‘C’est belle’ country garden

There’s nothing like a ramble in a country garden to refresh the spirit – and there’s no better time to do so than during the NZ Garden & Art Festival in November.


The steep-roofed La Grange barn on this Gluepot Rd property has a distinct French style, which is reflected in its gardens.

Wedding venue
Cherie and her father have created a multi-functional space, which can be used as a wedding and celebration venue. They’ve installed a kitchen and crated an ambient open area for holding the reception, plus installing a beautiful powder room.

This provides the flexibility to hold celebrations both in the courtyards and garden and undercover, to make it as formal or informal as desired. La Grange Café, open during The NZ Garden & Art Festival, will demonstrate its appeal.   

La Jardin
The garden abounds with antique objects, around which flourish foxgloves and roses. One area features a late 19th Century hay rake, another dray replica made from recycled timber and surrounded by wild flowers. Within the potager is a water pump, circa 1912.

All are displayed in a balanced fashion with quite formal structures of buxus hedging and brickwork. Liquid ambers and conifers are also used to give structure. White flowers feature strongly. Courtyards have been created for relaxing and entertaining, one with a suitably rustic outdoor oven.

What Cherie doesn’t find in antique shops she manages to treat, to achieve the distressed and ‘aged’ appearance.

Festival visitors will be fascinated, intrigued and enchanted by the sheer creative difference of this home and garden. Cherie, herself, emanates an ethereal and floaty quality giving the impression she might have stepped out of a Renoir painting.

She explains she looks for difference and that her designing is a way of being totally herself.

Her home is truly an extension of who she is; and there are no limits to what she’ll create in order to display the differences and passions which drive her.

The kitchen is her favourite part of the house with its hooks and hanging things, again the obvious French flavour. She also loves cooking.

Cherie speaks of the never-ending process with a wisteria pergola; just one recent addition to the garden. La Grange will be open during The NZ Garden & Art Festival to garden trail ticket-holders on Wednesday, November 19, then Friday to Sunday, November 21-23.  

For more information, see www.nzgardenandartfest.co.nz or www.lagrange.co.nz


Courtyards have been created for relaxing and entertaining – one with a suitably rustic outdoor oven.


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