Tai Tapu hotels collection

The foundation stone of St Paul's, the church at Tai Tapu, crossed the Tasman Sea: a granite from Jessie Rhodes's childhood home in Victoria, in whose memory her husband raised the church. The walls are of volcanic rock from Banks Peninsula. The village follows the Halswell River at the foot of the Port Hills, where Omahu Bush keeps its ferns and Gibraltar Rock breaks through below the ridge. In spring, daffodils cover the slopes where Heaton Rhodes once bred new varieties of them.