Bringing the bach, the bath and the bees into the backyard

As fewer kiwi families have access to a family bach, H & S Landscape Design has dreamed up a way of bringing the best parts of the bach into the backyard.

Winning duo Rebecca Hammond and Grant Stephens are returning to Ellerslie International Flower Show in February with “Take Rest.” This exhibit is one of the 16 major gardens on show in 2014, twice as many as last year and more than ever before.

Since winning the 2013 Supreme Award for Design Excellence and Supreme Judges Awards, the business partners have had little time to rest. The awards brought them to the attention of media and clients, and got them a monthly column in The Weekend Gardener magazine.

“A lot of the clients we have now first saw us at the Ellerslie International Flower Show and realised that we had similar ideas,” says Grant Stephens.

“Being in the show and getting the tick from our industry peers was humbling, especially as we were just launching our business.”

As veterans of the Christchurch earthquakes, they recognised the public’s need for a handy space that would offer all the best qualities of the bach – a place to dream, garden, read, snooze, socialise and generally recuperate.

“You don’t need a home away from home for a holiday,” said Grant Stephens. “There are lots of angles to relaxing, from reading a book to pottering in the garden or daydreaming in the bath tub.”

Their exhibit will feature a hanging dream chandelier, fire bowls, a four poster bed, a floating bath tub with a jetty, and flower and vegetable gardens. True to the idea of the bach, they are using materials lying around the home – Grant Stephens found the mason jars for the chandelier in his mother’s pantry, and Rebecca Hammond found the claw foot bath tub behind some sheds on her in-laws’ Geraldine farm.

To inspire people to live in balance with nature, the garden will attract useful companion insects such as bees, beetles and spiders. For example, there will be a frame of bamboo pieces for small insects to live in, and feeders to attract birds.