Ellerslie Designer Gets Outside the Box

First time Ellerslie exhibitor Emily McEwan’s garden is no conventional affair.

With prickly plants, a wall maze and stepping stones, it will challenge visitors to Ellerslie International Flower Show to step outside their box and explore the unknown.

At first glance, the 10 metre by 10 metre garden looks modern and bright. It’s only when the visitor steps out of the louvre-roofed pergola that they realise the routes to the more inviting areas of the garden are fraught with barriers.

Inspiration for the garden came from Mrs McEwan’s life path. As a young mother of three children, marooned in an isolated rural community with little immediate support, she had to focus on something to keep pushing forward.

Distance university studies and her garden kept her centred on the dream of becoming a landscape designer. Now she runs her own business in Mosgiel, near Dunedin, and keeps presenting herself with challenges.

“It’s easy to do the same things every day but there are opportunities around every corner,” she said. “You can shy away or push through the difficulties. And if you push through there’s a real sense of achievement and satisfaction.”

Mrs McEwan’s Ellerslie entry – one of the 16 major exhibition gardens at next February’s show -- is yet another challenge in her life. By taking a complex concept and expressing it with new and familiar plants, quirky built features like the lawn walls and bespoke sculptures, she joins those who constantly search and explore life.