Gillies Garden
★★★★★
Gillies Garden is three quarters of an acre surrounded by native bush, arranged around a cottage by James Walter Chapman-Taylor, among the most significant domestic architects working in New Zealand in the first half of the twentieth century. The garden takes its geometry and scale from the house and includes small rooms, straight paths and clipped hedges.
Peter and Nellie Gillies have gardened here for twenty-five years, and what they have made is a sequence of small gardens linked by narrow paths and clipped hedging, among them a bush garden, a water garden, a topiary garden, a courtyard, a herb garden, a parterre vegetable garden and a small rose garden. At the boundaries the hedging stops and the native bush takes over behind it.
The visit can be extended into the house. Peter and Nellie open the cottage's reception rooms and show the collection of New Zealand contemporary art they have assembled over fifty years, talking visitors through it themselves. Most Chapman-Taylor houses remain private homes, so the interiors are rarely seen. The art tour is booked as an addition to the garden visit and needs a group of at least five.
Facilities and Amenities
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Children welcome
Car parking available on the road adjacent to the garden entry
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Garden visit: $25.
Garden visit and 50 years of contemporary NZ Art: $30
(minimum group size for the Art add on is 5)Appointments necessary.
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From Wellington take State Highway1 - 5.3km
Keep right on Hutt Road towards Hutt Valley - 14km
Keep onto Fergusson Drive towards Stokes Valley and Silverstream - 600m
Keep left towards towards City Centre shopping & Silversteam 800m
At roundabout take second exit onto Field St towards Silverstream - 250m
At roundabout take first exit onto Kilm Street towards Silverstream -300m
At roundabout take second exit onto Whitemans Rd towards Pinehaven - 450m
Keep left on Whitemans Rd 700m
Turn right into Tiniroa Grove
Garden is 100m on your right
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Physical Address: 6 Tiniroa Grove, Silverstream, Upper Hutt
Phone: 027 871 3400
Email: gillies.family60@gmail.com
