Showcase
- NZILA Award of Excellence Residential and Gardens — 2022
This residential garden is one of the larger gardens completed in the Wakatipu Basin recently. Located at Millbrook Resort near Arrowtown, the garden represents the ambitions of overseas based New Zealand clients that sought a semi-rural sanctuary within the resort.
The clients brief required a family home for themselves and their sons. The clients sought a degree of formality and structure to the project, referring to classical / semi-formal European garden designs, with a New Zealand overlay. Fundamental to the design brief was an ease of flow throughout the garden, a series of spaces connecting seamlessly, providing opportunities for surprise and privacy and the ability for outdoor spaces to engage visually with the all-surrounding wider panoramic views.
The garden is still relatively ‘young’ and will require 2-3 more years of growth for the landscape forms to be fully evident.
Judges Citation:
Elegant, graceful and in keeping with local environs and the wider context, the Millbrook Residential Garden integrates the dwelling into the surrounding landscape. The vernacular language of the stone walls and clipped planting resonates with the regional rural landscape. While clearly drawing on precedents of European formal gardens, the garden responds to the sense of place with its materials and indigenous plants. A wide range of vistas and microclimates are enjoyed in different ways.
The strongly formal spaces and tightly manicured hedges provide a setting which enhances and amplifies the unexpected powerfully. The enormous boulders provide a direct relationship to surrounding mountain tops and appear to have been selected and placed in direct dialogue. There is also a welcome domesticity to the scale and placement of the boulders, which provide an exterior extension of the house’s interiors and furnishings. The quality of detailing and execution is exemplary throughout the construction.
Client:
Stewart Callaghan
Company:
Baxter Design Group Limited
Internal collaborators:
Paddy Baxter, Mark Stalllard
Key contractors:
Architect: Mason Wales
Project Manager: Peak Projects
Consultant Engineers: Bachelar McDougall Consulting
Landscape Contractor: Alpine Green
Tennis Court Construction: Fulton Hogan
Building Contractor (‘Hard’ landscape) : Rilean Contractors
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