1. How would you describe your garden?
It’s a smallish, quite feral garden filled with perennials, climbers, hedges and trees. I pretty much get a fail mark for any hard landscaping!
2. First memory of gardening that got you hooked?
Working alongside my Dad, probably from when I was a toddler. I must have been about 8 or 9 years old when he found me a patch of dirt where I was allowed to do my own thing - probably to keep me out from under foot. It did seem to always have the worst weeds!
Then I read The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett and was hooked.
3. What’s your favourite area of your garden?
It depends on the time of day and the season and my mood.
When life throws its curve balls, I hide in the vege garden and pull weeds, trying to get things straight. Then I gather in what’s there for tea.
I love my little hidden spot behind the hornbeam hedge, under the apple trees and climbing roses, the dappled light, changing shades of green and gold and ripening red and orange of the rosehips and apples as the seasons progress. It’s a place to hide from the heat in mid-summer or embrace the sun on a crisp winter’s day.
4. What would you describe as its biggest challenge and why?
Possums are regular, destructive and wily visitors. Generations of them have successfully grazed the roses, eaten the peaches, annoyed the dog and evaded traps.
The climate here can be quite extreme. So, over time, only what will thrive remains.
The toughest condition to deal with has been dry shade. While that’s doable in summer, in winter that area does not thaw out and the frost can do its worst, even with blankets of mulch.
On the other hand, it is the changing seasons which I treasure; the quality of light highlighting colour and texture and the challenge of finding new plants which are suited to the conditions.
5. What’s your favourite gardening aid that you couldn’t do without?
My "by hook or by crook" garden weeder - I think they are made from No 8 wire - tucked in my back pocket with my secateurs.
It may look small, but it’s mighty! Together we have tackled many metres of garden beds. I have several because they invariably get lost in the compost.
6. If climate wasn’t an issue, what would you love to grow?
I’ve always wanted a water feature, lush tree ferns and green moss.
I’m working on a plan that may just work. There is now a place to build a sunken shade garden, a place to hide when the norwester boils over the hill.
I have the sunken bit already. It’s bordered by the charcoal brick of the new house being built and the high hornbeam hedge.
There’ll be no water, but once there was a wide braided river here, hence the ancient gravelly footprint it left behind, so we might create a river-stone path.
I’m dreaming of the neglect-proof, tough-as-boots but softly moss-like scleranthus, hostas and ferns.
I know they’re the "in look" right now, but I’ve always coveted hydrangeas. There are only a couple of varieties that survive in Ōmārama - or maybe there are more that would survive, now winters are milder? But then that’s how we get fooled.
To complete the summertime picture there will be Clematis viticella ‘Polish Spirit’ weaving its way through the hornbeam, elegantly sporting dark velvet cardinal-coloured blooms.
• Do you have an area of your garden you would like to share? Send your photos and answers to the above questions to odt.features@odt.co.nz with "Gardener’s Corner" in the subject line.
