Butler Point

Mangonui, Far North
Owners: Lindo and Laetitia Ferguson
Click images to enlarge
Address: Marchant Rd, R D 1, Hihi, Mangonui
Phone: + 64-9-406 0006
Fax: + 64-9-406 0006
Email: butler.point@xtra.co.nz
Open: All year, daily, by appointment
Groups: By appointment
Fee: $5 per adult for garden and grounds $10 includes Butler House and whaling museum
Size: Large - 4ha (10 acres) including smaller (1 acre) house garden
Terrain: Garden flat, grounds hilly
Facilities: Historic house open by appointment, NZ Historic Places Trust, category 2; small whaling museum adjacent; Maori pa site nearby.

Butler Point takes its name from Captain William Butler, who built his home on its shores in the 1840s and is now buried in an attractive cemetery among mature pohutukawa. This magnificent pohutukawa grove features a 700-year-old giant, recorded in Great Trees of New Zealand as having a trunk girth of 10.5 metres. A secluded cottage garden surrounds the old house, with many natives such as cordylines, arthropodiums, and Elingamita johnsonii, as well as exotics.

Captain Butler’s legacy includes a superb magnolia, which guards the cottage and is underplanted with freesias, polyanthus, primroses and ferns. A pond is surrounded by huge gunneras and a variety of irises and daylilies. The orchards, which feature citrus, peaches, a macadamia plantation and a picturesque shelter for picnics, are being developed with new olive and fig trees. The garden provides pleasure whatever the season. Masses of hydrangeas flower in summer, with a mixture of old and new roses blooming into winter, including the old pale pink ‘Cécile Brünner’ growing beside fluffy blue ageratum and delicate mauve thalictrum. The formality of colour combinations is balanced by the exciting foliage which is used to delineate the garden. Geraniums and agapanthus brighten the impressive ponga fence which separates Butler House from Mangonui Harbour.

Directions:


From Auckland, take Sh 1 north. Take SH 10 to Kaeo. 27km north of Kaeo turn off SH 10 at Hihi Rd. Travel 6km to Marchant Rd leading to Butler Point.