Mother home to share garden delight
Harriet Remy-Maillet always felt she was blessed to call 8ha (20 acres) of gardens home for most of her childhood.
Mrs Remy-Maillet's (nee Beveridge) father was the curator at the Oamaru Public Gardens from 1957 to 1965, residing in the homestead which still sits in the middle of the gardens.
She was 14 when the family moved to Oamaru from Dunedin, originally immigrating from Canada to New Zealand in 1947.
Since moving to Toronto at the age of 21, Mrs Remy-Maillet has visited the house about four times and brought her daughter Suzanne Dawson along on her latest trip to share her childhood memories.
Harry Beveridge was the superintendent of parks and reserves in Oamaru, creating both the Wonderland and Japanese gardens.
Mrs Remy-Maillet told the Oamaru Mail she was forever in debt to her father for the appreciation he gave her of the beauty that lay in the gardens.
"All of my childhood was spent looking at gorgeous gardens," she said. "What more could I ask for?"
Mrs Remy-Maillet remembers watching ladies stroll through the garden after her father had spread liquid manure and quietly waiting for a strange expression to appear on their faces and then a mad run to escape the stench.
"We called it the 100 metre dash," she laughed.
Mrs Remy-Maillet uses one word to describe her life living in the public garden - "enchanted".
She attended Waitaki Girls' High School and later went on to graduate as a nurse from the Oamaru Hospital in 1962.
Before moving to Oamaru, Mr Beveridge was the curator at public gardens in Dunedin and Christchurch, before moving to Taranaki to work at the King Edward Park in Hawera.
Mrs Remy-Maillet said she was sorry to leave the gardens for Toronto in 1963, where she lived in an apartment.
"You couldn't grow flowers six storeys high," she said.
Now the keen gardener lives in Brisbane, where she is writing an autobiography.
Mr Beveridge moved to Brisbane to be near his family and passed away at the age of 98. "He loved his work so much," she said.
