What makes a winner? Gillian Vine finds out when she visits an Alexandra garden.
When The Wash ran a photo competition late last year, people responded with enthusiasm to the challenge to show off their gardens with a single photo.
In what The Wash editor Dave Cannan claimed one of his hardest jobs, he selected eight winners, each of whom received a $50 voucher from Nichol's.
One of the winning photos was of Ngaio and Graeme Johnson's front garden, in Alexandra, where their Bridge Hill section abounds with flowers and fruit.
It is difficult to imagine what it looked like 31 years ago when they bought the empty section.
"It was just old man lucerne - it was huge - and rocks,'' Mrs Johnson said.
In the early days, it was apparently part of the O'Neill orchard, the name commemorated in nearby O'Neill Cres, but appeared not to have been used for fruit growing.
That has changed since the Johnsons came, as they have planted "25-plus'' fruit trees, among them plums, apples, nectarines, peaches, cherries and peacherines (a nectarine-peach cross).
Then there are crab apples, grapes, gooseberries, currant bushes and a shade house full of tomatoes, leaving the visitor amazed at what can be grown in just 800sq m.
Initially, to clear a place for the house, rock was blasted and some of the stone used for cladding.
It took Mr Johnson, who was largely self-taught, four years to complete the work and having the material on site was "very handy, as we were very tight on money'', Mrs Johnson said.
By coincidence, her great-grandfather was a stonemason who emigrated to Central Otago and worked on Alexandra's old bridge.
Gardening runs in her family.
"At Carrick Station [near Bannockburn], Grandma had every perennial that would survive in Central Otago winters.''
The Johnsons had a different challenge: how to make things grow where there was scant soil, mostly in little pockets in the rock.
"We brought in lots of stuff and must keep doing so, as water drains the goodness,'' Mrs Johnson said.
The payoff is not only in having a garden that is 10 days earlier than on the flat in Alexandra, but one where almost everything seems to grow well, especially roses.
"Roses are really good value [for flowers] and value for money but they murder me. I come in with blood dripping down my legs and arms,'' Mrs Johnson said cheerfully.
Just how good this spot is for roses can be seen in the front garden, where bright scarlet floribunda PJ's Rose grows taller and broader than its German breeder's guidelines suggest.
Others in the Johnsons' collection include Sally Holmes, Blackberry Nip, French Lace, Just Joey and Peace, the latter because Mrs Johnson's mother always grew it.
The garden has been planned for successive displays, starting with spring bulbs complemented by camellias on the cool side of the house.
These are followed by roses, then lilies, dahlias and summer/autumn annuals like asters and begonias, alongside the second flush of roses.
"I like to plant close together, so weeds struggle to get through,'' she said.
Mr Johnson does the pruning and also looks after the lawns, although hydrocotyle is an ongoing problem.
This season, conifers were removed from the side garden to open up the area and the lawn extended using Readilawn.
"Your garden over time is a changing thing, a changing mood,'' Mrs Johnson said of the revamp, which gave a different look to part of this winning garden.
