Casale Di Terra – Church Bay Gallery
A casale is Italian for a group of buildings that make up a country compound. Ours is made of earthbrick, it’s the largest earthbrick structure in NZ
The Casale
The Gallery
Casale di Terra (a country compound made of the earth)
Unlike anything else in New Zealand
The Casale
Four buildings, three courtyards, vernacular design, spectacular setting.
The Council lets us sponsor three events a year as a permitted activity. We designed the Casale as a community facility, which, in addition to the art gallery which is proving a premier destination for overseas visitors, is used for fundraisers. The first one we did included 300 paying guests (thankfully it did not rain) and 60 volunteer staff and entertainers and raised $40,000 (even the entertainers paid $100 for a ticket). Helen Medlin, Jacqui Clark, Michael Hurst, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, MC’d by John Hawkesby and dozens more set the tone for the Casale.
Four times for the Jassy Dean Garden Safari, the film set for a film crew of 50 needing a summer Provencal house in February, Ecofest, Waiheke Walking Festival and more recently, the Waiheke Island Chamber Music Festival. We have also hosted birthdays, weddings and parties as well as community meetings, visiting speakers and just about anything we can think of to make life interesting.
The art gallery sells paintings by Gabriella Lewenz, sculptures by Virginia King and Maori sculptures Anton Ford, with other guest artists from time to time.
The Grounds
The gardens began when the crew stripped the topsoil from the jobsite and moved it to create the first gardens.
Olive trees were planted, and lavender to form the boundary. Then the raised beds were put in. And then the Oyster Inn was invited to use the gardens to grow food for their restaurant. Eventually that evolved into Bianca Nassenstein taking over to make the gardens into market gardens.
More beds were added, this time raised 600mm above the ground to keep out the rabbits. All the food is organic, with heritage plants to maintain food diversity.
In addition to the market gardens, below the guest house are the citrus trees and medicinal herb garden. The latest addition to food production is the freeze drier.