Happy Māori New Year
Usually I mark the time of the winter solstice and Matariki – the Māori New Year – with a photograph of the first blooms of the season on our pink Magnolia campbellii, set against our maunga (Mount Taranaki), with or without snow. The snow came in sufficient quantity last week for the low altitude ski field to open for a day or two. This week, that snow has melted away, all but a smidgeon on the peak. Such is the situation with a mountain set right on the coast.
This year, I am marking it with a seedling from Mark’s breeding programme that we refer to as ‘Hazel’s magnolia’. Several years ago, when Mark was asked to do the casket flowers for an old friend’s mother, he constructed his arrangement with the flowers of this magnolia. Her name was Hazel. In a world hurtling at breakneck speed towards one disaster after another, marked by cruelty and inhumanity, the memory of Hazel seems especially poignant. Hazel was a gem in life – one of the kindest people you could ever meet, gentle, welcoming and with natural grace.
It gives us considerable pleasure to remember Hazel each year with this magnolia. It is a one-off plant; we won’t officially name it or release it. It flowers too early in the season for commercial release and is not sufficiently distinctive to make the cut of the very few we name but that in no way diminishes our pleasure in the blooming each year around Matariki and the winter solstice.
It seems a vain hope that the start of a new year in Aotearoa will bring optimism, hope and a return to kinder, more compassionate times. Hazel’s magnolia is a reminder for us that these qualities are possible at an individual, personal level. May you have your own personal markers of hope for the year to come and the future beyond.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 
Plants which carry the name of somebody special to us are particularly prized even if not frightfully different. Connections!
Happy Matariki greetings. I love how quickly (it seems) Matariki has become a fixture in our calendar, and that it is aligned to our winter solstice – making it a distinctly Aotearoa/New Zealand celebration – when so many of our other holidays are aligned to Northern Hemisphere seasons. And how lovely to be remembered by a special flowering. Hazel sounds like she was a wonderful human being, and worthy of such remembrance.
It was a revelation to me when I realised that Matariki aligns within just a few days with the northern hemisphere declaration of New Year – both around the winter solstice. And yes, I think it is a particularly affirming, enriching festival for us to mark in this country.