Arthur saw nature ‘with eyes of admiration’

Arthur saw nature ‘with eyes of admiration’

ARTHUR ALEXANDER BILLS

b. June 17, 1937, d. June 13, 2024

By son Lance Bills

A piece of Harrisons history ended when my dad, Arthur Bills, passed away on June 13.

Without Dad, Harrisons wouldn’t be quite the same.

Mum (Judy) and Dad bought Harrisons Gardenworld at Peka Peka nearly 40 years ago.

They both loved growing and supplying the many plants that graced the gardens of the Kāpiti Coast and surrounding districts. They built a close relationship with their customers and their many suppliers from throughout New Zealand. Many of those relationships endure today.

They were not only great growers of flowers, vegetables, fruits, and trees and shrubs – but also they grew a family, several successful businesses, and a great group of lifelong friends. They renovated eight houses and established eight quite unique gardens through their married years.

The last garden they developed together was at 149 Old Hautere Road, Te Horo, which after Mum died Dad renamed as Judy’s Garden. There were many open garden weekends to raise funds for cancer-related charities and Arohanui Hospice. The garden was their pride and joy.

Some Ōtaki people may remember their first business, the Ōtaki Vegetable Market, at the highway shops where Property Brokers and Web2Print are now. It was initially run in partnership with Dad’s younger sister Juanita and her husband Robert Eales.

It one of the first of many fruit and vegetable stores that populated the highway from the early 1960s. I spent many hours of my childhood years at the Ōtaki Vegetable Market.

After that venture, Mum and Dad moved down the highway to Flavour Field Orchard at Te Horo (which is now a part of Penray Gardens). Those years were franticly busy and coincided with my college years – I would have been a stroppy teenager.

Flavour Field was in full production with about 10 acres (4ha) of crops, eventually supported by another 20 or so acres in Te Horo and Ōtaki. The strawberries were legendary (and still are at Penray) and Dad was a strong advocate for foliar feeding (applyng liquid fertiliser directly to the leaves).

Then a garden centre called Harrisons came onto the market. Dad was smitten. Here was the best of both worlds: customers he loved dealing with, and new plants he could grow (if they didn’t sell he didn’t have to rotary hoe them back into the ground like a paddock of cabbages).

Dad loved the many friends he made over many years. His 12 years hosting the garden show on Radio 2XX every Sunday morning deepened those relationships.

He remained active in the garden centre years after “retiring”, continuing to  propagate hydrangeas even when he needed two walking sticks for mobility. He’d just prop himself up to get the job done.

At his last home, in Levin, before moving to Parkwood Lodge in Waikanae, Dad continued to grow a variety of fruit and vegetables in his small garden, and he rekindled a fondness for canaries, as he used to have them when he was much younger and had a pair or two for several periods during his life.  He got serious about them when he discovered he could show them. He built several large cages for breeding, and surprised the canary world when he won repeated national prizes for his singing birds.

At Dad’s service I quoted William Blake:

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.

Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see Nature at all.

But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.”

Dad saw nature with eyes of imagination.