The quiet revival of the stumpery
By Victoria Read
There is something irresistibly evocative about a stumpery. Part sculpture garden, part forest floor in mid-revelation, these arrangements of upturned roots and weather-worn trunks speak of age, decay, and renewal all at once. Long favoured by Victorian gardeners seeking drama and naturalism, stumperies are quietly re-emerging in contemporary gardens—yet with a distinctly thoughtful, garden-led intent.
Perhaps the best-known example is the stumpery at Highgrove, where artfully positioned root plates anchor one of the garden’s most atmospheric spaces. It’s a place where shadow meets structure, and where ferns, mosses, and woodland ephemerals make themselves at home among the sculptural timber forms. Highgrove shows what these features do best: turn the overlooked into the extraordinary.
The Stumpery at Highgrove
Closer to home, the new stumpery at Mincher offers a particularly exciting glimpse into what’s possible. Many of us saw it earlier this year during the NZ Gardens Trust Conference, when it was still in its early days—raw, striking, and full of promise. Even then, the intention behind it was clear. With its locally sourced stumps arranged to create movement and texture, it felt as though the forest itself was in the process of re-forming. It’s the kind of space we’d love to return to in the coming years to see how it settles, softens, and grows into itself.
This theme also surfaced in conversation recently with Josh from Fernside, ahead of our upcoming Wairarapa Experience Day. Josh spoke about his work building up the forest floor in their native area using stumps—both as ecological scaffolding and as aesthetic structure. Rather than treating stumps as waste, he’s using them to enrich soil life, retain moisture, create habitat, and set the stage for native planting to thrive. Listening to him describe it, you sense that the stumps aren’t props at all, but partners in the process.
What ties these examples together is a shared respect for how forests naturally work. Stumperies celebrate the architecture of trees long after they fall, revealing the beauty in their roots and form. But more importantly, they create spaces that feel grounded, layered, and alive.
The stumpery reminds us that the forest floor is never still—it’s always becoming—and that even the most weathered remnants of a tree can shape something unexpectedly beautiful.