History of area
The property at 10 Masefield Way is a remnant of a public garden established in the1850s. Variously known as the Karori Pleasure Gardens, Donald’s Garden’s, Eden Vale, Woolahra and Young’s Gardens, it has been reduced to a small portion of its former extent.
The land was originally part of Section 36 Karori District, which was one of the original 100 country acre sections surveyed in 1840 by Captain William Mein Smith and ballotted for sale. The section was taken up by John Yule, formerly of Glasgow, in 1839. In December 1841 he subdivided the land into 20 two hectare lots and offered it for sale by public auction, the first such land sale in Karori. The gardens would come to be situated on Lots 14, 18, and 19.
Lot 19, which fronted onto Donald Street, was owned for approximately 10 years by George Edwards. Upon his retirement from the Thorndon Mechanics Institute, Edwards built a house at Karori and surrounded it with holly hedges. Here he set up a boy’s school which operated until the 1850s.
In 1853 Edwards sold the land to Robert Donald, with a letter to the Commissioner of Crown Lands stating, ‘I was on it six years and cleared the whole and erected a house and considerable out-building thereon and was from ill health obliged to leave there and come into Wellington[…] I sold the land in question to R. Donald’.
Robert Donald was a gardener from Insch in Aberdeenshire who arrived in New Zealand in 1850 with his wife Jane. They had originally arrived in Canterbury, but moved to Wellington almost immediately. They settled on Edward’s land and presumably in the house that Edwards built, naming it Eden Vale. In December 1853 an advertisement appeared in a local newspaper stating that ‘Robert Donald, Gardener, intimates to the inhabitants of Wellington that he has commenced a picnic and General Fruit Garden at Eden Vale, Karori’.
In 1858 Donald purchased Lot 18 for £50 and in 1859 Lot 14 for £120. Over the next five years he established a tea garden, which can be described as a kind of pleasure garden where visitors could drink tea and stroll. Possible the first mention of
Donald’s business came in the 1865 Wellington Almanac, where he being the first to mention ‘Donald, R. – Market and Tea Garden’. The garden was well patronised throughout the 1860s and was a popular early excursion for both Karori and Wellington residents. Governor George Grey reputedly planted a holly or a lime tree there in 1867. During this time the garden was known either as Donald’s Garden or Eden Vale. Donald also offered accommodation for wedding parties or lodgers at the garden. In September 1880, Donald purchased a further 4.65 hectares of farmland to the rear of the gardens. The garden remained a much advertised and visited attraction until Donald’s death in 1895.
The trustees of the Robert Donald Estate leased the garden to nurseryman William Young and Lucy Young, a widow, for three years with the agreement that the gardens would be maintained. (The Youngs may have been mother and son.) After three years the garden was purchased outright by the Youngs for £1,650. It was noted by the Cyclopedia of New Zealand that the Karori Pleasure Garden had been greatly improved under William Young and that it formed one of the most pleasant spots near Wellington. One source states that the property by then consisted of 12 hectares, of which the garden made up six, while the remainder was open land. It is difficult to be conclusive about the amount of land involved. The land was unevenbut on the flat part there were fish ponds, a lake, and croquet and tennis courts.There was also a summerhouse and a play area for children. The homestead was to the rear of the property and located alongside an ornamental garden.
From 1900 the Youngs began to sell off the land. Some was sold to a consortium, which subdivided the grounds and put them up for sale as residential sections. The greater part of the original garden was sold to John F.W. Mills and his wife, Dr Daisy Platts-Mills in 1904.11 The garden remained open to the public albeit on a reduced scale.
The Platts-Mills union was a significant one. John Mills (1867-1944) was the son of E.W. Mills, a very successful hardware merchant who founded his business in Wellington in 1854. Mills junior carried the family business on and also got involved in mineral exploration and extraction. He married Daisy Platts (1868-1956) in Dunedin in 1902. Born in Victoria, Australia, the daughter of a clergyman, she would go on to have a far greater public profile than her husband. Platts-Mills was one of the country’s first qualified female medical practitioners and after her marriage, and despite having three children, she managed to establish herself as the first woman doctor in private practice in Wellington. She was also heavily involved in community causes, particular those regarding the health and welfare of women and children. She served for two terms on the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board, was first president of the Plunket Society in Wellington, and ‘belonged to the Mothers' Union, the League of Mothers, the Women's Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand, the New Zealand Society for the Protection of Women and Children, and the YWCA’.13 In 1910 she set up practice in Karori and in 1912 she became house physician to the children's ward at Wellington Hospital. She was a lecturer and examiner for the St John Ambulance Brigade, she gave evidence for girl shop assistants in the Court of Arbitration, and was an office holder in the Women's Borstal Association of New Zealand. In 1915 she gave up her private practice to become medical officer to the Public Service Commission, a position she held concurrently (for three years) with her role at Wellington Hospital. It is little wonder that at one point, in 1918, she broke down from overwork.
During their early years at the property, which they named ‘Woolahra’ (a name given to, among other things, a station in western Victoria), the Platts-Mills made the garden available to the public. They held garden parties and fundraisers for various causes, school fêtes and picnics. Although such events became less frequent, particularly during World War I, the couple was still hosting events during the early1920s. In 1923, a Karori School garden party and dance was described as the last occasion the grounds would be open to the public. However, another fête was held in February 1924, which may have been the last such occasion.
One account states that the Platts-Mills left the property at some point during the late 1920s, although they remained in Karori. It is entirely possible that the couple, by then both in their late 50s, may have wanted to reduce the responsibilities the property brought. They moved to a house in Marsden Avenue. Later, about 1936, they retired to Whakatane and then Auckland. As a post-script to the Platt-Mills years, John Platt-Mills (1906-2001), the couple’s youngest child, went to England as a Rhodes Scholar in 1928 and stayed on after finishing his studies. He went on to become a prominent left-wing politician and lawyer. He visited the property (by then very much changed) on at least two occasions on trips back to New Zealand as an old man.
After the Platts-Mills left, the old house was unoccupied and the lake gradually filled up, leaving it largely a swamp. In 1928, the property was purchased by The Karori Gardens Estate Company Limited, who subdivided the property for sale. In 1930 the property was purchased by the Government Architect and Town Planner, Reginald Hammond. He was probably the country’s first professional trained town planner and he held a number of senior positions in the public service. Hammond demolished the original homestead and replaced it with a new house. The remains of the earlier house lie buried under the lawn in front of the present dwelling. Hammond subdivided the property and sold off most of the land. The adjacent streets created at this time (Masefield Way and Ellerton Way) were named by Hammond.
In 1975, the Dunnings sought to have part of the property at 10 Masefield Way designated as a ‘place of natural beauty’ under the Town and Country Planning Act.This would have had the effect of limiting the owners’ ability to subdivide it further without consent. Because of the long history of the garden, the aesthetic contribution that the garden made to the area, and the presence of several historically important trees, the proposed designation was successful. Prior to the inception of the operative District Plan, the listing was redesignated as a ‘heritage area’, such that the effect of the earlier protections would be carried through to the operative plan. The remnant garden is well known in Karori and further afield and is often included in walking and garden tours of the suburb. In a throwback to its origins, the garden is still occasionally used for tea parties.
