Twenty years, no less.

We are marvelling at the thought that this weekend marks the twentieth anniversary of the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival. It is a remarkable achievement to have survived so long and to have gained such a foothold in the garden culture of this country. Even more remarkable is the accreditation of so many of our gardens as being rated as nationally or regionally significant – many more than any other province in the country.

We do not subscribe to the view that this external recognition is due to the innate superiority of our gardens here. No, we think it is a downstream effect of the Festival and ever rising standards. Twenty years ago, Taranaki was a major force in plant production (mostly due to Duncan and Davies) but not necessarily head and shoulders above the rest of the country in the quality of its private gardens. Sure we had some notable gardens, but only half a dozen and most other areas of the country can muster half a dozen. Now we have close to 20 which are recognised as top quality gardens nationally and probably close to the same number again on the path to similar recognition. It is an astounding achievement. Even more astounding when you consider that the majority of the gardens are privately owned and managed without great resources of wealth.

What we have here, however, is a wealth of experience in presenting gardens well and an open garden ethos. And while no garden pays its own way, the system which allows garden owners to charge is an incentive to pour more money into making the gardens better for next season.

Look back and remember what went twenty years ago. In those heady early years, pretty well everybody and anybody could and did open. Most were free back then and there was certainly little of the intensive grooming and presentation that marks out the open gardens today. It was more akin to real estate open homes and the majority of visitors were local. Owners were not expected to be present and many times garden visitors walked around the property with nobody at home. Mark would round up the sheep and get them out of our park a few days before opening.

I can’t recall how far down the track it began to seep into garden openers’ consciousness that maybe it wasn’t a good look to peg your washing on the line. That while we all do washing, when strangers are visiting your place, flapping sheets and (horrors) underwear displayed for all and sundry to see is a bit naff. It may have been around the time when there was a campaign to divest the Festival of the practice affected by some of greeting garden visitors while wearing a white lab coat and rattling an icecream container of coins. Elder Daughter, who gets to wear a white coat most days of her life now because she inhabits a laboratory, has always marvelled at how some people think that a white lab coat confers an air of authority. We never went in for the lab coat look here, nor the rattling of coins as people walked in the gate, but I will admit that I used to peg washing on the line. By this stage, I think Mark had taken to mowing tracks in the grass around our park with the old reel mower and there were increasing numbers of visitors from outside Taranaki.

The early nineties were the peak time for visitors. Back then, large coachloads would turn up at the weekend. The Wellington Evening Post ran an excursion train up to the Festival, transferring hundreds of passengers onto coaches which crisscrossed the province. I recall one Friday evening chasing around on the phone for some visitors from Auckland who had arrived without any accommodation booked. Elaine Gill, who in those days was Tourism Taranaki, found them the very last bed in New Plymouth. The city was booked out.

They were heady days of garden opening. Garden visiting was an enormously popular activity and Maggie’s Garden Show on TV (except it was probably Palmers Garden Show back then) was mandatory viewing for everyone.

Many other areas jumped on to the garden festival bandwagon. Our festival lost its novelty value and numbers fell back somewhat. But dedicated gardeners just worked harder to lift the standards so that visitors would not be disappointed in what they saw. Around this time, we banished the sheep once and for all from our park and bought a super fancy lawnmower which cost more than our car but was the only machine capable of mowing the area which has some steep banks and tight manoeuvres.

There have been ups and downs and some quite major shakedowns since. But after 20 years our Festival is still here. Only now it caters for as many out of towners as locals and is an established part of the tourist scene here. Some may mourn the loss of the early days when garden standards were loose at best and where most gardens were free. Nostalgia is fine thing, but had we resolutely stuck to that early formula, I think our festival would have quietly died a natural death some years ago. Locals stop visiting when the excitement and novelty wears off and outsiders demand more when they have very limited time and when they are spending quite a bit of money to visit.

Taranaki gardeners can stand tall. The Festival is still here and in the end it is the individual home gardeners who are lifting the bar higher every year, presenting their gardens better and hosting visitors with friendliness.

Those of us who open know that it is a wonderful incentive to make you get your garden looking right. I love it when we are all tightly groomed and presented at our best here. And even if visitor numbers these days are more likely to be measured in the late hundreds for most, rather than the earlier days when they were knocking on the door of thousands, the bottom line is that it is really lovely to have many hundreds of people turn up, ready to enjoy themselves and admiring all your efforts. It sure has the feel good factor.

Long may the Festival continue. It is pretty special for our province and has made us a senior player on the garden scene in this country.

October 26, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide

Those who have their gardens open to the public for the next ten days are unlikely to be doing any serious gardening themselves this week.

But others who read this column should try and get out to see a few gardens. If nothing else, visit two – one that you have always intended to get to and one which you think sounds as if it has some good ideas to inspire you in our own garden.

  • Pieris (commonly referred to as lily of the valley plants though they are not related at all to that cool climate perennial) are best dead headed. If you let them go to seed, they tend not to set flower buds on those stems next year. As rhododendrons finish flowering, try and dead head them too so that they put their energies into setting fresh flower buds not seed. Rhododendrons set next year’s buds in their spring growth each season so it is a long way ahead of when they flower.
  • While the seventies may have been the era of conifer gardens, the eighties of cottage gardening, and the nineties brought us the horrors of the minimalist garden, there is little doubt as to what is the fashion of the new millenium. It is the vegetable garden, the more organic the better. If you have never grown your own vegetables, avoid being too ambitious to start with. Remember that vegies need full sun and very well cultivated soil. Lettuces are a good crop to start with. Radishes bring a quick return for minimal effort. Micro greens or mesclun salad greens can be rewarding. Sweet 100 tomatoes are a good, easy care crop for a beginner.
  • If you are in the habit of buying the fresh herb plants from the fruit and veg section of the supermarket, you can extend their cropping by buying the smallest grade of plants on offer and either planting them out in a garden border out from your kitchen or potting them into a larger pot with some quick release fertiliser. Water well.
  • Pumpkins can be started on a mound comprised of layers of soil and lawn clippings. The decomposing grass generates heat which speeds up germination and initial growth considerably. Don’t make the heap too big or you may cook the seeds. A metre wide by 60cm high is about the right size.
  • Grape and tomato plants are very susceptible to hormone sprays at this time of the year, so be very careful if you are still using these types of sprays on your lawn. Magnolias are similarly vulnerable so keep sprays well away from any specimens in or close to your lawn. Better still, put the hormone spray away at this time of year.
  • If you want to grow watermelons and rock melons, this is your last opportunity to start off seeds. They should have been started earlier but you may manage to force them under cover for planting out in six weeks time. Mark did this last week.
  • Don’t delay on planting out trees and shrubs. It is getting late in the season and they are best established before summer.

The Propagation of New Zealand Native Plants

Author: Andrew Steens

Publisher: Random House, $34.99

Lawrie Metcalf has updated his book which was first released in 1995.

The fact that the earlier edition ran to two reprints is an indicator of demand for this type of reference. And a technical reference book it is, on how to reproduce native plants. It is remarkably user friendly and will take the complete novice who knows nothing about propagation through to competence while also providing a useful reference for those who start with more skills.

The propagation techniques are explained clearly and in simple, logical fashion and are applicable well beyond native plants. The first 76 pages are transferable information covering raising plants from seed, cuttings, layering, budding and grafting. The next 70 odd pages give specific detail on the methods of reproducing over 200 different native plant varieties.

This book does not pretend to be anything except a technically accurate, really useful reference book. If you buy this book, then you are already converted and don’t need to be convinced of the merits of natives so there is no preaching or wowing the reader. For a book that is likely to have a long lifespan, Random House could have been more generous with a heavier duty cover. My copy is already curling badly. I can see that in a bookcase where other, glossier, fashion garden books will be culled over the years to come, this one will live on although probably tattered and worn.

The Native Garden

Authors: Isabel Gabites and Rob Lucas

Publisher: Random House, $39.95

Subtitled “Design Themes from Wild New Zealand”, this is a revised and updated edition of the 1988 publication when it was pretty cutting edge philosophy.

It is well anchored in a passion for our environment and for our native flora but not so well anchored in a passion for traditional domestic gardening. The gardens photographed do tend to look as if they belong to DOC workers or environmentalists and the underlying philosophy is one of ecology and celebrating our indigenous landscape and flora.

This is not so much a book for the beginner who is wondering how to start a garden. It is a book that you will enjoy more if you are already a convert to the cause and if you envisage your own small plot of land as a microcosm of the wider environment.

Technically very sound and remarkably comprehensive, it concentrates on plant varieties which are available in the market. It is lavishly illustrated with many close-up photographs but also some stunning images of native plants in the wild. This book is a celebration of all that is special about our natural world in New Zealand but also a useful reference for translating it into our home patch.

October 19, 2007 Weekly Garden Guide


With the open garden high season upon us, owners will be relieved to hear that the terror threat in gardens is low this year.

While just about every activist group in the country has been implicated in the para military training in the Ureweras (peace activists, Maori sovereignty advocates, animal rights activists and environmentalists), there is no suggestion that active gardeners in horticultural societies have been recruited yet. However, vigilant garden openers may like to keep their eyes peeled for Latvian ex-KGB agents who are easily identified by their bad hats and the notebooks they carry.

  • If you have naturalised annuals which self seed year after year (thinking particularly of pansies but there are many others too), pull out plants with inferior flowers or yukky colour mixes before they seed or you will find that increasing numbers of plants have these undesirable characteristics in future seasons.
  • When we said last week that serious inorganic gardeners will use Orthene to combat white fly, we were in fact advocating that home gardeners look to a more environmentally friendly option, of which there are several. You need to be a certificated, card carrying chemically qualified person these days to buy Orthene.
  • Labour Weekend is the traditional time for major plantings in the vegetable garden but the cold wet weather this week may deter all but the most hardy of traditionalists. It won’t matter if you delay a week or two before starting to sow your corn or to plant out your tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and courgettes. Or corn can be started in small pots if you are too cold and wet to direct sow. It is a crop best planted in succession to ensure a longer harvest season. Don’t delay on getting your carrot seeds in, however. It is also time for planting main crop potatoes and kumara runners can be planted in warm areas. Keep successional sowings of peas. All grandparents should sow peas as part of their duties to young grandchildren. It doesn’t matter if none make it to the pot. Pity the poor child who misses out on the pleasure of eating peas fresh from the pod in the garden.
  • Once you have garden borders weed free, laying a good thick layer of mulch (around 10cm) will deter the next crop of weeds from germinating as well as adding structure the soil and feeding the plants if you use compost mulch. Just make sure that the mulch is free of weeds or you will multiply problems ten fold.
  • Keep pruning in between showers. Despite the dripping foliage, this is the best time of the year to prune most plants (but not cherry trees which are summer pruned).