It’s the time of year when our gardens are finally emerging fully from winter’s onslaught; scrappy and tired, but ripe for restoration and regeneration.
It often doesn’t take too much money or effort in order to bring our outdoor areas back to life in time for summer either. As always, imagination tends to be the most outstanding key ingredient.
Gardening writer Sarah O’Neil is already in her element, enjoying the promise that comes with a new season.
“This is the time to set the scene, paying special attention to the hard landscaping such as fences, raised beds and screens,” she says.
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“I like to think of this part as building a theatre, providing a stage on which the actors — your plants — will star.
“Essentially, you are laying the foundations for a garden that will bring you huge pleasure, now, and in the future.”
She says that trees can be the best backdrop, providing privacy and shade, but it’s getting quite late in terms of planting them.
“You really need to get in right now and be careful where you place them as you want to avoid having trees growing too close to the house.”
O’Neil’s own special-interest lies in growing her own fruit and vegetables and she says that every season she finds herself excited yet again by all the new seeds that are coming to market.
“There’s never been a better time to be a gardener — not only can you save money but you can also have great fun.
“Take tomatoes, for example,” she says.
“There are black, yellow, orange, purple, and of course traditional red varieties available now at garden centres and they all taste subtly different, as well as looking fantastic in a salad.”
O’Neil is a great believer in getting children involved in the gardening process, teaching them how to mulch the soil to keep weeds down, and how to water when necessary.
She’s noticed that lots of seedling or packet seeds now, cater for helping to raise butterfly numbers — another project that young family members will enjoy.
“Many people assume that the only hosts caterpillars like to feed on are swan plants, but that’s definitely not true as they also like many other flowers, including cosmos, marigolds and zinnias, and these are all great companion plants in a vegetable garden,” she says. “And of course the bees like a wide variety of nectars too.”
As far as flowers go, O’Neil has noticed a huge resurgence in the popularity of traditional favourites such as dahlias.
“Again, you just wouldn’t believe how many new colours and different varieties there are out there and dahlias always make a spectacular show.
She says that other staples of our grandmothers’ gardens, including cornflowers, nigella, Love in the Mist and even carnations are also staging comebacks.
The great thing about modern gardens is that we not only design them and choose plants to give ourselves satisfaction, we design them to share and many happy Kiwi occasions are held on the deck or the patio, with friends.
O’Neil has some good ideas around this, too.
“I like to plant things that have a wonderful fragrance by my entertaining areas and queen of the night is a top contender, along with night-scented stock, which has the most amazing perfume.
“White flowers of any kind always look lovely and romantic in the moonlight,” she says.
Flowers and edibles apart, there are some more very distinct garden trends this season and in Northern climes, a sub-tropical vibe is top of the pops.
Luckily, these are the sorts of plantings that look great, can cover large areas of land, and require minimal input in terms of on-going care, although they do need plenty of compost at the outset.
If you’re in a hurry to achieve that island-resort look, banana palms grow quickly, giving almost instant gratification, with their huge, lush leaves. They need full sunshine and shelter from the wind — plus plenty of water. Some types are purely ornamental but if you want the added bonus of actual bananas, there are a number of online tutorials that discuss all the ins and outs of growing them successfully. They don’t handle frost well, so are most suited to gardens in, around, and north of Auckland.
Also popular are various types of taro, which also put on a great display in a relatively short time and vireyas and clivias help to add colour, as will coleus, with its green and bright-red or pink variegated leaves.
Tropical garden fans often add in the ever-popular canna lily, and bromeliads are very eye-catching when they are massed together but these relatives of the pineapple family do require a lot of work as they regularly produce ‘pups’, which need to be separated and re-potted.
The good thing about tropical style is the fact that you can add in traditional favourites and they work well. The dahlias we talked about earlier look fantastic with palms and leafy shrubs, and begonias can be used to add extra colour too.
