The brief for starting the garden

Views of the land when we were deciding to buy it

Not only the gorgeous views of both hills and sea, but on our second visit to the property the birds were singing and the sheep across on the hills were voicing their opinion, that’s what sold it to us, we had found our new home.

There were certain things we wanted from the garden. We wanted sea views but privacy, birds and bugs so we needed to grow organically which we have always done for vegetables anyway. We wanted whatever fruit we fancied, shade in summer and sun for the winter but I like to have evergreen trees. I really wanted to have tropical plants but I don’t like a garden to look like it’s suffering so to keep it lush I needed to firstly plant for protection of more tender plants and secondly choose wisely but there was still a lot of trial and error until conditions improved.  Lastly I wanted it to be a garden for family and friends, giving respite but also stimulation.

There was a narrow area where any top soil had been removed and that’s where we ended up with the main house. The property was 3/4 of an acre and most of it quite steep with a basin that I now call the glade, below the house and lawn. The garden now offers a lot of different micro climates to grow Heliconias and orchids among many. Below is the garden as it is at the moment, most of it is only 10-11 years old so palms and trees are still growing. We kept some of the gums with one large gum tree being the focus of the glade. I’m still planting trees as the steepness gives us a lot of room for that.

My first job for the garden was to break up the clay and in areas where I knew I would plant, I dug the area (with a pick, as it was so hard), added gypsum to the soil and left it to break down for about 3 months but I was impatient to plant so parts were just mulched heavily and planted out. I added horse manure from a neighbours property and planted. Tropicals love good drainage in our climate so I had mixed results with being so impatient and lost a few Bauhinia variegata being one of those and a Ceiba speciosa died back quite a bit.  I moved the Ceiba (Chorisia speciosa) which has thrived away from the sea spray and is now about 9 metres tall.  I was given another Bauhinia and this time made a small hill of composty soil so it had good drainage for its early life when small roots needed protection from too much cold rain during winter. That tree is also thriving now and I am less lazy about preparing sites these days. With all the mulch came insects and therefore, birds and year by year the soil improved and I find I can plant most things now.

Some of the first trees I planted

Bauhinia variegata (Hong Kong orchid tree) it’s also my orchid tree as it grows about 2 metres a year, outwards so has lots of forks for orchids to attach to. I have put Barkeria, oncidium, Dendrobium and maxifolia orchids in the branches and am growing Hoyas at the base where they can climb up.

Jamaican Fiddlewood which has the sweetest light apricot, scented flowers but is anti social in the way it drops most of it’s leaves in our spring.

Bangalow palms, these 3 are right next to the path going down from the top garden to the bottom and the glade

Australian Frangipani with red Alstroemerias and Rhapsis exelsia beneath them

A native variegated Mertya “Moonlight” with Brugmansia Ecuador pink in the back ground”

Dombeya, very fast growing and in 8 years reached 10 metres, it also has a lovely open habit so you can easily see the clivias underneath

Albissia

Trevesia with Justicia Aurea beside it. This has been a very slow growing tree, the first winter it nearly rotted away so I raised it up on a mound and it has slowly grown to about 7 feet.

From an obsessive glassblower to an obsessive gardener

I am well aware I can bore most of my family and friends with garden talk although they usually try to hide the fact, it is noticeable how they pick up the pace if looking around the garden with me. My husband loves the garden as a beautiful environment but only has interest in the edible plants, although, he has started to absorbed some names such as Heliconia, Alstroemeria and Schizopetalus.  My sister is my main garden enthusiast and has a beautiful garden herself but is 7 and a half hours away by car so here I am writing my first blog so I can share my experiences, both successes and failures with other keen gardeners or garden lovers.  Maybe I can start sharing cuttings and rhizomes with other Kiwi gardeners.

My love of the tropical all started with Dad being transferred from Wellington (south of the North island) to the warmer climes of Auckland (north of the North island). The smell of warm rain on the earth and the sight of so many exotic plants excited me but it wasn’t until I was 21 that I really experienced the true tropics. Myself and a group of friends spent 5 weeks in Samoa for the 21st birthday of one of those friends who was brought up there, and whose family still lived there. It was a wonderful time spent often in the back of a pick up truck on our way to yet another beautiful beach and passing through wonderful coastal and rain forest scenes.

I’ll fast forward here to early marriage and mortgage days. We bought a six acre block of land and a rotting house in Taranaki where we  farmed emu, pigs, sheep and a house cow. It was a beautiful property with a river running around 2 sides of the house but the garden was much smaller than our present one as I had my own glass blowing studio and most creative energy went into my glass designs.  When possible we escaped winter by going to somewhere like Bali or Rarotonga, highlighting both our desires to be somewhere warmer and preferably coastal.

14 years later and we are on the East coast, I no longer blow glass and couldn’t find a replacement that excited me as much, so the garden grew until it has become the obsession glass blowing was to me. It keeps growing and changing, sometimes I can feel ill at ease with a plant setting until finally I move a plant maybe only 6 inches to the left or right and find I can now have my coffee without the feeling of things being all wrong.

Well that’s how I came to be gardening in a zone 9-10 garden and as I can’t afford sculptures or wooden furniture for the garden, I make my own from ferro cement and in the case of furniture, driftwood. My sister helped me with the daybed below and looking out from the daybed you see my first water feature.

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