Making home, making identity: Asian garden making in New Zealand, 1850s–1930s

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Acknowledgements

For the research and writing of this article, I thank the generosity of many people for loaning valuable archival material, sharing with me their reminiscences, or guiding me around many of the sites I visited. Without their help, this article would not have been possible.

For research on Colonel Brett, I am indebted to his great grand-daughter, Mrs E. Hall, and her son-in-law, Michael Bruner, as well as other members of the family including Rosemary Thompson for lending me material and sharing their knowledge. Michael Clark generously showed me around Kirwee, while Trevor and Eileen Brown welcomed me to their home, once Colonel Brett's, and also shared their research notes. For research on both Colonel Brett and Sir J. Cracroft Wilson I also acknowledge the help of Noel Frizzell, Kirwee historian; Stephen Wright, Selwyn District Council Archives; Richard Greenaway, at Christchurch Public Library Research Centre; Canterbury Museum; Oriental and India Office, British Library; Michael Jones; Hamish, Lara and Callum Temple-Doig; Dr. Douglas Simes for alerting me to research in the British Library; Professor Geoffrey Rice; Kathryn Parsons and John Robson (University of Waikato Library); Duncan Campbell; Katie Holmes.

Research on Kerikeri was only made possible through the generosity of Nancy Pickmere (Kerikeri historian) lending me her book notes, Stephen and Kathy Frewan (the present owners of the Pagoda Lodge); Tony and Sue Little; Dr. Colin S. Little; Joan Booth; Mike Manning; Dame Fiona Kidman; Sue Hunt; Don Starr; Pamela Benner; Keith Bilkey; Margaret and Barry Coulston; and other informants not identified; the Proctor Library Archive, Kerkeri; Alexander Turnbull Library Wellington; Martin Collett, Auckland Museum Archive; Auckland Public Library Research Centre; Public Record Office, London. And thank you, Cath and Trevor Ferguson, for your help, generosity, enthusiasm and help in tracking down sources and informants on my behalf. Lastly, my wife, Ondine Godtschalk, as well as taking several of the photographs, supported and shared my enthusiasm for this project.

I also gratefully acknowledge a University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor's Award which facilitated research in Kerikeri and an earlier Small Research Grant as well as a research grant while I was the ‘Asia New Zealand’ Fellow, at the University of Otago for work on Brett and Wilson.

University of Waikato

Notes

1. This is Duff Maxwell's comment on his beloved property in northern New Zealand, the old mission station of Te Papa. Duff Maxwell, in Rev. Brown, ‘Clippings’ (Tauranga Public Library: The Elms Historic Family Home Preservation Trust Incorporated, photocopy, c. 1955), no page.

2. Reading the Garden: The Settlement of Australia (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008), p. 4.

3. Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 53.

4. These assumptions unsurprisingly dominate the small literature on garden history in New Zealand. See, Bee Dawson, A History of Gardening in New Zealand (Auckland: Godwit, 2010); Malcolm Bradbury (ed.), A History of the New Zealand Garden (Harmondsworth: Penguin Viking, 1995).

5. On Chinese gardening in New Zealand, note sections in: James Ng, Windows on a Chinese Past, 4 Vols (Dunedin: Otago Heritage Books, 1993–1999) and James Beattie, ‘Growing Chinese Influences in New Zealand: Chinese Gardens, Identity and Meaning’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, ix/1, June, 2007, pp. 38–60.

6. On European interest in Asian species, see Jane Kilpatrick, Gifts from the Gardens of China: The Introduction of Traditional Chinese Garden Plants to Britain, 1698–1862 (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007); Fan Fa-Ti, British Naturalists in Qing China: Science, Empire and Cultural Encounter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); on such developments in New Zealand, see Beattie, ‘Acclimatisation and the “Europeanisation” of New Zealand, 1830s–1920s?’, ENNZ: Environment, Nature and New Zealand, iii/1, February 2008, pp. 1–25; Beattie, Jasper Heinzen and John P. Adam, ‘Japanese Gardens in New Zealand, 1850–1950: Transculturation and Transmission’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 28/2 (April–June, 2008), pp. 219–236.

7. Duncan Campbell, ‘“What lies beneath those strange rich surfaces?”: Chinoiserie in Thorndon’, in Charles Ferrall, Paul Millar and Keren Smith (eds), East by South: China in the Australasian Imagination (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005), pp. 173–189; Henry Johnson and Brian Moloughney (eds), Asia in the Making of New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007).

8. Note, Stanislaus Fung, ‘Longing and Belonging in Chinese Garden History’, in Michel Conan (ed.), Perspectives on Garden Histories (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1999), pp. 205–219; ‘Special Issue’, guest edited by Stanislaus Fung and John Makeham, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, xviii/3, July–September 1998; Zvonkica Stanin, ‘From Li Chun to Yong Kit: A Market Garden on the Loddon, 1851–1912’, Provenance, xi, September 2007, pp. 15–34.

9. Andrew Sinclair, Letters and Journals, March 1860, no page. MS 1947. Wellington: Alexander Turnbull Library (henceforth, ATL), New Zealand.

10. Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

11. Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).

12. Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800–1920. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

13. Sir John Cracroft Wilson, Transcript of Diary/Recollections, 1854, typed transcript by Ron Chapman, 1989, Canterbury Museum [henceforth, CM], Christchurch, New Zealand, ARC1989.80, p. 41.

14. Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).

15. See, Matt McGlone, ‘The Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand in Relation to Environmental and Biotic Changes’, New Zealand Journal of Ecology, xii, 1989, pp. 115–129; McGlone, ‘Polynesian Deforestation of New Zealand: A Preliminary Synthesis’, Archaeology of Oceania, xviii, 1983, pp. 11–25; on the South Island, see Atholl Anderson, The Welcome of Strangers: An Ethnohistory of Southern Maori A. D. 1650–1850 (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998).

16. Wilson to Editor, 11 December 1868, Cashmere (Canterbury), in The Christchurch Press (14 December 1868), p. 3.

17. Biographical information from: ‘Wilson, John Cracroft’, India Office Records, Negative 31385, J/1/45, pp. 238–248, Oriental and India Office (OIC), British Library, London; ‘Obituary: Sir John Cracroft Wilson’. Lyttleton Times (4 March 1881), p. 5 (quote); ‘Sir John Cracroft Wilson’, CM, ARC1990.7.

18. Department of Justice, High Court, Christchurch, Item CH 511/1881 – Wilson Cracroft John, Box Location: L1, 1a–L4, 31c and L7, 64a–67i. Deeds — L7, 67i–j. Books of Wills – U1, 3c–e, National Archives, Christchurch.

19. John Cracroft Wilson, 31 July 1874, New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (henceforth, NZPD) (Wellington: Government Printer, 1874), p. 362.

20. Wilson, Diary, p. 13.

21. Note, David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘Introduction: Imperial Spaces, Imperial Subjects’, in Lambert and Lester (eds), Colonial Lives Across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 1–31.

22. Rollo Arnold, New Zealand's Burning: The Settlers World in the Mid 1880s (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1994), pp. 118–121; Eliott Campbell, ‘Scottish Identity in Dunedin and Christchurch to c. 1920: An Application of the New “British history” to New Zealand’ (MA thesis: University of Canterbury, 2001).

23. David Burton, Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India (London: Faber & Faber, 1994).

24. Lyttleton Times (4 March 1881), p. 5; Wilson, Diary, p. 8; for a brief mention of the names of some of the families, see Jacqueline Leckie, Indian Settlers: The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2007), pp. 21–22.

25. Wilson, Diary, p. 23.

26. On William Wilson, see Charlie Challenger, ‘Studies on Pioneer Canterbury Nurserymen: (1) William Wilson’, Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture Annual Journal, vi, 1978, pp. 139–162.

27. Wilson, Diary, pp. 23–24.

28. Wilson, Diary, p. 23.

29. Lyttelton Times (12 November 1853), p. 9.

30. Wilson, Diary, p. 24.

31. R. C. Lamb, Birds, Beasts & Fishes: The First Hundred years of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society (Christchurch: North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society, 1964), p. 101.

32. Ibid., p. 17.

33. See the excellent article by Thomas R. Dunlap, ‘Remaking the Land: The Acclimatization Movement and Anglo Ideas of Nature’, Journal of World History, viii/2, Fall 1997, pp. 303–319.

34. Ray Desmond, The European Discovery of the Indian Flora (Oxford: Royal Botanic Gardens and Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 275–281.

35. Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Cultures and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850 (New York: Alfred Knopf; Toronto: Random House, 2005); William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India (London: Flamingo, 2003).

36. William Ellison Burke, ‘Reminiscences of Old Canterbury’, qMS-0333, ATL, p. 41.

37. For an account, see P. J. O. Taylor, general editor, A Companion to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 182–186; The Revolt in Central India, 1857–59 compiled in the Intelligence Branch Division of the Chief of Staff, Army Head Quarters India (Simla: Government Press, 1908), p. 177. It should be noted that, contrary to Parry, Brett claimed that he spent seven years in Burma. See, Brett, 18 August 1874, NZPD, Vol. 16, p. 678; The Revolt in Central India, 1857–59 Compiled in the Intelligence Branch Division of the Chief of Staff, Army Head Quarters India (Simla: Government Press, 1908).

38. On this practice, see: James L. Hevia, ‘Loot's Fate: The Economy of Plunder and the Moral Life of Objects From the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China’, History and Anthropology, vi/4, 1994, pp. 319–345; Richard H. Davis, ‘Three Styles of Looting India’, History and Anthropology, vi/4, 1994, pp. 293–317.

39. See, The Case of the Banda and Kirwee Booty: A Sequel to ‘Prize Money’ (London: Harrison, 1864), p. 13 (description of Brett's position); for debate, see British Parliamentary Papers. House of Commons, Vol. 42, 4 February to 29 July 1864.

40. P. J. Perry, ‘Brett, De Renzie James 1809–1889’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 7 April 2006 (URL: http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/); ‘Mona Tracy: Scripts of Radio Talks and Archives’, typescript, MS Papers 157, ATL.

41. L. G. D. Acland, The Early Canterbury Runs, 4th edition (Christchurch: Whitcoulls, 1975 reprint), p. 41.

42. See, Anthony D. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 14–64 (quote, p. 14).

43. See, M. M. Roche, ‘Charles Torlesse: A Pioneer Recorder of Canterbury Weather, 1849–1858’, Weather and Climate, iv, 1984, pp. 66–69.

44. Ray Dobbie and Brian Perrin, In the Shadow of the Alps: A History of Malvern County, 1853–1989 (Leeston, New Zealand: Selwyn District Council, 1998), pp. 233–235; Derrick Rooney, ‘Canterbury's First Century of Water’. The Christchurch Press (24 December 1977), p. 15.

45. Brett quoted in ‘Malvern Water Supply’. The Star (28 December 1877), p. 3.

46. The Christchurch Press (27 January 1930), pp. 8, 13.

47. See ‘An Act to amend “The Forest Trees Planting Encouragement Act, 1871”’, Statutes of New Zealand (Wellington: Government Printer, 1872), pp. 283–285.

48. ‘An Act to amend’, p. 284. On its background, see Beattie, ‘Environmental Anxiety in New Zealand, 1850–1920: Settlers, Climate, Conservation, Health, Environment’ (PhD dissertation: University of Otago, 2005), pp. 390–393.

49. G. L. Popple, Malvern County: A Centennial History (Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1953), p. 85. I have searched through surviving accounts of the period — including ones written by the Indian forester appointed as New Zealand's first Conservator of Forests in the mid-1870s — without mention of the plantation, because it seems many did not visit Brett's house. His house, it should be noted, lies about one kilometre from the then main highway to the West Coast and usually most people were in a hurry either to get to Christchurch or to make it closer to the West Coast. As Jerningham Wakefield noted, ‘Just before reaching Kirwee, the last of these, the dreary view of waste plain was relieved by extensive oat cultivations belonging to Mr W. B. Tosswill, and a distant view of Colonel Brett's house and plantations, on the estate which gives the name to the station’. E. Jerningham Wakefield, Lyttleton Times (3 December 1875) in Deans Family: James Deans, newspaper cuttings, 1874–1909, Folder 24, item 447, 123/72, CM.

50. On the impact of nationalism in Australia on native plant appreciation and garden making, see Katie Holmes’ article in this issue.

51. See, Kylie Mirmohamadi's article in this issue.

52. ‘Today's Rotary Tiffin’. North China Daily Mail (17 December 1931), no page, in L. A. L. Moore, ‘Newspaper clippings re Kerikeri Settlement, 1928–34, North China Daily Mail, Peking + Tientsin Times’, MS Papers 599:1, ATL.

53. Peking and Tientsin Times (24 September 1928), no page, in Moore, ‘Newspaper clippings’. Note, too, ‘Report on sample of Kerikeri, New Zealand, soil supplied by E. S. Little, by the Imperial Chemical Industries (China) Ltd.’, Shanghai 4 July 1928, Leonard A. L. Moore, ‘Correspondence + mimeographed material concerning North Auckland Land Development Corporation, 1928–30’, MS Papers 599:3, ATL.

54. Auckland Weekly News, no page, in Moore, ‘Newspaper clippings’, MS Papers 599:1, ATL.

55. Moore, ‘Newspaper clippings’, MS Papers 599:1, ATL.

56. ‘New Zealand Tour 2 Captain Davies’ Charges’ (17 January 1929) in Moore, ‘Correspondence + mimeographed material’.

57. ‘Today's Rotary Tiffin’. North China Daily Mail (17 December 1931), no page.

58. Peking and Tientsin Times (24 September 1928), no page.

59. Christine Elizabeth Pearson Elson-White, ‘Kerikeri “gold”: A Behavioural Investigation of the Process Involved in the Evolution of Spatial Patterning and the “personalité” of Kerikeri, Bay of Islands’ (Massey University: MA in Geography, 1971), p. 89.

60. Moore, ‘Correspondence + mimeographed material’.

61. Edward Little to Mr Moore, 3 August 1928, Peitaho, in Moore, ‘Correspondence + mimeographed material’.

62. Beattie and Lauren Murray, ‘Responding to the 1937 Exhibition of Chinese Art’, draft ms submitted to East Asian History.

63. Elson-White, p. 91.

64. ‘New Zealand Tour 2 Captain Davies’ Charges’.

65. Nancy Preece Pickmere, A Lamp Shines at Kerikeri: The Story of Kerikeri, 1819–1939 (no place: Kerikeri One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Organisation Incorporated, 1969), p. 107.

66. Kay Boase, Tides of History: Bay of Islands County (no place: Bay of Islands County Council, 1977), p. 218.

67. Pickmere, p. 101.

68. For an introduction to archaeology in China, see Corinne Debaine-Francfort, The Search for Ancient China (London: Thames & Hudson, 1999).

69. Steven Conn, ‘Where is the East? Asian Objects in American Museums, from Nathan Dunn to Charles Freer’, Winterthur Portfolio, xxxv/2, 2000, pp. 157–173; Craig Clunas, ‘China in Britain: The Imperial Collections’, in Claire Farago and Donald Preziosi (eds), Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004); Jeanette Shambaugh Elliott with David Shambaugh, The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures (Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2005).

70. On which, see Fu Xinian, ‘The Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties’, in Nancy S. Steinhardt (ed.), Chinese Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Beijing: New World Press, 2002), pp. 85–87.

71. Zhou Xiang-pin and Chen Zhe-hua, ‘Shanghai Gardens in Transition from the Concessions to the Present Time’, in Michel Conan and Chen Whangheng (eds), Gardens, City Life and Culture (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2008), pp. 122–139; David Porter, ‘Beyond the Bounds of Truth: Cultural Translation and William Chambers's Chinese Garden’, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, xxxvii, June 2004, pp. 41–58; Wong Young-Tsu, A Paradise Lost: The Imperial Yuanming Yuan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001); Geramie R. Barmé, ‘The Garden of Perfect Brightness, A Life in Ruins’, East Asian History, ii, 1996, pp. 111–158.

72. Beattie et al., ‘Japanese Gardens’.

73. Kerikeri, 24 October 1930, p. 11, in Benner Papers, Proctor Library, Kerikeri.

74. Harry Haines, ‘Reminiscences’. Bay Chronicle (7 November 1987), p. 9.

75. Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996).

76. John Hay, ‘Structure and Aesthetic Criteria in Chinese Rocks and Art’, Res, xiii, 1987, pp. 6–22.

77. Ji Cheng, The Craft of Gardens, translated by Alison Hardie, foreword by Maggie Keswick (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 112–113.

78. On which, see Campbell, ‘The Epistolary World of a Reluctant 17th Century Chinese Magistrate: Yuan Hongdao in Suzhou’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, iv/1, June 2002, pp. 159–193; Stephen McDowall (ed.), Four Months of Idle Roaming: The West Lake Records of Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) (Wellington: Asian Studies Institute Translation Paper 4, 2002).

79. Elson-White, p. 91.

80. Pickmere, p. 101.

81. R. Emanuel, ‘The Citrus Industry: The Beginnings’. Kerikeri Chronicle (11 October 1978), p. 6. Emanuel had come to Kerikeri as a 22-year old in 1927 with his parents. ‘Obituary: Mr Bus Emanuel: Pioneer Orchardist Helped Shape Future of Kerikeri’. Bay Chronicle (12 September 1986), no page.

82. Joan Booth, personal communication, 13 October 2010.

83. Zhou and Chen, ‘Shanghai Gardens in Transition’.