I read a report last week about leading Auckland mayoral candidate, Phil Goff’s plan to plant a million trees around Auckland. Good luck on that one, Phil, I thought. For many New Zealanders do not like trees.
I was telling Mark about findings in The Sceptical Gardener, by Ken Thompson, who is clearly interested in the effect of a garden and trees on real estate prices. First he quoted a US study. From Lubbock, in Texas, no less. The shorter version is that if you have a garden that is a rich, layered eco-system that supports a wide range of different birds, the correlation is that it adds US$32,028 to the value of your real estate when you go to sell it. There is more – another chapter on determining the value of trees, both planted on your own section and also on the road verge. A Perth (Western Australia) study shows broad-leafed trees on the road verge add AU$16,889 to the value of your adjacent real estate. That is a very precise sum.
“Not in New Zealand,” was Mark’s comment, articulating what I had already thought. “It is more likely to devalue your property by that amount in New Zealand.” For many New Zealanders do not like trees.
Why, when we live in a country that was until very recently, heavily forested, do so many people hate trees here? Why do so many folk want to hack back or cut out anything over two metres in height? And why do we so often see the death sentence pronounced and carried out on trees once they have reached about fifty years of age? “Past their use-by date”, it is often claimed even though the tree may in fact have a life expectancy of hundreds of years.
I used to think that maybe it was a visceral response that harks back to the difficult conditions encountered by our early settler forbears who arrived expecting to find pleasant green, rolling lands but instead had to start by hacking out dense, impenetrable forest in order to find a place to stand.
Upon reflection, it is more likely a response to conditions whereby our climate is not quite as warm as most of us would like and our housing stock is generally of low quality – at least when compared to other western societies and cooler climates. Often poorly insulated, if at all, and inadequately heated, most of us rely on passive solar heating so we want sun, sun and more sun. Woe betide any tree that might block a ray of sun or indeed any view. We are still a very new country with little respect, let alone reverence, for the past.
Third floor balcony of a Sydney apartment
I am just back from a visit to Australia where both our two daughters live and I could not help but notice the greater role played by trees in that country. Sydney daughter has a third floor apartment with a good-sized balcony and how bleak that setting would be without the surrounding foliage. It is high density living not far from Bondi, with heavy traffic and residential high rise all around. Yet despite that, there are only three apartments that overlook her living area, both indoors and outdoors and the trees cushion the heavily urbanised environment. The trees are a combination of large specimens on the verge and trees planted in the garden of the ground floor apartment.
Canberra suburbia
Canberra daughter lives in a much harsher climate (hot in summer and very cold in winter) but is in one of the desirable leafy suburbs with large street trees. Canberra is a planned city and in her area, the trees are allowed to grow to maturity even at the expense of footpaths. There aren’t many footpaths at all and those that do exist, appear to be laid in slabs which would accommodate tree roots better than the unimpeded level surface poured in one that we demand in NZ suburbs. Additionally, front fences are banned – only hedges allowed – which avoids the prison look of some of Auckland’s leafy suburbs. Daughter tells me that public policy is such that where tree replacement is required, no more than 20% of trees be felled at any one time.
So good luck to Phil Goff and his million trees. Increasing housing density in Auckland means that leafy public plantings are going to be even more important to soften the urban environment. But he will be fighting some hostile attitudes from many residents.
Some readers may recall our lost campaign to try and save about 29 mature pohutukawa that lined the river in our local town of Waitara.
Believe it or not, some folk actually think this barren wasteland (now grassed) is an improvement. Three small specimens have been planted to replace the missing twenty-nine. Eventually, that is. As long as tree-hating local residents and the powers-that-be don’t hack them out before they ever reach maturity. For this is New Zealand and urban trees are not greatly valued by many.
These are the genuine article when it comes to terracotta urns – Greek oil jars. I spotted them just lying about looking absurdly decorative out the back of a shed on a tiny island just off Patmos. It was not until I saw Greek oil jars that I ever considered the different shades of terracotta that come depending on the local clay. On the eastern isles, the terracotta was quite pale with a white powdery finish which I find much more attractive than the more usual orange shades. If I could have shipped some lovely oil jars home, I would have.
Hardly urns, but a handy segue on how attractive older utility gear can be, forcing pots, just hangin’ about waiting to be used again in the vegetable garden. Placed over vegetables that need blanching (rhubarb, kale, white asparagus, celery and the like) they produce more tender shoots. We saw them in more than one English garden. I think they are available in New Zealand but with a hefty price tag that will ensure they are used as ornament, not their designated purpose.
If you are going to have an urn, or a font, maybe, and have a property that is of a suitable scale, then you might as well make it a B I G one. This is at Castle Howard in Yorkshire with Mark standing beside it. I am not sure what is growing in it but it did not really enhance the Experience of the Urn. It may have been more effective left empty.
When it comes to lidded urns that bear a slight resemblance to a certain style of funeral urn, the same principle may apply. If you are going to have one, it may well look considerably more dramatic if you have many, as in this interesting and contemporary small Auckland garden.
Still with the greys, these two handsome urns are from Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s garden at Gresgarth. The squatter pot was nestled into the garden by the stream, making a charming scene to be viewed at close quarters. The use of a plinth makes the taller pot a statement all on its own. I admired it enormously, even more so in its understated meadow setting.
I feel some gardeners haven’t quite taken on board the message that some pots are sufficiently elegant to exist simply as a decorative pot, without a plant in it. Very deep pots can drain poorly – some even come without any drainage holes in the bottom at all – meaning that the roots are going to be very wet all the time. A tall pot on a narrow base is not the most stable design. Adding in a tall plant will make it even more top-heavy. Further, to keep container plants healthy and growing well, they really need to be completely repotted in new mix at least every second year, if not annually. Getting a plant out of a pot with a narrow top is a mission and usually involves either damaging the plant or breaking the pot.
This modern urn filled with copper foliage (posssibly a cirsium -one of the ornamental thistles) sat on a plinth in an otherwise austere setting – the stable yard, I think it was – in a private Yorkshire garden. One of a pair or maybe even more, I am sure they were not cheap to buy but they were very effective. I thought from one of my photos that they were marble, but looking at the others, it appears they may be a composite stone that is made to resemble marble and the run-off from the copper is giving a subtle patina over time,
Nobody does cheerful urnage like the Spanish and the Portuguese. At least nobody that I have seen. I photographed these two in Seville because they were so shamelessly flamboyant. The amazing thing is that these pots can be placed in a public area and not be smashed as they would likely be in this country. But honestly, I think it is very difficult to transfer this sort of decoration away from that bright light and cultural context of southern Europe without running the dire risk of it simply looking, well, vulgar. The only time I have seen something similar done successfully was by Lynda Hallinan in Auckland. Her elaborate pot sits empty, you will notice (filling it would really be over-gilding an already gilded lily), nestled in amongst lots of foliage and flowers where it caught my eye.
And the modern take on the baptismal font? This is in the middle of the raised beds at Tupare Garden in New Plymouth. I am not sure it is a good enough piece to take centre stage. It may have looked more at home were it in grey stone but that sort of modern take on mellow Cotswold stone is not so much at home across the world. But I guess it comes down to personal taste. 
Much of the white domestic garden figurine decoration here probably has a closer debt to the pre Raphaelites and Victorian sentimentality, but personally, I remain unconvinced as to what it adds to home gardens. Especially as so many garden owners appear to feel the need to repaint their figures every year or two, to maintain that pristine whiteness. Each to their own, is all I can say.
In a similar mould, I think I could even find the right spot for this unloved figure of the harvest maid that is marooned in the area serving some equally unloved apartments in Auckland. By the Countdown Supermarket on the corner of Dominion Road in Mt Eden, if my memory serves me right. But Mark may disagree. “Why,” he says, “must we import the art and history of other countries? Can we not evolve our own?”
Similarly, the Holyoakes in New Plymouth are strongly family oriented and told me that their large Lego man makes them smile and acts as a constant reminder of the delights of child rearing. While uncompromising as a piece of garden sculpture, they have placed it in a small courtyard visible only from their living room, surrounded by the grandeur of the very large bird of paradise plant – Strelitzia nicolai.
By no means can all garden statuary be called sculpture. Some is more akin to craft than art although at its best, crafty efforts can cross over to folk art (more on this another time). Figures made from terracotta pots are found relatively frequently, usually created by the garden owner. This is affordable garden decoration, not sculpture or art.
Tupare Garden in New Plymouth has one of the oldest white forms of campbellii in our area, though the tree is not a particularly strong grower. It has a different provenance which the late Jack Goodwin relayed to Mark. Alas Mark did not write it down at the time but his recollection is that Russell Matthews, who created Tupare, bought it as a seedling grown plant from a local nurseryman who had imported seed, probably in the 1940s. This may have been James or Francis Morshead. M. campbellii is renowned for taking many years before it sets flower buds and an anecdote from another source relates the huge disappointment Matthews felt when the first blooms opened white, not pink. More a collector of status plants than a plantsman, he was apparently delighted when Victor Davies – of Duncan and Davies Nurseries – assured him that the white form was most unusual and therefore a real treasure. Only history puts this into context – that the white form is unusual for Taranaki because of all our Quaker Mason pink plants, but not at all unusual in the wild.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 