Blue House Amberley

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Blue House Amberley Love for all things plantish 😊🌿
Experiments in dry gardening🌵
Friends with mycorrhizae 🍄. Specializing in naturalistic planting design.

Open November - April, $15 we provide a map and Jenny loves to talk with visitors. Blue House Amberley is an open garden in North Canterbury. It is gardened by Jenny Cooper, with able help from partner Chris Raateland. We are in the Hurunui Garden Festival, check out www.hurunuigardenfestival.com
This is a garden where strong design and a plants woman’s passion go hand in hand. It is a garden that invites you to wander, explore and relax, with plenty of places to sit, and new delights around every corner. Our wide grass paths take you from intimate and cool shade gardens, to sweeps of tussocks and prairie flowers, and through Mediterranean inspired gravel gardens, featuring stunning succulents and aloes. From generous sunny borders filled with unusual and difficult to source perennials, to an iris filled damp garden. We have a gorgeous no-mow meadow, vineyard and charming and productive vegetable garden. Tiny paths meander through arched hedges and down to the creek
We also provide a map and information about our garden philosophy, honed in the difficult North Canterbury climate. This includes no-dig, bare rooting, limited feeding and encouragement of mycorrhizal fungi. Instagram: bluehouse_amberley
www.bluehouseamberley.nz for details about the garden and how to visit.

This is a celebration of morning light, that has never been in the garden before. We have dithered about this for a year...
14/10/2026

This is a celebration of morning light, that has never been in the garden before. We have dithered about this for a year, and finally in winter we took out 8 plants from our huge olearia macrodonta hedge, to let early morning light into our vege garden and orchard.

We are thrilled at the brightness, and the lovely new seating area we have created. All the vege have perked up too!

Also Chris built a shade house, which is so great I need a seat in there so I can enjoy the loveliness.

Ignore the ugliness of some of these photos, the area is still a bit raw and it needs to grow into itself.

But you can see how the early morning light streams through this area now, and we get to enjoy a huge red japonica, and our best maple, which have been hidden until now behind a 6 foot wide hedge. So much extra land, I could build a couple of townhouses .

I'm going to put the saw away now, no tree feels safe in this garden 😕

Once spring really gets going I have to be outside looking at each little leaf as it opens. I don't want to miss a momen...
08/10/2026

Once spring really gets going I have to be outside looking at each little leaf as it opens.
I don't want to miss a moment.
Spring has arrived with a flourish and the housework is suffering 🤣🤣🤣

www.bluehouseamberley.nz for our opening hours
www.hurunuigardenfestival.com 20 Oct - 1 Nov 2026

Just a few special plants: nothing fancy, but so beautiful to see their little faces lifted to the sun. The most interes...
06/10/2026

Just a few special plants: nothing fancy, but so beautiful to see their little faces lifted to the sun.

The most interesting plants here are allium nectaroscordum and a double pale pink pulsatilla which I look forward to greeting every spring and her fluffy sweetness never disappoints.

The garden is now open by appointment, details on our website, www.bluehouseamberley.nz
It was lovely to have people back in the garden last weekend 🥰

Plus we are barreling towards the Rodin Cars Hurunui Garden Festival! Eeek what am I doing sitting here, the chickweed is loving this warm wet and they are taking over the vege garden.....

What a spring we are having here, so much water, so little wind, I'm falling back in love with spring in Amberley.Lots o...
30/09/2026

What a spring we are having here, so much water, so little wind, I'm falling back in love with spring in Amberley.

Lots of spring bits and bobs here, the euphorbia rigida is looking stunning, so i will forgive its promiscuous seeding around later in the season.

The dianthus cruentus is in its second year, dotted all over the garden and really starting to shine, its little intense bobbles drawing the eye.

You will spy my NEW SHADE HOUSE, such luxury! My planty babies are so comfy here they don't know themselves.

The garden is open this weekend!! Text Jenny 021 258 9511 or pop over to our website, www.bluehouseamberley.nz

Some more bits and bobs from high summer.It is comforting to look at these pics because at the moment the garden looks p...
27/08/2026

Some more bits and bobs from high summer.

It is comforting to look at these pics because at the moment the garden looks pretty bare! Plenty of empty spaces and I can't remember if anything is there?

I popped in a photo from last week, after the big chop in the grass border, and then mulching with woodchip. Please ignore the unsightly white grape netting. Black birds love fresh mulch! Ugly, much. No Ai generated images here lol.

Here are a few more finds from my out-of-control photo library from last summer. I forget how lovely a garden is in summ...
25/08/2026

Here are a few more finds from my out-of-control photo library from last summer. I forget how lovely a garden is in summer, as I've been staring at sticks for the last few months. These were all taken in high summer, before the real dry began, as you can tell from the green lawn.
Before I know it we'll be back there again, altho there have been some changes in the garden since then. But more about that later.

Feeling slightly panicky as the Hurunui Garden Festival is only 2 months away and the garden opens in one month!!! But it will be lovely to have visitors back in the garden again 🥰

We had a bit of a sad summer this year, with a family illness (fingers crossed we look like having a happy ending there ...
20/08/2026

We had a bit of a sad summer this year, with a family illness (fingers crossed we look like having a happy ending there 🥰) but I completely stopped posting on social media.

But I didn't stop photographing! Hence, now in late winter, I have hmmmm let me see, about 574,937 photos from summer, to sort through.

I took all these photos for a reason. I just can't remember what that reason was.

So I'm just going to b**g up a few that I like, so that I can cross them off the list . (The list, the list, oh that terrible list! Even when life falls to pieces around you, the list persists)

Yes the garden will be open this summer (3 October, to be exact!) and yes the garden will be in the Rodin Cars Hurunui Garden Festival, along with 23 other lovely gardens and historic homesteads.

After months of hardly engaging with the garden at all, there it was, quietly waiting for me, still lovely after months of neglect. It turns out it doesn't really need me at all! I'll file that under important lessons learned 😍

Hurunui Garden Festival
bluehouseamberley.nz

13/08/2026

Snow from a few days ago. Such a nice little winter interlude. We couldn't work so spent the day by the fire, reading our books and looking out the window. It felt like a day off school 😆😆😆❄️❄️❄️

I warn you now, these photos are all almost exactly the same! This little patch of gravel garden obsesses me, in winter....
13/08/2026

I warn you now, these photos are all almost exactly the same!

This little patch of gravel garden obsesses me, in winter.

Euphorbia rigida, euphorbia myrsinites, euphorbia pithyusa (thank you ), one lovely grass and a touch of sunlight.

I took over 40 photos. Please be impressed by the enormous restraint needed to get that down to 6 photos 🤣🤣🤣

So spare, so beautiful! Winter quiet, hardly any colour, lovely bobbly forms, and just a hint of spring....
13/08/2026

So spare, so beautiful! Winter quiet, hardly any colour, lovely bobbly forms, and just a hint of spring....

Address

35 Willowside Place
Amberley

Telephone

+64212589511

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