The collaboration between O2 Landscapes and Michael Shepherd seeks to tie distinctive regional cultural and landscape forms with a range of little-used New Zealand plants, to explore new directions in garden-making. Michael's own interest in gardens has been stimulated by the development of his own ground-breaking garden in Onehunga, Auckland.

The development of New Zealand garden and landscape design has followed a well-trodden path, almost exclusively derived from Northern Hemisphere garden form, with occasional references to local material (most notably in the rise of interest in native plants). These garden styles have been well-documented by theorists such as Helen Leach and Rod Barnett. We do not wish to deny the place of the Northern Hemisphere tradition in gardens, but rather seek to bring more elements of New Zealand's cultural and natural history into play. Efforts at regional expression in the design of gardens have barely scratched the surface of the fascinating range of material that could be referred to, ranging from pre-European Māori culture to the modern landscape vernacular.

Early Māori cultural form

Michael Shepherd has long been interested in Māori visual culture, particularly that of the pre-European period. Much of this early visual culture does not seem to fit with the somewhat limited range of Māori forms/styles that are presented in contemporary art.

One example of an area that we believe would translate well into built form is that of traditional earthworks associated with settlement or cultivation in pre-European Māori society. These are particularly interesting as they effectively represent the 'footprint' of people that held a very direct relationship with land.

Early New Zealand 'hybrid/fusion' gardens

The point at which a mostly indigenous landscape populated by a Polynesian culture was confronted by an engulfing European culture provides us with interesting insights into the formation of 'intercultural' gardens. The 'hybrid' gardens and landscape of the early stages of colonisation can ironically provide us with appropriate directions for the future of a New Zealand garden in which the respective importance of native ecology, Māori culture and adapted European culture are all deemed legitimate.

Modern landscape vernacular

The term 'vernacular' refers to the ordinary features of a culture; or those concerned with (and which arise from) everyday phenomena such as industrial or agricultural production, domestic life or recreation. Michael's interest in New Zealand's social history adds to the established interest that O2 landscapes has in the everyday visual culture of New Zealand.

The name of the collaboration, Kāri, is the Māori transliteration of the English term, garden. We have deliberately chosen a transliteration, as it is a hybrid term. It is an adapted word which is neither wholly Māori nor entirely English, just as the New Zealand garden is neither entirely natural nor invented, neither Māori nor European.

To view an example of an installation at Hotwater Beach that was formulated by Michael Shepherd specifically for the garden, click here.