Kate Campbell Gardens picks up the Premier Award and a gold medal for its meticulous maintenance at The Elms on the shores of Lake Hayes
Kate Campbell Gardens took home the Garden Management/Maintenance award and a gold medal in the residential project garden management/maintenance 400m2 and over category for its maintenance and management of The Elms – three luxury apartments looking over Lake Hayes in the Wakatipu Basin.
The judges were won over by the talent of the team at Kate Campbell Gardens.
“The gardens (designed by Suzanne Turley) include a well thought-out ground floor mixed garden, with an orchard, roses, perennials and formal clipped hedges, as well as planter boxes on the top and middle apartments to enhance their balconies.
“The extensive knowledge and skills needed to keep all the planting looking superb is testament to a well skilled team. Formal clipped hedges frame much of the garden, while several playful moments within the planting create a garden that is hard to place into a box.”
More than meets the eye
The project was trickier than it seemed at first glance, because the gardens surround three private apartments integrated as a whole.
It has a formal, American-style entry with a well-maintained historical Ulmus glabra ‘Horizontalis’. Careful plant selection and management of the top two apartments is required to keep the view to Lake Hayes uninterrupted by structural elements. The final effect is almost one of suspension as “the apartment appears to float above the lake”, said the judges.