Special Publications: October 08, 2025

SELWYN GARDENING GUIDE 2025 | 5
Layers of story…
Homebush Gardens
Layers of history, family, story and connection
are woven deep into the gardens at Homebush, and
exploring them is a fascinating and meaningful
experience.
In 1851, Scottish brothers William and John Deans
settled the Homebush run in the Malvern Hills near
Darfield, where six generations of Deans family have
lived and gardened ever since. These days, visit on
a pre-arranged group tour and it will be Crispin
Deans and his wife Fleur who guide you around, both
passionate about the gardens and sharing the beauty
and history of the site.
Food production drove much of the early use
and structure of the land. One of the garden’s
most striking aspects is a circular holly hedge.
Planted in the 1860s, it was not for formal garden
design but rather to encircle and contain sheep,
to get nutrients into the soil fast and create
fertile ground for vegetable growing. Nowadays,
the hedge contains the rose garden, with many
roses dating from the 1940s and transplanted
here away from the quake-ruins of the original
homestead. Astonishingly, the original holly
hedge has kept regenerating since the 1860s
– Crispin jokes that this should be a heritage
building in its own right!
Each generation of the family has layered their
own preferences into the style of gardening
and land management. Visitors today can
delight in Redwood stands and the “Cathedral”
of Sequoiadendron giganteum planted in
the 1850s, the 1913 magnificent tree avenue
leading up to the house, the unique collection
of rhododendrons hybridised and planted from
Kew Gardens seed from the 1920s, the Welsh
Bodnant interplay of hillside and water, the
garden “rooms” fashion post World War II, and
the current Capability Brown style of spacious
rolling views where you discover vistas and
“view shafts” as you stroll.
Crispin sees the whole grounds as a
multigenerational experiment and conversation.
1851
Black
poplar
The story of how the grounds became shaped
and developed as they are today arises very
much from a mixture of practical settler
necessity alongside a vision of guardianship
upheld from the time they were settled. The
Deans brothers made two key decisions at
the start. One area of hillside covered in
native trees and bush was instantly fenced
off, to be protected from human and animal
intervention. It remains a source of original
native seed, which birds continue to spread.
The brothers also established the future
direction of the lands as a garden by planting
the first exotic tree, a black poplar that still is
splendid and healthy today, long surpassing its
expected lifespan and size.
In pointing out a Turkish oak planted by great-greatuncle
Douglas from an acorn he brought back from
Gallipoli, he says: “Trees are tangible – they last for
generations, allowing you to tell a story you can pass
on to your children and they to theirs.”
And indeed, amongst the sheer scale of this
landscape, it’s the stories of family memory that
ground this place as a home. It’s delightful to learn
that a large rectangular grassed terrace was for
many years an ice-skating pond for parties of up to
60 people, and that the family has been Christmas
lunching under the same massive copper beech
since the 1920s. With Homebush remaining in such
caring and knowledgeable hands, this will surely be
the case for decades to come.
Group tours available of the Gardens, heritage
listed rural buildings and museum-style displays:
www.homebushstables.co.nz