Winter far from downtime at botanic garden

People often assume that winter is a quiet time for staff at the Dunedin Botanic Garden, with not much to do.

While spring is definitely the busiest season - with rapid plant growth keeping gardeners on their toes - and summer brings the most visitors, winter is far from a downtime.

Frosty mornings often lead to crisp, blue-sky afternoons, which makes for ideal working conditions. With mowing and weeding slowing down, winter allows our team to tackle landscaping projects like resurfacing paths and renovating garden beds.

This is the time to dig out tired shrubs, improve soil with compost or leaf mould, and do extensive mulching. We use tonnes of wood chips made on site from tree prunings, or stone chip in areas like the Mediterranean and rock gardens.

Projects or landscaping work will vary each winter, but certain essential tasks can only be completed while plants are dormant, such as pruning roses and other deciduous shrubs.

Even rainy days keep us busy. Some heroic staff members are out managing water flow, clearing channels to prevent blockages and erosion. Since pruning in the rain can spread disease and walking on wet beds compacts the soil, most of the gardeners switch to indoor tasks when it’s really wet.

Rainy day jobs include maintaining tools, cleaning plastic plant pots, assembling plant display labels and water-blasting the glasshouse floors. There’s also important computer work, like updating garden bed maps and plant records.

So while it may not look like much is happening from the outside, winter is a season full of essential, behind-the-scenes work at the garden.