The Memorial Garden behind the CPW has historically housed the ashes of cats who passed away at the shelter or in foster care, and includes a collection of stone plaques and statues.

After she heard a chance comment about how sad the garden was looking, Amanda Smith, Vice-President of CPW, launched into a project with a handful of other volunteers to make the garden an attractive place again. She says the plants were scraggly and unkempt and the weeds were fast taking over.

“The garden needed a refresh,” she says. “I love gardening so I offered to give it a makeover. As with any renovation though, it ended up taking way longer than I had thought and involving a lot more work."

Amanda says the first hurdle was realising that there was weed matting about 10cm below the surface in the old part of the garden.

“Presumably it was put there when the garden was first put in to try and manage the weeds. It never stops the weeds! But it had stopped the plants from sending down proper roots which is why many of them had died and the few that remained were on a strange lean.

“So one Saturday morning Iona, Emma, and I pulled the remaining plants and the worst of the weeds out so we could get to the weed matting and pulled it all out. The committee then agreed to pay our gardeners to rotary hoe the whole garden and bring in some new topsoil.”

The garden is now designed with paths in the shape of a cross to create four smaller plots.

“This will give the garden some structure and make more of it accessible,” she says. “There was an old bird bath half buried amongst the bushes in the old garden and I thought I would put that in the centre of the cross. Hopefully the birds will use it in the summer and provide something for cats on the Timids deck to watch.”

When the new concrete path to the clothesline had been built, all the paving stones from the old path to the clothesline were stacked up under the house, and they turned out to be ideal for creating the new cross-paths. With those in place, Amanda could start choosing plants.

“I’m a cottage garden girl and love flowers and lavenders and roses. But I knew they would be too much work as they require lots of water, tending and fertiliser to look their best. So I chose some flowering shrubs instead along with some wind grass for movement and purple akeake for colour and structure.

“Each plot in the garden is the same – one red Escallonia, one white Escallonia, a Mexican orange blossom, a silver foliage Convolvulus, a wind grass, and a purple akeake in the centre. Finally, I planted some pink and yellow primulas around the bird bath in the middle. All the garden was then covered with a thick layer of pea straw to help keep it moist and suppress the weeds.

“Finally, a good friend of mine donated two lovely wooden garden benches so people can sit out there and spend time remembering all the beautiful cats we have loved and lost but will never, ever forget.

“Thanks to Iona and Emma for their help, Delwyn for her patience as I traipsed in and out of the shelter in muddy gumboots and disturbed the cats on Timids with my bad music, sawing, and hammering, Grace for the times he sang to me while I was working on the garden, and Thena who used to peer at me under the shelter wall and sniff the sticks or leaves I would push through to her in the hopes she would play with them.

“And sorry too to anyone who may have wanted to help with the garden and didn’t get a chance. Once I got started I just got obsessed. I hope you like how it turned out.”