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A place where golf and garden align

A Hāwera property with a lake, birdies and swirling greens is a place to worship golf. Virginia Winder learns this is no garden in the rough.

Using grass as their creative medium, Annette and Shane Rowe have painted a landscape using swirling brush strokes and swathes of swaying sedge.

Their living masterpiece pays tribute to the game of golf and the structural strength of their house on the outskirts of Hāwera.

Called 49 Rata after the name and number of the street they live in, the 4-hectare (10-acre) property is opening for the Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival from October 28 to November 6.

Visitors will find a nine-tee golf course, a lake croaking and quacking with wildlife, lawns lavished with love, buxom bushes and big bands of bristling carex (sedge). And, if the skies are clear, Taranaki Maunga will be standing tall in the distance.

The Rowes know their roles at 49 Rata. ‘‘Annette does the garden and I do the lawns and the golf course side of things,’’ Shane says.

‘‘This is my gym,’’ says Annette, who’s been weeding a gathering of gazanias beside the driveway near the house. ‘‘People think going to the gym for an hour is good; I can be out there (in the garden) up to four to six hours.’’

However, she knows the stars of this property are the immaculate lawns, and three golf greens.

‘‘I could have weeds in the garden, but no-one would notice if the lawns are looking good,’’ Annette says.

Which they always are, especially since Matt Wright from Expert Turf came to the fore.

‘‘I get a bit excited about my lawns,’’ Shane says. ‘‘I have a son in-law in Wellington and we compete with our lawns. We send pictures to each other. Everything is a competition in our family.’’

Which isn’t surprising considering some members of the whānau are national sports stars.

Between the couple, they have six daughters. Two from Annette’s first marriage – Adine and Leah, two from Shane’s – Rachel and Toni, and together they have Ellie and Lani. Adine (nee Harper) is a former Silver Fern and is married to Jeff Wilson, who represented New Zealand in rugby and cricket. Both are now sports commentators and parents of two boys. Annette is also competitive. A couple of years back, she won the regional BMW golf tournament and then scored the national BMW title and an all-expenses-paid trip to play in an international BMW competition on the Baja peninsula in Mexico. ‘‘Shane was my caddie.’’

How did she perform at Los Cabos by the sea?

‘‘Not well, but I had an absolutely amazing time.’’

So did Shane. ‘‘I loved being Annette’s caddie,’’ he says.

At 49 Rata, the golf course began in stages. They decided to create a green across the lake, then another two were developed, and further tees blocks added.

Now they have a nine-tee course that gets a lot of use when friends and family are around.

‘‘The grandkids or visitors, they gravitate to picking up a club and hitting a ball at various golf flags.’’

Even the visiting journalist is drawn to the practice putting green by the front patio. With a putter in hand, she imagines being a pro golfer facing the final hole in a women’s open. She lines up the shot, taps, too hard, overshoots the hole and hits the cat.

Tiggy the tabby isn’t hurt, just teed off at having her rest disturbed. The next putt finds the hole, clunk, and the crowd cheers. OK,

just Shane and Annette, but still the reporter glows inside. Shane says their four grandsons enjoy hitting balls from the patio across the lake to the green.

‘‘I introduce competitions – $5 for the closest to the pin. And they will stand there all day trying to beat Poppa.’’

In summer, he has a group of 10 guys come around each Thursday to play Skins, a type of golf competition. But golf hasn’t always been kind to Shane, which can be seen inside the entrance to the house. Below a large koru shaped from swamp kauri are 19 putters, including one that once belonged to New Zealand golf star Bob Charles.

‘‘I had a putting issue called ‘the yips’ a few years ago and I thought continuously changing my putter would fix it. It didn’t.’’

It was wise advice from an insurance agent that cured Shane. The agent showed him how to change his putting grip and, miraculously, the yips disappeared. ‘‘I’m a recovering yipper.’’ While golf rules at 49 Rata, the garden has also been the scene of celebrations.

‘‘We have had a couple of weddings, our girls’ 21sts and 30th birthdays, a couple of 80ths, and Beauden Barrett had his stag do here,’’ Annette says.

In fact, the All Black first-five and sometimes fullback is the only person to have had a dip in the lake.

‘‘I under-estimated how much I would love the lake,’’ says Annette, explaining how the wildlife arrived their naturally – and ‘‘a few’’ golf balls accidentally.

There are frogs and lots of birdies – five breeds of duck, swans, pukeko, shags and the occasional heron.

‘‘It’s a living thing – there’s always something happening on the lake.’’

On the lawn below the house, five Peking ducks waggle, waggle, waggle towards a tray of feed. ‘‘Talk about ducks in a row – they do,’’ Annette says.

Other characters are two alpacas, Meisha and Baby, who look as if they are perpetually smiling. The animal family also includes Lily the sheep, Peggy the goat and a Burmese cat called Scotty.

As we wander, Shane points out the stripes in the landscape of lawns. ‘‘I wish

I could be as passionate about practising my golf as I am in manicuring my course. ‘‘Mowing lawns isn’t boring. It’s great thinking time. There’s not a lot of concentration involved – you do have to follow your lines,’’ Shane says. ‘‘It’s a really good time to reflect or see other things to improve on (in the garden).’’ He wears headphones and always listens to music – his playlists almost always feature Elton John, Van Morrison, The Beegees, Celine Dion and Inxs. ‘‘We have speakers on the patio and when we are outside, the garden is filled with music,’’ says Annette, who has always found the garden a sanctuary, especially when she and Shane owned real estate business Harcourts Hawera. ‘‘It’s my thinking place.’’

After nearly 30 years in real estate, they sold Harcourts in 2017 and travelled for three years.

Then it was back to 49 Rata, which began as a rough piece of land.

When planning their new home, they knew they didn’t have 40 years to grow shelter belts, so they created it with contours, dropping the house and cutting into the bank. They ensured the house had height by building a solid basement, now home to five lawn mowers, including one designed especially for golf greens.

Next, they brought in a hill from Shane’s dad’s farm next door and used it to surround the house and create a contoured landscape. In 2012, they moved in. ‘‘We lived in one end of the house while the rest was being built. I had no kitchen,’’ Annette says.

In the beginning, the lake wasn’t there either. ‘‘When we bought this, it was a really scrubby piece of land and so we drained it and that’s what allowed us to form the lake.’’

To match the strength and structure of the house, Annette has opted for mass plantings of carex.

‘‘I love the big band of grasses around the house ... they move in the wind. People think grass is low maintenance. They aren’t. Every grass gets a weed in it.’’

They have planted about 600 new plants, taking the number up to about 4000 grasses.

Green grass beyond the lawns is being encouraged to grow wilder, softer, in preparation for the 10-day festival, which is a collaboration with the Taranaki Arts Trail featuring 79 artists and the Taranaki Sustainable Backyards Trail showcasing 30 properties.

Other strong plantings include a grove of Washingtonian palms, hillsides of ivy, pools of star jasmine, clipped coprosma, corokia, griselinia and pseudopanax, plus belts of harakeke.

All of these are a backdrop for the main event – that sport involving clubs, small white balls and tees.

‘‘I will basically play golf forever,’’ Shane says, like a declaration of love.

This story is published as a partnership between the Taranaki Daily News and the arts festival charitable trust TAFT.

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2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/282003266305818

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