Gillian Vine visits a garden packed with edibles.
The Wild Dunedin Festival kicks off today, with dozens of events on offer.
Food plays a big part with choices from learning which seaweeds are good eating to gin tasting.
At the Dunedin City Library from 6pm on Tuesday, Jason Ross, Rory Harding and Sue Novell will talk about how to grow food locally while adapting to the changing climate with its increasingly erratic and unstable weather patterns.
Sue is a Dunedin gardener and is talking about how she and her husband, Brian Hyland, have altered their Tainui garden so they can grow edibles all year round. Increasing the health of the soil and aiming for biodiversity has been part of their 35-year journey.
Sue and Brian moved to Tainui 35 years ago to what were once very old sand dunes, quite unsuited to the rhododendrons, camellias and non-native conifers previous owners had planted on the steep slope below the house. Most of those plants were removed, although a native lacebark (Hoheria) was retained along with a strawberry tree (Arbutus).
Tree ferns were replaced with ngaio, a more natural choice for a coastal garden, and other natives added, including a totara — "It does really well here". A lancewood is now big enough to hold a bird-feeding station that brings in tui and bellbirds (korimako). To protect the birds from cats, Brian has put a metal band around the trunk, an idea worth copying.
Under the trees, renga renga lilies (Arthropodium cirratum) and shrubby kawakawa (Piper excelsum) thrive, while — well away from pathways — Brian has scattered seed of ongaonga (Urtica ferox) to attract butterflies. An important food source for red and yellow admiral caterpillars, the spines protect the babies from birds.
Tainui is windy, so good windbreaks are essential. Two forms of native Olearia were chosen, the endangered O. lineata traversii and a hybrid of it, Dartonii. The latter is more erect and faster growing, so more suitable for a windbreak, while the former, Sue says, "is much scragglier".
The slope below the house is full of fruit trees. Being sandy and very dry, constant mulching is needed to maintain plant vigour. Cape gooseberries do well here, as they don’t mind dry conditions.
There are citrus, lemons, mandarins and limes; a Stella cherry and a huge Buerre Bosc pear on a sunny wall of the house, figs in pots, yellow guava and a strawberry guava that fruits in July, pepinos, blueberries, black and redcurrants, thornless blackberries, Iona and Albany Surprise grapes, apricots, a Japanese raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis) that will reach 10m; and even a mulberry.
"I’ve chosen varieties that don’t need spraying," Sue says of the fruit.
For instance, Sweet Perfection is a peach that doesn’t get peach curl. Originally found in North Otago on the property of Terry Fowler and Helen Brookes, it is now available from some nurseries.
Another peach, whose name Sue doesn’t know, doesn’t get leaf curl and is evergreen, unusual for peaches in the South.
"Late [peach] Black Boy grows really well here ... Garden Annie has beautiful leaf colour in spring and autumn and very nice fruit, and Blush Babe is very good for drying," Sue says.
Of course, she has apples and plums, chosen to fruit in over months.
"I’m trying to have a succession of fruit so I have an ongoing harvest and no glut," Sue says.
She recommends semi-dwarf apples for smaller home gardens, as they are grafted on to stronger rootstock and do better than dwarf types on heavy soils.
A prune has been a disappointing fruiter but earns its keep as a pollinator for an English greengage and while Billington is a self-fertile plum, it does tend to fruit more heavily with a compatible tree nearby.
The vegetable garden, for which Brian made the beds, was once a rose garden and lawn. Now it has an amazing number of herbs and vegetables.
"I try to grow lots of different perennials and self-sown vegetables that do well here," Sue says.
Among less familiar vegetables, she has magenta spreen (Chenopodium giganteum), which looks rather like purple orach but, unlike it, does not go bitter in summer; a "really really yummy" perennial brassica whose young leaves are picked in succession; crunchy yacon tubers for winter; old English skirret, which "self-seeds madly"; several types of quinoa; perennial sea beet; minutina for winter salads; and tomatillo for Mexican-style dishes.
Unsurprisingly, Sue and Brian are self-sufficient in fruit and apart from a few carrots and potatoes in spring, buy no vegetables.
Their 1100sqm property is an inspiration to anyone wanting to become more self-sufficient.
