- Police are investigating two suspicious fires at the former home of late TV star Dale Harvey.
- The fires occurred hours apart on June 10 at the unoccupied Vine Street property.
- The house was sold last month for $855,000 after marketing highlighted its connection to Harvey and its potential.
Police are investigating two suspicious fires at the former home of late 90s TV star and gardener Dale Harvey.
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Barfoot & Thompson agent Alan Vessey, who sold the house last month for $855,000, said investigators had called him about the fires, which broke out in the early hours of June 10.
He told OneRoof it was "extremely sad that someone would do such a thing ... this is the society we live in, the lack of respect".
A police spokesperson told OneRoof that the fires were being treated as suspicious.
Emergency services were first called out to a blaze at the unoccupied Vine Street property just after 3am, on June 10. They found that a shed there was on fire.
They returned to the address at 6.20am after a second fire had taken hold at the property.
Harvey’s three-bedroom home on Vine Street, in Auckland’s Mangere East, attracted three bidders at auction last week. Photo / Supplied
Harvey's gardens suffered after the death of Harvey’s partner in 2024. Photo / Supplied
“We have two fires reported on the same day, hours apart, at the same property on Vine Street," the police spokesperson told OneRoof. "The investigation is in the early stages, and we cannot confirm they are linked."
Harvey, known to a generation of Kiwis for his gardening skills, passed away at his “Quarter Acre Paradise Conservatory” on Vine Street, in Mangere, just before Christmas.
The American-born radio host, columnist and environmental consultant became a household name in the early 1990s, and his Mangere gardens welcomed countless visitors over the years.
However, the “Garden Guru of New Zealand” had fallen on hard times and was struggling to maintain his beloved gardens since the death of his partner, John Newton, in 2024.
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Vessey told OneRoof in April that Harvey used a wheelchair in his later years and had felt the loss of Newton keenly. “He loved his plants. He was quite lost when his partner passed away.”
Vessey told OneRoof last month that he was unsure of the new owner's plans for the property, but said much of the interest had come from people looking for opportunities to do it up.
The purchaser had only viewed the home two days before the auction and ended up making a deal with the vendors outside the auction room for $855,000 after the property passed in.
The inside of Harvey’s home. The listing agent understands Harvey was wheelchair-bound in his later years. Photo / Supplied
Vessey said he had fielded calls from a couple of people who remembered the property from when Harvey used to open his garden to the public.
In his listing on OneRoof, Vessey highlighted the property’s connection to Harvey and its past significance. “Vine Street was the home of renowned gardener Dale Harvey, whose spectacular gardens attracted visitors, tours and charity events from across the community,” he wrote.
“Over time, the gardens have faded, and the home itself now shows significant deferred maintenance. The reality is that the property requires serious work. But for buyers who understand opportunity, that is exactly where the potential lies.”
He added: “Set on a massive 1417sqm freehold site, this is a rare landholding where the real value is in the scale of the land and what it could become.”
Harvey hit New Zealand’s screens in 1992 in The Living Earth, a programme designed to make Kiwis heroes in their own backyards.
In the first episode, he welcomed viewers to his grandparents’ home at 23 Vine Street, which he inherited and named the Quarter Acre Paradise Conservatory.
“It’s a working garden. A home that provides me with food, income, pleasure and a place to stand against the problems and pleasures of the modern world,” Harvey told viewers.
The episode also featured the homes of actor Annie Whittle and All Blacks’ great Michael Jones, with an animated Harvey swapping banter with his guests.
The property started life as an orchard, with Harvey retaining many of the old plantings, including his grandparents’ grapefruit trees.
Harvey had an international career in the US, Japan and Australia. He met Newton in Melbourne in 1981, and the couple supported each other’s creative and community-focused endeavours.
Harvey and Newton were tireless environmental campaigners and loved to share their passion for gardening. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
In its heyday, the couple’s gardens had two large conservatories, an orchid house, a natural pond garden, extensive container displays, perennial borders, a lawn garden, and tropical and sub-tropical plantings, some of which can still be seen from aerial photos.
Harvey explained that each area of the garden was designed to demonstrate what could be achieved on a traditional quarter‑acre section, using careful micro‑climate planning, colour theory and seasonal rhythm.
The couple held garden tours, Valentine’s events, weddings, birthday parties, community celebrations, memorials, and private functions. They also used it as a teaching garden, with live demonstrations.
Harvey also wrote a regular gardening column in Woman’s Day, contributed to New Zealand gardening handbooks, and presented at international garden shows.
His now-defunct website described this media exposure as central to spreading what Harvey called an environmental message about responsibility, regeneration, and stewardship. Running through Harvey’s work was the philosophy that a better world could begin in one’s own backyard.
That philosophy eventually led to the launch of the Healing of Planet Earth or H.O.P.E Trust.
In 2014, the Manukau Courier newspaper reported that Harvey and Newton founded the trust in 2000 after youngsters broke into the gardens and stole goldfish from the pond.
“We thought, ‘instead of getting them into trouble, let’s start a garden class’,” Newton told the newspaper at the time. Newton began teaching floral design classes at Aorere College after the goldfish incident.
