’ investigation by Mr. T. Walsh, of Devonport, who undertook the task at the request of Commander Nelson Clover, [the] officer commanding the naval base at Devonport”.

Of the Devonport naval collection, the figurehead was described as the “largest and most ornately carved”. At first it was assumed to have come from the Constance Craig. “An inspection of the figurehead at the dock”, however, led to the conclusion that it did not come from this vessel: “Practically all the “shell backs” [a term used for an old or experienced sailor, especially one who has crossed the equator] to be found about Auckland waterfront, were consulted about the possible origin of this old piece of ship ornamentation. The Joseph Craig, the Hazel Craig, the Quathlamba, and the Royal Tar were mentioned as being likely ships, but in each case investigation proved that the figure-head did not come from any of the vessels mentioned. The possibility that the late Mr. J. J. Craig had bought the figurehead in Fiji or elsewhere was then examined. After 60 inquiries had been made a chance meeting with a carter formerly employed by J. J. Craig, Ltd., elicited that for many years the figurehead had reposed in a shed on the old Railway Wharf. The following up of this line of inquiry led eventually to establishing that the figurehead belonged to the ship America, which put into Auckland in distress in 1903 and was condemned here”.

Research uncovered at the time found that the America had started life in 1868 under the name ‘Mornington’. “In July, 1903, she sailed from Newcastle [Australia] with 2,400 tons of coal, but was two days out when a leak developed in the stern”… “The ship put into Auckland, and the captain made a great fight to save his ship. She was condemned on September 3, 1903, and cargo and ship were sold. Some years later the ship was dismantled and anchored in “Rotten Row.” When the American fleet visited the Waitemata, in 1908, the America left her moorings and fetched up alongside one of the worships. The weather was exceedingly rough, and every effort to shift the hulk failed”… “the old hulk was taken to the “bay of wrecks” at Pine Island, where holiday-makers subsequently set her afire”.^[iii]

HELEN DENNY

Many column-inches, commonly with some of the most spectacular images, were dedicated to the figurehead of the Helen Denny. In 1935, “after having been lost track of for a number of years”, The Evening Post reported that “the figurehead of the intercolonial barque Helen Denny has turned up again. The figurehead, which is in a remarkable state of preservation, is the property of a Roseneath [Wellington] resident, and is to be mounted in a garden overlooking the harbour where the old vessel spent many years as a hulk”.

“The form of the figurehead is such as was familiar in bygone days, and is that of a lady attired in a white dress of the mid-Victorian, period, trimmed with green and gold. Clasped in her right hand on her breast is a red rose. She has black hair surmounted by a coronet, and gold bangles encircle her arms”.

The Helen Denny was described as “an iron ship of 695 tons, with a length of 187.5 ft”, and was said to have “took the water in the Clyde in 1866”. “The name Helen Denny was bestowed upon her as a compliment to the wife of the then manager of Denny and Company, the famous Dumbarton shipbuilders… The figurehead is intended as a likeness of that lady, and although its merit cannot readily be judged by comparison, it appears to be a remarkably fine piece of work”. ^[iv]

“For 10 years she traded out of Glasgow to Rangoon [now Yangon, Myanmar] and those exotic eastern ports… Then the Shaw, Savill Company bought her and brought her into New Zealand waters”.[v] For many years, the Helen Denny was well known as a trader and cadet ship on the New Zealand coast.^[vi]

“THE BEAUTIFUL HELEN DENNY, one of Captain Ferdinand Holm’s vessels well known in New Zealand as a training-ship for boys”.
Evening Post, 10 October 1936, P24

The barque was dismantled in 1912 for service as a hulk, after which the figurehead was said to have “certainly had a chequered history”.

The Evening Post in 1935 noted that: “Many years ago it was picked up off the beach by a shipping clerk, now retired, who had it in his garden at Roseneath for some time before passing it on to its present owners. What happened to it prior to this and how it came to be on the beach are not known. There is a well authenticated story to the effect that when Colonel Denny visited New Zealand many years ago, he asked for the figurehead. The company which then had the vessel promised to let him have it when she went out of commission, but this was never done”.^[vii]

The figurehead sat in that Roseneath garden for several years. In 1938, it was reported, rather poetically, that “Standing among the flowers of a Roseneath garden, the carved wooden figure of a graceful woman watches with unblinking eyes the steamers loading and discharging merchandise, the fussy tugs, the harbour ferries, yachts, coal-hulks, all the colourful shipping of the port of Wellington. She is watching doubtless, for the coming of the tall and stately sailing vessel whose figurehead once she was—but the old barque Helen Denny, last and loveliest of the colonial clippers, is ending her days as a battered bulk in Lyttelton.”^[viii]

The figurehead of the barque Helen Denny.
Evening Post, 30 October 1937, P 24

Other Figureheads in Gardens

Finally, I provide here short notes on three other vessels, whose figureheads were noted in New Zealand suburban gardens. Again, however, this coverage is by no means exhaustive, with snippets of others also appearing in various newspapers in the early 20^th Century.

NORTHUMBERLAND

The figurehead of the Northumberland, featuring “a warrior with a sword”, rested “in the garden of Mr Frank Armstrong, at Akitio”, in the Manawatū-Whanganui region.^[ix] The Northumberland was wrecked on the Petane Beach (Napier), on May 13^th, 1887”. A 1910 report noted that “After the officers and crew of the Northumberland were saved the vessel broke up and the figurehead was the only thing saved”.^[x] A story from the 1920s, however, suggested that more was salvaged. The Hawera Star informed its readers that in the cargo of the ship there “was a quantity of rum”… “and some of it was among the first of the flotsam to come ashore. The crowd immediately broached it and got very tipsy, giving the police a lot of trouble”. This report noted that the “figurehead of the Northumberland was secured by a Westshore fisherman, and was for years a prominent object in his garden”.^[xi]

AGNES JESSIE

The “figurehead of the barquentine Agnes Jessie, which was wrecked with the loss of five lives” on Mahia Peninsula while on route between Lyttelton and Auckland^[xii] in 1877, was “discovered in the garden of Mrs. K. Northe, of Havelock Street, Napier” in the 1930s. The Auckland Star reported that the “figurehead is in a splendid state of preservation, and represents a young woman in the dress of the early Victorian period. It has been in the possession of Mrs. Northe’s family for nearly 40 years, having been washed ashore nearly two months after the wreck happened”.^[xiii]

ROBINA DUNLOP

The Robina Dunlop was wrecked in the mouth of the Turakina River, while in transit between Wellington and Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) in 1877.^[xiv]In 1924, the Manawatu Times reported on a Mr John Grant of Turakina, who was “was an interested visitor at Saturday’s All Black match. He is 73 years of age and from his upright lissome figure, looks as though he could still play the game with the best of them”. Although it is unclear why this was part of the story, it continued: “Nearly sixty years ago he carried the carved figurehead of the wrecked vessel “The Robina Dunlop” on horseback from the beach, to his father’s home, where it still stands in the garden, a beautifully carved-life slzed representation of the lady after whom the vessel was named”.^[xv]This figurehead, also, was later presented to the Devenport Naval base collection in 1936 by Mrs. M. Grant.^[xvi]

Read Part I here: The Hydrabad

Read Part II here: The Wolverine

References

[i] Sun (Auckland), 22 March 1930, P 17

[ii] Ship’s Figureheads. Wanganui Chronicle, 24 March 1930, P 2

[iii] Curious Figurehead. Sun (Auckland), 5 June 1930, P 10

[iv] An Old Figurehead. Evening Post, 25 September 1935, P 13

[v] Figurehead of the Helen Denny. Dominion, 23 August 1938, P 3

[vi] Evening Post, 25 September 1935, P 9

[vii] An Old Figurehead. Evening Post, 25 September 1935, P 13

[viii] Figurehead of the Helen Denny. Dominion, 23 August 1938, P 3

[ix] John Knox’s Figurehead had a Movable Arm .Star (Christchurch), 7 June 1930, P 21 (Supplement)

[x] New Zealand Graphic, 23 November 1910, P 18

[xi] Local and General. Hawera Star, 7 February 1927, P 4

[xii] Wreck of the Agnes Jessie. West Coast Times, 29 June 1882, P 2

[xiii] News of the Day. Auckland Star, 24 March 1936, P 6

[xiv] Total Wreck of the Barque Robina Dunlop. New Zealand Times, 15 August 1877, P 2

[xv] Personal Paragraphs. Manawatu Times, 29 July 1924, P 4

[xvi] Three More. Auckland Star, 26 March 1936, P 10

Meet Dr Carrot and Potato Pete: The legacy of the Victory Gardens

An illustrated talk by Gail Pittaway

11 September, Chartwell Room, Hamilton Gardens, 7 pm.

$5.00 entry fee (cash, please!)

At the beginning of the Second World War, Britain imported 60% of its food, much of it by ship. However, with a naval blockade by German warships, this traffic and the nourishment of the nation, were under severe threat. The government introduced a food rationing scheme in January 1940 to avoid the food shortages endured during the First World War.

To support the food supply and supplement the increasingly strict rations, a ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign was launched by the Ministry of Agriculture in October 1939, encouraging families to grow and prepare their own food. Everyone was encouraged to turn their flower beds and lawns into vegetable gardens, ‘Victory gardens’. For this propaganda the Ministry even employed Disney cartoonists, who created such characters as Doctor Carrot and Potato Pete.

The Ministry of Food started publishing Food Facts pamphlets in 1940, and magazines, newspapers and daily radio programmes such as ‘The Kitchen Front’ and ‘the Radio Doctor’ were full of ideas and recipes to enable families to make the most of the weekly rations. One of the most significant contributors to this campaign was a New Zealander, Bee Nilson, whose efforts to encourage British householders to make the most of home-grown vegetables to make nourishing meals, despite the privations of war, resulted in an overall improvement of health standards across the population. ‘Rationing enabled the poorest sections of society to eat more protein and vitamins, which led to a substantial upturn in the health of the nation’. (Imperial War Museum)

Gail Pittaway is a writer and lecturer, now part-time, at Wintec, Hamilton, whose research interests include literature, food history, New Zealand cookbooks and garden design. This talk arises from her recently submitted PhD Thesis, A New Zealand Food Memoir, tracing a personal journey through food changes in the middle of the twentieth century. In this research she ‘discovered’ the work of Bee Nilson whom she considers an unacknowledged New Zealand food hero.

A Victory Garden in a bomb crater, London, Office of War Information (NARA record: 1138532)

‘Fine specimens of nikau palm, fern trees and tai tai’: On early use of the ‘New Zealand palm’

by Mike Lloyd

[This blog is a repost from Mike Lloyd’s ‘The Local Arboretum: Noticeable trees and their stories‘ website]

As I noted in the first post on the Arrowsmith Phoenix palms, a worldwide ‘palm craze’ spread among garden enthusiasts from the 1850s on.¹ British migrants brought this with them to the colonies where they settled, including New Zealand. At times this led to an appreciation of the nikau (Rhopalostylis sapida), but relative to the palms that fascinated Europeans in their newly built palm houses (like the famous one at Kew), the nikau palm could easily be overlooked. Here’s an interesting travelogue where we can partly see this dynamic expressed:

This is taken from an 1884 letter to the editor of the Taranaki Herald, titled ‘A trip home in the S.S. Doric‘. It is very likely that the ‘Brazilian palm tree’ discussed was in the Rio Botanic Garden’s 750 metre long ‘Avenue of Royal Palms‘. Justifiably, this had worldwide renown though the palm planted there – Roystonea oleracea – actually originates in the Carribean. Evaluating the nikau in relation to it is an ‘apples and oranges’ kind of comparison, which the correspondent isn’t really encouraging. Perhaps he just wishes there were gardens like this in New Zealand, but for sure the mention of the nikau does at least show that New Zealand’s sole endemic palm had some significance for a New Zealander on their trip back ‘home’ (i.e., to England) as early as the 1880s.

Several years before the palm-interested correspondent made these comments, nikau plants and/or seeds were actually travelling about the globe. In September 1865 the Australian government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller wrote to George Grey requesting seeds of what he then called New Zealand Areca palms (Areca sapida being the original botanical name). Two months later he gratefully acknowledged receipt of both seeds and ‘living plants of this noble palm’, which he intended to distribute to interested enthusiasts about the globe.

Nikau seeds and plants were not the only thing travelling the globe in the late 1800s. After a visit in 1881 to New Zealand, Marianne North² gifted the following artwork to Kew Gardens, London:

By the time of this gift -1882 – nikau palms had been growing in Kew’s Temperate Palm House for a few years. New Zealand travellers, at least those who bypassed Rio, can be found well-pleased upon visiting Kew to find healthy specimens of nikau ‘quite at home’:

Early use of the nikau for decorative and ceremonial occasions

One of the commonest ways in which the nikau was used in New Zealand from the 1850s to the early 1900s was for decorative purposes. Probably, whole plants were not dug up, rather fronds were cut from nikau palms sourced in the ‘bush’. We’ll see some photos shortly, but searching Papers Past using the term ‘nikau palm decoration’ turns up many accounts of such decorative use. As early as 1859 the Nelson Examiner includes in a report on the laying of the foundation stone for Nelson College that

Nikau were obviously growing in Nelson during the reign of Queen Victoria (VR stands for Victoria Regina). Nikau were also growing in Lower Hutt as indicated by this extract from the New Zealand Herald, from which this blogpost’s title comes:

There are no available photos of this arch constructed for the Prince’s visit in1869, but there are many photos available of the remnant nikau palms from which the fronds were probably sourced:

Source: Nikau palm trees at McNab’s Gardens, Lower Hutt, Wellington Region. Williams, E. Ref: 1/1-025586-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, /records/22785533

This photo was taken circa 1885, clearly showing nikau large enough to provide fronds for decorative arches. MacNab’s Gardens were originally the private gardens of Alfred Ludlam, who was a politician, farmer, and horticulturalist, as well as being a prime mover in the founding of the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Many of the nikau palms so liked by Ludlam survived the later transition to Bellevue Gardens, and then into the gardens of private residences (see NZ Tree Register). Recognising the status of these remnants the Hutt City Council district plan protects all remnant nikau; it is not known what happened to the ‘tai tai’ (toetoe).

Given there are a good number of historic photos it is worth looking at a few examples to see how nikau (and other plants) were employed for decorative purposes. Here are a few presented in chronological order:

Source: Wellington’s Royal Reception Celebrations, June, 1901.Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19010628-04-02

Source: Gladstone Road looking towards the decorated fire bell archway for the opening of the Gisborne-Auckland railway, 26 June 1902. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19020710-12-02

Source: Queens Wharf decorated for the American Fleet, 1908. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 2-V0020

Source: Crowd at Kohukohu, celebrating the coronation of George V, King of Great Britain. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. PAColl-5155

The use of nikau palm fronds as seen above were for decorations in highly ordered ceremonial occasions. It is not hard to imagine why the nikau fronds were chosen: in these places the palms must have been well-established in handy areas; they offered a large frond good for providing a spectacle; they were sturdy and could be easily attached via nails, rope or wire; and, of course, the fronds offered something truly New Zealand in character.

All this is not to forget that nikau fronds were also used in more prosaic occasions such as garden parties:

Source: Garden party at Titirangi, 1919. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections TAB-P-0188;TAB-P-0190

These two final historic photos take us up to 1919 which is about when, in terms of actual planted palms, introduced exotics like the Phoenix palm came to dominate the use of palms in New Zealand amenity horticulture (at least in the North Island). Nikau were also planted from the 1900s, and the use of fronds for decoration continued, but it probably wasn’t roughly until the 1970s that the resurgence of interest in native plants resulted in higher rates of planting of nikau palms.

Now, walking around any major New Zealand city, sights of nikau growing and flourishing will be found. Here is an example just west of the Wellington railway station, looking up to the New Zealand Parliament buildings, where in 1901 nikau fronds were used as decoration:

Footnotes:

It should be emphasised that this post does not specifically delve into Māori use of the nikau palm, which obviously pre-dates European colonisation of Aotearoa.
For further discussion see: Michele Payne, 2015, Marianne North: A very intrepid painter, Kew: Kew Publishing.

The Time Traveller’s Guide to the Hamilton Gardens: Peter Sergel Talk

Thursday 21 August, 6:30 – 8:00pm, Chartwell Room, Hamilton Gardens Pavilion, 6:30-8:00pm; $10 cash, no registration required.

Through captivating storytelling and stunning photography by Grant Sheehan, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Hamilton Gardens shares all the hidden secrets and fascinating histories behind each garden. Travelling through time simply by walking through a garden is the vision of Peter Sergel, the mastermind behind and original director of Hamilton Gardens.

In this entertaining talk, Peter will provide highlights of Hamilton Gardens. There will be a prize raffle while copies of the book will also be available for purchase.

This event is organised by the Garden History Research Foundation, and supported by the Friends of Hamilton Gardens, and Hamilton Gardens Development Trust.

“The Zhi Garden Album” and the Vanished Garden Behind It

By Shanshan Liu and Xiao Huang, with contributions from Chang Jingyi and Gu Rui

The Zhi Garden Album (《止園圖》) is a set of twenty paintings created in 1627, currently held in two parts by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin. Executed in a delicate and realistic style, the album presents a splendid Ming-dynasty garden from multiple perspectives. The first page is inscribed with the phrase “Panoramic View of Zhi Garden.” Who built Zhi Garden? In which city was it located? When was it constructed? Was the garden depicted in the album a real place, or merely a product of the artist’s imagination? These unresolved mysteries have made The Zhi Garden Album a subject of great interest among international scholars.

In the 1950s, American art historian James Cahill first encountered The Zhi Garden Album in Boston. Attributed to the Ming-dynasty painter Zhang Hong (張宏), the album portrays a grand garden in remarkable detail from various viewpoints. Deeply moved by its distinctive realism, Cahill began a long-term engagement with the work. His later research elevated The Zhi Garden Album as a quintessential example of Chinese realist painting, and he systematically articulated Zhang Hong’s unique place in the history of Chinese art.

In 1978, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York began constructing its Chinese-style garden “The Astor Court” (Ming Xuan, 明軒), James Cahill made a special trip to New York to meet with Professor Chen Congzhou (陳從周), a leading Chinese garden scholar who had traveled to the U.S.A. to provide guidance for the project. Their exchange marked an early attempt at cross-disciplinary collaboration between Chinese garden design and art history. In 1996, Cahill partnered with June Li (李關德霞), curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to organize the exhibition Paintings of Zhi Garden by Zhang Hong: Revisiting a Seventeenth-Century Chinese Garden. For the first time, all 20 album leaves, previously dispersed across different institutions, were reunited and presented as a complete set.

After returning to China, Chen Congzhou did not forget The Zhi Garden Album. Over several years, he compiled the influential book A Comprehensive Collection of Gardens (Yuan Zong,《園綜》), and included the black and white images of 14 leaves from The Zhi Garden Album, gifted to him by Cahill, as the only visual artwork in the entire volume. Published alongside over 300 garden inscriptions, this marked the first time the album entered the field of Chinese garden scholarship. In 2009, landscape historian Cao Xun (曹汛) discovered a rare surviving copy of Collected Writings from Zhi Garden (Zhi Garden Ji) in the National Library of China. By closely comparing the poems and garden records in the book with visual details from The Zhi Garden Album, he identified the garden owner as Wu Liang (吳亮), the author of the anthology, and successfully located the site of Zhi Garden in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province (江蘇省常州市).

At the invitation of Cao Xun, we established contact with James Cahill and began a collaborative study on Chinese garden painting. In 2012, we co-authored The Immortal Forests and Springs: Garden Paintings in Old China（《不朽的林泉：中國古代園林繪畫》）, with the first chapter dedicated to The Zhi Garden Album. As the first scholarly monograph to systematically explore the genre of garden painting in China, Garden Paintings in Old China was well received by readers. With its growing influence, the story of Zhi Garden has become increasingly well known. As a rare example of a Ming dynasty garden whose overall layout can be reconstructed from visual depictions, Zhi Garden fills a critical gap in the historical narrative of Chinese garden design.

To enable a wider audience to experience the flourishing aesthetics of private Chinese gardens at their peak, we devoted the next decade to an in-depth exploration of Zhi Garden. In 2022, we published Zhi Garden Album: A Portrait of Peach Blossom Spring (《止園圖冊：繪畫中的桃花源》) and Dreaming of Zhi Garden: Recreating a Painted Utopia（《止園夢尋：再造紙上桃花源》). These two volumes present high-resolution, full reproductions of all twenty paintings in The Zhi Garden Album, accompanied by detailed interpretations of the garden cultural, historical, and artistic significance.

*Zhi Garden Album: A Portrait of Peach Blossom Spring*
In Chinese and English
by Liu Shanshan and Huang Xiao
Donghua University Press
Published: January 2022

Dreaming of Zhi Garden: Recreating a Painted Utopia
by Huang Xiao and Liu Shanshan
in Chinese
Tongji University Press
Published: October 2022

The 17th century marked the pinnacle of classical Chinese private garden art, witnessing the emergence of numerous renowned garden designers and historically significant gardens. Unfortunately, many of these gardens have either vanished due to the ravages of war and the erosion of time, or undergone substantial transformation. As a result, reconstructing the gardens of the 17th century has become a crucial focus in the study of Chinese garden history. Among them, Zhi Garden stands out as a representative example of this golden era.

Zhi Garden was first established in the 38th year of the Wanli reign (1610). The name “Zhi Garden” (Garden of Restraint) is drawn from the poet Tao Yuanming’s verse in On Giving Up Wine (陶淵明《止酒》): “At last I realize that restraint is good; today I truly give it up.” The garden was designed by Zhou Tingce (周廷策), a prominent garden designer of the late Ming dynasty. Together with his father, Zhou Bingzhong (周秉忠), he belonged to one of the most distinguished families of garden makers during that time. Behind Zhi Garden stood the influential Wu family, who constructed more than 30 gardens during the Ming and Qing dynasties, earning them the reputation of a garden-making lineage. In modern times, the Wu family produced many cultural luminaries, including Wu Zuguang (吳祖光), Wu Zuqiang (吳祖強), and Wu Guanzhong (吳冠中), who continue to exert significant influence in the world of art and culture.

The physical structure of Zhi Garden has long since vanished, the garden faded into obscurity in the latter half of the 17th century and was subsequently forgotten by history. However, traces remain in the form of ruins, visual records, and historical texts. Drawing upon garden inscriptions, pictorial evidence, and topographical features, we have identified the original site of Zhi Garden to be located just outside Qingshan Gate, north of Wujin City in Changzhou. Today, the location of the garden site is found in Tianning District, Changzhou (常州市天甯區), although it has not yet undergone systematic archaeological excavation. The most significant historical material related to the garden is The Zhi Garden Album, which consists of one aerial view and nineteen detailed scenes. Together, these images comprehensively document the garden’s layout and its scenic architecture (Liu and Huang, 2024). The perspectives used in the album are based on real views within the garden, rendered through a realistic painting style that incorporates stylistic and technical adjustments by the artist. The Zhi Garden Album emphasizes visual correction grounded in lived spatial experience, offering a faithful representation of the actual scenery and enhancing the album’s function as a spatial guide.

Zhi Garden was designed as a suburban garden, distinguished by its unique approach route: visitors could arrive by boat from outside the city gate. The garden featured two main entrances, located on the north and south sides.

The overall layout of Zhi Garden was divided into four sections: the eastern, central, and western zones, along with an outer area. The eastern section served as the starting point for the garden tour, guiding visitors through a carefully orchestrated sequence of views. The central zone was characterized by expansive water features, creating a sense of openness and spatial depth. The western section was primarily residential, while the outer area on the eastern side seamlessly connected the garden to the surrounding countryside.

The main hall of the central section in Zhi Garden was Liyun Lou
(*Liyun Lou*, literally “Pear Mist Hall”)

The owner acclaimed Zhi Garden as a garden “celebrated solely for the beauty of its water.” Situated beside the city moat at the junction of three rivers, the site incorporated an unusually rich variety of aquatic features. Because the terrain was relatively flat, dramatic vertical elements such as waterfalls were rare. Instead, the designer used rills, brooks, ditches, and channels, the linear waterways, to connect ponds, pools, lotus basins, and sunken hollows—broader expanses of water—thereby weaving an unbroken, serpentine network that animated the entire garden on a horizontal plane.

In Zhi Garden, rock and earth artificial hills ranked second only to water in importance. According to The Record of Zhi Garden, “the garden devotes three parts to earthen hills and one part to bamboo and trees.” The combined presence of rockeries and vegetation formed wooded hillscapes that covered roughly 40% of the garden, comparable in scale to its water features. Zhi Garden featured a full range of rockwork, from large to small: limestone rockeries, yellow stone mounds, earthen hills, terraced stone flower platforms, and individually placed ornamental peaks. Among them, Feiyun Peak (Flying Cloud Peak) within the wooded mountain grove was the most technically demanding to construct and best exemplifies the artistic mastery of the garden’s designer, Zhou Tingce. The artificial mountain appears as if it had flown down from the heavens and landed gently on an island surrounded by water. With no surrounding natural hills to borrow for visual continuity, the sense of its miraculous arrival is all the more striking.

The architecture of Zhi Garden formed a harmonious balance with the garden’s mountains, waters, and plantings, embodying a subtle interplay between the artificial and the natural. Although architectural structures occupied a relatively small proportion of the overall layout, they played a commanding role in organizing space, often serving as focal points along clearly defined axial sequences. This spatial arrangement reveals the principle of “the dynamic balance between the regular and the irregular” (qi zheng ping heng，奇正平衡) that underpins classical Chinese garden design.

Architectural Layout of Zhi Garden
Illustrated by Huang Xiao, Ge Yiying, and Wang Xiaozhu

Drawing on compelling reconstruction evidence and the garden’s exceptional historical significance, the Changzhou municipal government has decided to launch a project to rebuild Zhi Garden, with the aim of promoting the legacy of Jiangnan garden art and preserving local cultural heritage. This remarkable cross-border scholarly journey now holds the promise of bringing a once-imagined garden back into the real world. It signals the vast potential of international collaboration in the shared study and preservation of humanity’s invaluable heritage.

Author Biographies
Liu Shanshan Shanshan Liu is an associate professor in the History of Architecture at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Beijing, China. She holds a doctorate in Architectural History and Theory from Tsinghua University. She has published several monographs in Chinese and English, including Garden Paintings in Old China (2012), Zhi Garden Album: A Portrait of Peach Blossom Spring (2022).

Huang Xiao is an associate professor at Beijing Forestry University and serves as the Secretary-General of the Research Center for Chinese Landscape Thought. His published works include The Vanished Garden: Zhi Garden of Ming-Dynasty Changzhou, Studies on Private Gardens in Ancient Northern China, and Architectural Atlas of Jiangsu and Shanghai.

References
^[1]James Cahill, Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshan. The Immortal Landscape [M]. SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2012.
^[2] Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshan. Dreaming of Zhi Garden [M]. Tongji University Press, 2022.
^[3] Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshan. “The Poetic and Literary Context of Ming Literati Gardens: A Case Study of Wu Liang’s Zhi Garden” [J]. Art Panorama, 2023(02):122–126.
^[4] Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshan. “The Subtle Delight of ‘Restraint’ in Wu Liang’s Zhi Garden” [J]. Journal of the China Garden Museum, 2021(00):21–26.
^[5] Huang Xiao, Ge Yiying, Zhou Hongjun. “The Dynamic Balance of Order and Irregularity in Ming Garden Architecture: A Comparison of The Craft of Gardens and Zhi Garden” [J]. New Architecture, 2020(01):19–24.
^[6] Huang Xiao, Zhu Yundi, Ge Yiying, et al. “View, Movement, Dwelling: Zhou Tingce and Flying Cloud Peak in Zhi Garden Garden” [J]. Landscape Architecture, 2019, 26(03):8–13. DOI:10.14085/j.fjyl.2019.03.0008.06.
^[7] Zhou Hongjun, Surij, Huang Xiao. “Exploring the Water Management Strategies of Zhi Garden Garden in Ming-Dynasty Changzhou” [J]. Landscape Architecture, 2017, No.139(02). ^[8] Li, June; James Cahill. Paintings of Zhi Garden by Zhang Hong: Revisiting a Seventeenth-Century Chinese Garden. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1996

Ship Figureheads as Statuary in New Zealand Gardens, Part 2: The Wolverine

by Ian Duggan

A number of newspaper reports were published in the early 20^th Century on the figureheads of ships featuring as items of statuary in New Zealand gardens. In a previous blog we covered the Hydrabad, whose figurehead ended up in a Foxton garden for many years, before it came to an unfortunate end, chopped up for firewood. In this blog we examine the HMS Wolverine, whose figurehead adorned the garden of a residence in Stanley Bay, Devonport, Auckland.

By 1929, the figurehead of the Wolverine was already said to have been “a prominent feature in a garden at Stanley Bay for many decades”^[i]. The figurehead was described as “gigantic”; “his knotted wig and closely buttoned coat represents a hunter of the seas; a wolverine is carved on either side of the base of the figure; a faithful modelling of the animal that scours the icy wastes by the frozen northern oceans”.^[ii] Elsewhere, however, it is described as the “figure of a Red Indian”.^[iii] And, perhaps it was most interestingly stated as such: “Impressive in its rude vigour is the figure-head of the Wolverine, a gigantic male figure representing a hunter of the seas”. ^[iv]

The garden of interest belonged to a Mr. Arthur Willetts^[v], a resident of Waterview Road. Willetts had worked in the then well-known ship-yards of George Niccol Limited, where he built boats for 52 years, up until the time the yards were closed in 1932, the last 20 of which he had spent as foreman. He had joined the firm when he was only 13 years of age, having followed in the footsteps of his father, Mr. James Willetts, who had worked in the Niccol yards before him. Through his career, the younger Willetts had worked on the builds of 80 large boats, including the ferries Condor, Pupuke and Toroa, as well as all the vehicular ferry steamers active in the harbour in 1932. The oldest vessel he helped build still active at the time the boat-yards closed was the scow ‘Tally Ho’, which brought sand to Auckland from the islands in the gulf. Of interest to the current story, of this boat he said he had “built about 38 years ago out of the timbers of the old man-o’-war Wolverine. That warship, which used to be stationed in New Zealand waters in the old days, was one of the old ‘wooden walls’ of England. When her days were ended I helped to break her up in Stanley Bay. We used her timbers, which were wonderfully sound, to build scows and schooners, and her sails were cut down to suit smaller vessels”.^[vi]

HMS Wolverine, Sydney, July 1881. Public Domain.

The HMS Wolverine was launched in the UK in 1863, and was said to be “composite in build”, being constructed of iron frames with teak and oak planking, and “composite in motive power, having both sails and steam”.^[vii] A Wikipedia page on the vessel provides a more lengthy synopsis of her life and activities, but briefly: she served in North American and West Indian waters in the 1860s and early 1870s, and from 1875 served as the flagship of the navy in Australian waters. In 1882, she was presented to the Colony of New South Wales as a training ship for the New South Wales Naval Brigade and New South Wales Naval Artillery Volunteers, before being decommissioned in 1892. She later, briefly, became a merchant vessel.

The days of the Wolverine came to an unceremonious end on a voyage from Sydney. Her new owners loaded her with shale and she was dispatched for Liverpool, England, but when some time out she began to leak badly the crew demanded that the master put back to port for repairs. She arrived at Auckland, being the nearest port, in April 1895. The Government authorities then condemned the ship following a survey, and she was sold to Mr. G. T. Niccol^[viii] – or, as one report phrased it, “she came into the hands of ship-breakers”.^[ix] Niccol and company began to dismantle the Wolverine where she lay, moored off Northcote, and she was later docked at Calliope Dock, where her valuable copper sheathing was stripped, and her copper fastenings taken out. After being undocked the Wolverine lay in Stanley Bay for some time, and eventually the remains of the hull were burnt.^[x] In 1900, the last remnants were said to have been blown up with dynamite, after which very little remained.^[xi]

Wreck of the HMS Wolverine at Stanley Bay, Auckland, New Zealand photographed in ?1902, Public Domain.

It was during the breaking up of the vessel that the figurehead came into the possession of Arthur Willetts, and placed in his garden – likely in the late 1890s – and there it remained for many years^[xii]. Little was noted in the press of its time in the garden, except that the figurehead was taken down from its pedestal in 1921 and repaired, and it was hinted at this time that it would, in all probability, find a last resting place in the museum.^[xiii]It wasn’t until mid-1929, however, that this move was made, being first transported to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, though not without some protest: Commander Nelson Clover hoped that the figurehead would instead be erected along with others at the nautical museum at the Devonport naval yards.^[xiv] Indeed, by late 1930 he got his wish, when it joined the existing collection of figureheads there.

A ship’s carpenter at the naval dockyards with part of the figurehead of H.M.S. Wolverine, which is being restored for mounting purposes. New Zealand Herald, 31 July 1930, P8

It is unclear what happened to the Wolverine figurehead thereafter. However, it was noted in 1952 that: “The remains of what were once handsome figureheads from sailing ships are now rotting in a corner of the Devonport Naval Base. The Navy considers restoration impracticable. The figureheads were collected over a period of years, and were originally mounted along the driveways at the base… They have been repaired and repainted periodically, but most of them are now unrecognisable. There were at one time 16 figureheads; to-day only one is standing, and seven others are stored near the workshops behind the base playing field. Outside collectors have shown some interest in the models, but the Naval Board in Wellington considers that their maritime history makes H.M.N.Z.S. Philomel the proper place for them. It is proposed to coat the figureheads with a preservative, and to store them till they can be displayed under shelter”.^[xv]

The latest addition to Commander Nelson Clover’s nautical museum at Devonport, Auckland. Evening Post, 15 September 1930, P7.

Read Part I here: The Hydrabad

Read Part III here: The America, the Helen Denny, and others

References:

[i] News in Brief. Otago Daily Times, 15 July 1929, P14

[ii] Sun (Auckland), 22 March 1930, P17

[iii] Auckland Star, 12 September 1930, P8

[iv] Maritime Museum. Waihi Daily Telegraph, 2 July 1938, P3

[v] Sun (Auckland), 21 October 1927, P16

[vi] Ship Yards Close. New Zealand Herald, 14 November 1932, P10

[vii] Sun (Auckland), 22 March 1930, P17

[viii] Auckland Star, 25 October 1930, P15 (Supplement)

[ix] Sun (Auckland), 22 March 1930, P17

[x] Auckland Star, 25 October 1930, P15 (Supplement)

[xi] Auckland News Notes. Otago Daily Times, 13 September 1900, P5

[xii] New Zealand Herald, 17 June 1929, P11

[xiii] Auckland Star, 8 August 1921, P4

[xiv] New Zealand Herald, 17 June 1929, P11

[xv] Press, 17 September 1952, Page 8

What’s In a Name? Yarrow and the great Achilles

Annette Giesecke, Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington

I tried to grow yarrow in my Pennsylvania woodland garden to no avail, but on my New Zealand plot, surrounded by orchards and pasturelands, it grows rampant, undeterred by drought or clay soil. A member of the Asteraceae family and native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, this handsome perennial plant reaches a height of up to 1 metre (3.5 feet); has fernlike, finely dissected leaves; and its flat or slightly convex flower heads, blooming from spring well into autumn, consist of clusters of small flowers. In the wild, its flowers range in colour from white to pink, but there are red, orange, hot pink, lavender, and yellow cultivated varieties available in garden centres.

*Achillea millefolium*, the flower of Achilles. Photo by Jitaeri. Image, Wikimedia Commons.

Known also in common parlance as ‘arrowroot’, ‘death flower’, ‘eerie’, ‘hundred-leaved grass’, ‘old man’s mustard’, ‘sanguinary’, ‘seven-year’s love’, ‘snake’s grass’, and ‘soldier’ – yarrow is interesting on so many levels. When established, it is hardy even in adverse conditions, and it is of significant value to wildlife. Its nectar-rich flowers attract butterflies, bees, and other insects, while its leaves, toxic to some animals (including dogs, as I have witnessed), are grazed by others and gathered by nesting birds. The whole plant has a distinctive, sharp odour, that can be described as a mixture of chamomile and pine, or chrysanthemum-like. To the taste, its roots are bitter. Yarrow has been used by humans for millennia as a medicinal plant, useful in treating a wide range of ailments ranging from headaches and indigestion to infections. It effectively staunches bleeding and repels mosquitoes as well. Yarrow also has applications as a fabric dye, yielding a range of yellow tints. And then there is its mysterious botanical name, Achillea millefolium, which translates as ‘Achilles’ thousand-leaved plant’. ‘Thousand-leaved’ is, of course, a reference to yarrow’s dissected leaves, but why is this the plant of Achilles, that ancient Greek hero famed for his exploits in the Trojan War?

In addition to being an extraordinarily effective warrior, Achilles had a range of other skills and talents, all in keeping with his unusual parentage and upbringing. He was the son of the sea goddess Thetis and Peleus, a mortal man. A prophecy had revealed that Thetis was destined to bear a son who would overpower his father, an event that would threaten the established divine hierarchy. For this reason, Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, offered Thetis in marriage to Peleus, a king of the northern Greek district of Phthia, for whom this was a reward. By some accounts, Thetis did not accept this arrangement willingly, causing Peleus to wrestle with her as she changed her shape to fire, water, and then a wild beast to elude his grasp (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca. 13.3). Peleus prevailed, and all the gods were invited to the couple’s wedding… all but one. Only Eris, goddess of strife was excluded. Her presence on this festive occasion, it was thought, would only bring misfortune. Misfortune befell the festive gathering nonetheless, as an angry Eris appeared bearing what would prove to be a fateful wedding gift: a golden apple labeled ‘for the fairest’. Loveliest of the goddesses were Hera (queen of the gods), Athena (goddess of wisdom and defensive war), and Aphrodite (goddess of love and desire), and all three, equally beautiful, laid claim to this golden prize. As no god dared to make this choice, it was agreed to leave the decision to Paris Alexander, the prince of Troy, whose reputation as a lover was well known. Not leaving the outcome of this contest to chance, each goddess offered Paris a bribe. Hera promised that she would make him king of all men, while Athena offered him success in war. Aphrodite, however, knew him best and offered him Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. It was she who was awarded the golden apple.

In the course of time, Paris traveled to Greece and, while being hospitably entertained in Sparta, made off with Helen, that kingdom’s queen. This was an affront that King Menelaos, Helen’s husband, could not bear, and with his brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae in the lead, assembled the bravest and strongest men of Greece. A fleet of one thousand ships then sailed to Troy, their purpose being to retrieve Helen, a goal not easily achieved as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey reveal.

Between Paris’ fateful judgment and his theft of Menelaos’ queen, some fifteen years had passed. Soon after the wedding of Peleus to Thetis, Achilles was born to them, and although half-divine by birth, he was destined to die an early death, as a prophecy foretold. His distraught mother attempted to make her infant immortal, holding him by the ankles and dipping him in the magical waters of the dreaded river Styx. This left him invulnerable, except on his ankles where his mother had held him fast.

While a young child, Achilles, like several other Greek heroes, was sent to live with and be educated by Chiron, a very special centaur. Others were Jason, who went to fetch the famed Golden Fleece; Hercules, renowned for his 12 Labours; and Asklepios, the god Apollo’s son who would become a god of healing. From Chiron, Achilles learned how to hunt, how to play the lyre, and, of particular relevance to yarrow, how to use herbs in healing.

The centaur Chiron teaching Achilles how to play the lyre. Roman fresco from Herculaneum, National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 1st century CE. Image, Wikimedia Commons.

When grown, Achilles would join the Greek forces who fought for the return of Helen, in the course of battle displaying extraordinary cruelty—especially towards Hektor, Troy’s brave and kind defender, a wholly decent, honourable man—but also extraordinary compassion towards his wounded comrades. In Homer’s Iliad, one particular wounded warrior, Eurypylos by name, was not attended to by Achilles himself but by Achilles’ closest friend, whom he, in turn, had instructed in the art of healing. Eurypylos had pleaded for Patroklos’ help, saying:

“Please, I beg of you, lead me to my dark ship, and cut this arrow from my thigh. Warm water will wash away the blackened blood, and then sprinkle good, soothing medicines (ēpia pharmaka esthla) upon it, just as people say Achilles taught you”. (Iliad XI. 828-31)

What, exactly, this good, soothing medicine consisted of is not stated here, but the following lines offer a significant clue:

“Patroklos lay him down, and cut the piercing arrow from his thigh, washing away the dark blood with warm water. And he placed a bitter root upon the wound, first rubbing it with his hands, a root that kills pain (rhizdan pikrēn) and that put an end to all his suffering. The wound was dry, the bleeding stopped”. (Iliad XI.844-48)

Homer did not name this bitter root, but yarrow’s root is bitter, and the plant has analgesic (painkilling) and hemostatic (blood-stopping) properties as well.

The Iliad is conventionally dated to about 750 BCE, and it would be more than 700 years later that Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, author of a multi-volume Natural History (first century CE), provided the next clue: “Achilles, too, the pupil of Chiron, discovered a plant which heals wounds, and which, as being his discovery, is known as the ‘achilleos’ [plant of Achilles].” Yet Pliny proceeded then to identify this plant with one very different from yarrow, writing:

“By some persons this plant is called ‘panaces heracleon’, by others, ‘sideritis’, and by the people of our country, ‘millefolium’: the stalk of it, they say, is a cubit in length, branchy, and covered from the bottom with leaves somewhat smaller than those of fennel. Other authorities, however, while admitting that this last plant is good for wounds, affirm that the genuine achilleos has a bluish stem a foot in length, destitute of branches, and elegantly clothed all over with isolated leaves of a round form. Others again, maintain that it has a squared stem, that the heads of it are small and like those of horehound, and that the leaves are similar to those of the quercus—they say too, that this last has the property of uniting the sinews when cut asunder. Another statement is that the sideritis is a plant that grows on garden walls, and that it emits, when bruised, a fetid smell; that there is also another plant, very similar to it, but with a whiter and more unctuous leaf, a more delicate stem, and mostly found growing in vineyards”. (Natural History 25.19, adapted from John Bowersock trans. 1855. London: Taylor and Francis)

Pliny offered several plants as candidates for Achilles’ plant. One is sideritis (‘mountain tea’), a group of plants in the mint family that don’t remotely resemble yarrow physically but that do have medicinal properties. Another is ‘panaces heracleon’ (‘Hercules’ cure-all’, Opopanax chironium), a yellow-flowering herb that grows 1-3 metres in height but that likewise has medicinal applications. Did Pliny confuse these two with the plant that, much later, with the advent of standardized scientific botanic nomenclature, would be called Achillea millefolium? Or, were all three simply known as ‘Achilles’ plants’ in antiquity? All we can say is that it was Achilles’ reputation as a healer of battle wounds that inspired the choice of yarrow’s scientific name by Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century.

Achilles tending Patroclus wounded by an arrow, identified by inscriptions on the upper part of the vase. Interior of an Athenian drinking cup, ca. 500 BCE attributed to Sosias as painter. From Vulci. Image, Wikimedia Commons.

*All translations of ancient texts are by the author unless stated.

Modern Sources:

Christopher Brickell and Judith D. Zuk (eds.). 1996. The American Horticultural Society, A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. New York: DK publishing.

David J. Mabberley. 2014. Mabberley’s Plant-book: A Portable Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses 4th Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Annette Giesecke. 2020. Classical Mythology A to Z: An Encyclopedia of Gods & Goddesses, Heroes & Heroines, Nymphs, Spirits, Monsters, and Places. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal.

Herb Federation of New Zealand: https://herbs.org.nz/herbs/yarrow-international-herb-of-the-year-2024/

Upcoming talk in Hamilton: “Finding Mrs Mitchinson: The Life of a Forgotten Colonial Plantswoman”

by Annette Bainbridge, Garden History Research Foundation

20 March 2025, 7.00-8.30 p.m. The Link Room at Hamilton Gardens (entry $5 waged; $2 unwaged – please bring cash!)

Mary Mitchinson (1860-1937) ran the Caledonian Nursery in New Plymouth for over ten years after the death of her husband in 1895. An entrepreneur, medal-winning horticulturist and importer of rare and exotic plants, Mary Mitchinson dominated Taranaki’s garden scene from the mid-1890s into the early twentieth-century. This talk will follow her career, the challenges she faced as a businesswoman in a male-dominated market, her role in expanding the reach of Taranaki nurseries throughout New Zealand and the way in which she helped to shape Taranaki’s 19^th-century image as “The Garden of New Zealand”.