Gardens of the World

Just before the bridge to Brightwater, turn left up Clover Road and you will find an unsung gem; the Gardens of the World.
In 1990, rather than cash up and relax, sixty-five-year-old orchardist, Geoff Etherington, started a botanical garden.
Like his father, his legacy project commenced late in life. The Etheringtons emigrated from Kenya in 1963, and soon after, Geoff’s father started planting, what became, a large commercial orchard.
Geoff and his wife, Gillian, took over in 1968. In addition to apples, they grew grapefruit and were pioneer kiwifruit growers. On the orchard, they raised three sons and a daughter.
Geoff cleared six acres of apple to create his garden. After recontouring, he started artfully planting perennials from every continent except Antarctica. He created dedicated areas for plants from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas, and New Zealand. The centre piece for the garden was to be a large pond and fountain.
Age was against him, but he had a lifetime of horticultural know-how, lots of machinery, and ample irrigation.
He gave the garden all his energy, and the garden returned it in kind. But no matter how great your zest for life, in the end mortality wins. By 2010 Geoff was nearly spent.
None of his children were able to take over. They had their own lives, and the garden was not remotely profitable.
Geoff’s candle was flickering, and the garden was looking like spluttering and dying with him.
In 2008, Francis Day of Day’s Funeral Services, was fresh from being rebuked by the TDC when he sought to establish a crematorium on the corner of Salisbury and Champion Road (now the Woolworths site).
Meanwhile Geoff was on his unlikely quest to find someone to take over the gardens. Francis visited the gardens with an eye to finding an alternative crematorium site. The two men had a chance encounter, started talking, and discovered that their respective goals were complimentary.
Francis has never commuted to work. As a child and an adult, he always lived within 30 meters of the Marsden House, the home of Day’s Funeral Services. Likewise work when he and his wife Paddy moved onto the Etherington property, was just a few paces away. The Gardens of the World were out front door, and there was 5.5 acres of undeveloped land out back.
He’d been thwarted once in his bid to create a crematorium, and when neighbours objected, was thwarted again, but eventually he prevailed.
On the 5.5 acres he had built the crematorium, and a chapel. Beyond the chapel a garden of remembrance (site for memorial plaques) is still evolving.

Paddy and Francis Day
Paddy is a serious gardener, as is her grandson, Chris, now a qualified horticulturalist. Chris is the son of Pat and Tracey, who are also involved in the business. Another son, Michael is the CEO of the Invercargill City Council, but takes a keen interest in the garden, and always works in it when visiting. Francis has handed over the reins for Day’s Funeral Services to his daughter, Bridget, and her husband Bevan.
Gardens of the World has a future because it is currently subsidised by the funeral business.
In common with some famous gardens such as Butchart Garden near Victoria in British Columbia, Monet’s Garden at Giverny near Paris, and Sissinghurst in Kent, it has been saved by a visionary, or visionaries, who, when the founders powers had run their course, grasped the torch and ran with it.
Gardens of the World is possibly the greatest bargain on the Waimea Plains. The entry fee is $5.00, just as it was when the garden opened in 1996. But more and more it is being booked for functions of all sorts, particularly weddings.