Trees and flowers were important ways of remembering the old country. Heaton Rhodes was born in New Zealand to an English family, but was educated in England. When he built a house, Otahuna, south of Christchurch in 1895, he established a fine garden of trees, lawns and flower beds. These fields of daffodils were particularly well known, and provided the bulbs for the even more famous daffodils along the banks of the Avon River in Hagley Park, Christchurch.