Hackfalls Arboretum

It is part of Hackfalls Station, a sheep and cattle farm of about 10 square kilometres, owned by the Berry family.

The farm is in Tiniroto, a tiny village in the eastern part of the North Island, between Gisborne (town) and Wairoa.

It includes many different oaks "spaced in rolling pastureland, allowing each to develop fully, and limbed up to enable grass to grow underneath".

[2] The hill country of the Tiniroto district was formed in a big landslide from the North and East which occurred thousands of years ago.

The Māori occupation brought fires which destroyed much of the original forest cover, except in ravines and near the Hangaroa River.

From 1880 onward, European settlers cleared most of the remaining forest, scrubs and ferns, replacing it by grassland.

At Hackfalls a few remnants of the original plant cover remain, the largest of which consists of about 40,000 square metres, protected by a Queen Elizabeth II Trust covenant since 1985.

The Berry family, who originally came from Knaresborough in Yorkshire, arrived in North Canterbury in 1883[4] and settled at Tiniroto in 1889.

From 1954 onward, soon after his father's death[7] Berry began planting trees for their beauty and botanical interest, “starting with ease to grow willows and poplars, then a few oaks which he found did rather well there.

Thus began a forty year love affair with the genus Quercus, resulting in his now having the biggest collection in the country, with Bob our leading authority on oaks”.

[8] The first trees were planted near the edge of Lake Kaikiore: a [swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum), some of the common alders (Alnus), and weeping willows (Salix babylonica var.

And when the International Dendrology Society (IDS) made a tour of Central and Southwest Mexico in 1982, he participated and collected seed which he brought back and sowed.

Contact between Bob Berry and William Douglas Cook dating back to 1953 played an important role in the arboretum's development.

Cook was the founder of Eastwoodhill Arboretum (Ngatapa, Gisborne) and offered advice and suggestions for Hackfalls.

That year he also wrote the first catalogue of Eastwoodhill, and published the first typewritten “list of trees and shrubs” of Abbotsford Station, as Hackfalls was still called in those days.

She created a garden with well grown specimens of many interesting shrubs and plants, cultivars as well as (endemic) species, including Muehlenbeckia astonii.