Sarah Borthwick remembers the first time she saw the 3.2 hectare Te Whanga Gardens, owned by her then fiancé Paddy’s family. “I thought it looked like the Botanic Gardens,” she says. “Now I just see all the gardening work that needs to be done!”

While Paddy runs the family wine business – Borthwick Vineyard - Sarah has ambitiously taken on the lion’s share of the work on the grounds, with the help of Janet McDonagh who works alongside her two days a week.

Sarah, Paddy and their children (aged 5, 4 and 3) moved into the Heathcote Helmore designed house overlooking the gardens two years ago. This was built for Paddy’s grandparents Pat and Nancy Borthwick (of the international meat business family) in 1956. The main house was then home to Robin and Robin Borthwick.

“It’s amazing to think this used to be a bare paddock,” says Sarah. “They chose it because it was where the rams used to sleep, it was the sunniest, warmest spot.”

The house is elevated on a formal ha-ha, and was designed to enjoy vistas to the north and west. Bus parties regularly visit the registered garden (east of Masterton) to see the roses, the gullies full of rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias, and exotic trees such as the Mexican devil’s claw.

As well as guiding visitors, one of Sarah’s first projects was renovating the former ‘gardener’s cottage’, which will be ready for its first season as a homestay this spring. The 1950s house has two double bedrooms, one single and a generous living area. It is located down a picturesque tree lined drive bordered with spring flowers, with views to the Tararuas.

Sarah’s mission is all the more ambitious considering she had little previous gardening experience. “I had to learn very quickly. The first year we arrived, we found ourselves in the middle of a full on drought. Much of the land here is clay so it gets very hard and dry in the summer.”

She poured over gardening magazines and books for ideas. In place of high maintenance cottage garden beds, she is planting ‘en masse’ ground cover, shrubs and trees, as in the spectacular lawn promenade leading east from the house, with its long bed of vivid red perennials on one side, and white roses and arum lilies on the other.

“I’ve kept the English character of the garden, but taken a ‘broader brushstrokes’ approach,” she says. Sarah and Janet propagate only plants that can withstand Wairarapa climate extremes, and swear by continuous mulching.

Sarah is conscious that she’s building on decades – and generations – of loving, well-considered planting. The frost free location, and the gardening flair of their forebears means the family enjoys a wide range of fruit, including citrus throughout the winter. On a property where simply mowing the lawn takes four hours in the spring, it’s lucky that the newest Borthwick resident gardener is loving the job so far: “I like the feel of a hard day of physical work,” says Sarah.