The World of Woodlands Estate, Taupiri

Every time I visit a new garden space I attempt to find a way to relate it back to my own work. Honestly, there is so much that can be learnt simply by observing, and in this case my main take away was Focal Point. When I was studying this was a hard thing to really focus on, because you try your hardest to make EVERYTHING perfect, overly fantastical, and under practical, and focal point technically falls into the last for me (it is a practical effect that is). It's a tool to direct your attention as you visit and meander, drawing you, the visitor, onto your next destination. A vista can be grand and awe inspiring, but not many of us have the land or patience to create a vista (as they can take decades to perfect), so we do Focal Point instead.

People have called them many things over the years, Points of Interest being among the most well known, the end goal is a 'Thing' to be seen, a Focal Point. The gardens at Woodlands feature and promote this key fundament of design, in my humble opinion, and utilize it well. Historical context is important in this instance, and understanding how estates were designed in the last 100-200 Years.

The garden itself appears to move on and on, winding paths through seemingly fairly dense spaces. Tree scramble the skyline, bushes overlap with the eye line of the path, but also, when you stop in the right place, they don’t. It really very clever as a flow path alone, let alone the myriad of intense plantings that densify the environ.

A great example of this is when you stop just in front of the house (where the true front will be for the viewer facing out over the lawn space). A great elongated lawn stretches out before you, shadows from the tall tress the line their edges, tumbling their dark down over the hedge rows of Carpinus betulus that run the length. A flag pole sits centrally to far ground the space, and as you look up the length you can make out a small white structure BEYOND the lawn space itself. Farther than the wall of the almost Juliet balcony that looks over the river, and then the river itself, there is a white pergola sat perfectly inline with the lawn and flag pole. A prime example of Focal Point, because at any time during that I could have stopped and identified 3 or 4 different features that could hold your attention along, but with all of them linearly cascading one after another we end up with a path for the eyes to follow, all the way to the furthest feature.

The lawn could be boring, dull, even feel a little too damp by itself. But the envelope of the tall old trees that guide your eyes past it’s own limitations to a pergola that is catching the sun, well, that just warms the entire space. But that’s not the only time it is seen. It is done time and time again throughout the environment to tell stories, show new focal points, even create the illusion that there are different gardens within this one.

One of my favourite paintings is Monet’s Bridge over a Pond of Water Lillies, one of nearly 300 paintings featuring Monet’s garden in Giverny, because of not only the over embellished pond of flower crowns and bright reflections, but the structure the bridge provides. In the centre of frame a wooden footbridge steeply climbs over the water, the architecture such a freeform painting requires to hold it all together. And here at Woodlands it does the same thing, but I didn’t find this attracting my attention, nor the ducks swimming about, but instead the presence of a second bridge I could not see. From where I stood on the first bridge there was an amazing view of a widened bend in the stream, becoming more of a pond, with willows, red hot fire pokers, acers, a wisteria climbing over the railing, and a rose garden. Honestly, it’s a beautiful vista and when I crossed it at first I didn’t consider the implications of a returning foot bridge on a loop track, but on the way back from the oaks my partner remarked on the foot bridge not looking quite the same. She was right of course, it was a second bridge with the vista instead facing out over the starboard side.

Brilliantly, this focus on focal point, the change of angles and limiting my eye line, created multiple spaces where I could look out over the water and experience them from a different perspective, un-obstructed by my former flow path. The genius of this is not lost on me today, as I attempt to design a car park where the parked vehicles are not obstructive to the beautiful gardens and property.

The gardens themselves have many different locations where focal point becomes the goal, and the artist in question did a magnificent job in drawing my eyes and attention just so as to always make each corner a new location.

Next time you find yourself commuting from Auckland to Hamilton, swing by the Taupiri off ramp, hang a left, and let the road take you there, it really is a pleasure.

https://www.woodlands.co.nz/