The Wanaka tree

That Wanaka Tree

Have you heard about the Wanaka Tree ? It is a solitary crooked willow tree at the south end of Lake Wanaka in New Zealand and is arguably the most photographed tree in the country. While this tree is famous, photographers have been photographing 'lonely' trees and boulders for many years. There is something about the resilience and fortitude that such an image portrays, that tends to be attractive to viewers.

Rocky beach, Curieuse Island, Seychelles,

The image alongside is from Curieuse Island in Seychelles, where we had an idyllic summer holiday in 2014. It is a good example of how a boulder that stands out with a distinct identity looks more striking than the cluster of rocks to the right of it.

So you may very well wonder - what does that have to do with the layout of our home site ?

Regular visits to our site made me familiar with the existing terrain and the boulders on the site. From a visual point of view, I wanted the boulders on the plot to not appear to be clustered into a large block massed together but have distinctive shape and identity.

Boulder /rock clusters on the site

There were four distinct rocky areas in the site. The first rock on the western end of the site was a single sandstone boulder approx. 10 feet visible above the soil and of indeterminate size below it - our best guess was that the visible portion of it weighed about 30-35 tons. The second area also had a massive single granite boulder, roughly bean shaped. It appeared to be about 24 feet along the longer side and about 15 feet wide and probably a 100 tons or more. It had a mature tree growing on top of it. The tree itself appeared to be about 20 feet tall. The third area was a cluster of rocks with one large odd shaped sandstone boulder about 14 feet tall and about 8 feet wide surrounded by several smaller sandstone rocks covered with soil. The fourth area had 4 large granite boulders close to the north eastern edge of the site - One of these granite boulders was tear drop shaped about 40 to 45 tons in weight and lying sideways - all of them were on top of hardened soil about 8 feet above the surface to the south. The area between clusters three and four was also packed with soil.

While areas one and two appeared distinctive, the other two areas appeared as a mass due to the soil surrounding them. I decided that we would need to clear the soil between the two areas, discover what was underneath and isolate the single largest boulder in area three. Similarly area four had the resting tear drop - I decided to excavate a bit of the soil underneath the resting tear drop so as to have it appear to protrude about two to three feet into the air.

Once we achieved this, we would have four distinctive landmark objects on the site around which to design our garden.

...The Northern Walkway

...The egrets came calling