Northern heights: Paul Grace and Stephen Neville farewelleo the flat plains of Canterbury for a sloping subtropical paradise on Auckland's North Shor

摘要

Gardeners can be notoriously hard to please. Those of us with pancake-flat properties fantasise over sloping sites, while those of us with mature gardens hanker for a bare section's blank canvas. Southerners dream of passionfruit and palms; northerners yearn for paeonies and trilliums - and surely every one of us secretly wishes for a bigger backyard? Actually, Stephen Neville and Paul Grace are perfectly happy with their plot. Five years ago, these born-and-bred Cantabrians moved to Auckland's North Shore and enthusiastically swapped their flat Christchurch garden, with its many roses and rhodos, fora steep, spacious, subtropical paradise in Northcote.