Can you have a garden without plants? – a good question indeed. Many people’s idea of a garden is somewhere to grow flowers, vegetables and fruit. Indeed one definition of a garden is ‘a place set aside from the wilderness where the hand of the gardener works in harmony with nature to cultivate for use […]
We Kiwis love our gardens. Apparently, gardening itself is still one our most popular pastimes. However, despite surveys suggesting the contrary, more and more of us are opting for the ‘do-it-for-me’ approach. We want our homes to look as smart and stylish on the outside as they do indoors, and increasingly, we’re just as happy […]
These days, it’s a rare kid that chooses the fruit bowl over the pantry. Nostalgic tales from the ‘olden days’ of apples nicked from a neighbour’s tree, for them, seem hard to fathom. But today as always, stolen or not, the mouth-watering crunch of a freshly picked apple just can’t be compared to the one […]
Autumn is a great time to plant a new garden, but for those of us averse to digging, the hardest part can be getting started. Spadework is at its most off-putting where heavy soil is hard to dig, let alone being conducive to healthy plant growth. Poor soils, both heavy and light, can be renovated […]
Four exhibition gardens have won gold at this year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show. In what the judges say was “a tough competition for the medals with a number of hotly contested criteria”, Wellington designer Ben Hoyle and Christchurch designers Carl Pickens, Rob Watson for the Canterbury Horticultural Society and Sir Miles Warren, Alan Trott, Pauline […]
Now is the time to re-invent native planting. The 1980s saw what I like to call the ‘early period’ of native planting design. It was based on the ‘DoC Visitor Centre’ idiom – a bushy thicket of mixed vigorous shrubs and trees with a scattering of sedges or grasses at the edges – oh, and […]
Sustainability is a buzzword which permeates flower shows these days – and this year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show is no exception. Waterwise planting, water recycling, intelligent use of water, low-energy gardens and restoring soil nutrients are all key international garden trends and many of these concepts will be seen in two exhibition gardens at […]
Late winter and spring flowering shrubs bear their flowers on wood they produced the previous growing season. That means they’re best pruned (if at all) immediately after flowering, before next seasons flower buds are formed. In cold climates it’s wise to delay pruning until the risk of frost damage is over, even though this may […]
