NZILA Award of Excellence.

A show-stopping Queenstown garden’s earned local landscape architects Baxter Design Group a national award.

The company’s won the ‘award of excellence for residential and gardens’ in the 2022 Resene New Zealand Institute of Landscape Architecture Awards for its work on a Millbrook property, owned by Stewart Callaghan.

It’s the only short-listed residential award in the South Island, one of just two national awards handed out for residential work.

Paddy Baxter says they’re ‘‘humbled’’ to be acknowledged, and the award recognises ‘‘what we do as a business, and have been doing for 30 years’’.

‘‘Residential projects form an important part of our wider portfolio and it’s fantastic to be nationally recognised for this project.

‘‘We had an outstanding site and a great client, who allowed us to express our full range of creative design on a scale not often seen in residential design.’’

The garden flows through a series of seamlessly-connected spaces, creating elements of surprise, opportunities for privacy and outdoor spaces that celebrate panoramic views.

‘‘It’s one of the largest residential gardens at Millbrook Resort, which means everything had to meet stringent Millbrook design control covenants,’’ Baxter says.

Judges describe the garden as ‘‘elegant and graceful’’, in keeping with the local environs and wider context, integrating the home in its

surrounds, and praise the scale and placement of ‘‘enormous boulders’’ in direct relationship to the surrounding mountaintops.

‘‘The quality of detailing and execution is exemplary throughout the construction.’’

Callaghan says he and his family ‘‘couldn’t be happier’’ with the outcome.

‘‘It was a very challenging assignment to transform a rolling hill into a magnificent NZ alpine garden … The garden is a show-stopper at

any time of the year.’’