HAVE you noticed how flowers suit their season? Take summer’s roses which, despite changing fashions, remain the world’s favourite flower. Would we be so fond of them browned and battered by early spring storms and chilly temperatures? Somehow the subtle colours and fragile petals of roses suit early summer’s more gentle air. And their fragrance [...]

WHEN it comes to helping produce the next generation of gardeners, I can’t claim any medals yet unless I stretch things a little and claim my Dunedin son’s partner, the only one to comment on our new, albeit temporary garden. “There’s no vegetable garden and no place for one,” she said after a saunter outside. [...]

WHEN you are next in Central Otago, make a time to go and see Jane Falconer’s Patearoa garden, Clachanburn – and never complain about where your garden is again. It’s a grand garden, an oasis situated in a most improbable place about as inland as you can get in the Maniototo at altitude 1500m. Clachanburn [...]

TWO emails came in close together the other day from readers saying they appreciated Noticeboard and gardeners’ generosity. That’s something I can understand, being what you might describe as ‘between gardens’ in winter, the very time I value special garden treasures most of all. I am missing simple pleasures like the perfume of ‘Paper Whites’, [...]

FASHION by its very nature is fickle. That’s fine when it comes to clothing – though not family finances. Garden fashion is another matter. Good gardens take time to develop so how does one ever keep up with trends? Like other gardeners, I reckon I just do my own thing. But let’s be honest here, [...]

DID you find your house and garden by chance? Or did you hunt for your home for months? Many gardeners move home, after falling in love with a property up for sale, despite having no plans to shift. I envy them as we have moved to a new home after a two-year search that has [...]

IN the floral froth of spring, it’s easy to overlook our native plants but our gardens would be much the poorer without them. Purists plant ‘native gardens’ where not an exotic is allowed to intrude yet New Zealand’s plants are such great mixers, to me that’s a shame. Anyway, where do you draw the line? [...]

IN almost 10 years of our publishing Weekend Gardener one of the quaintest stories has to be Pooch Paradise this issue where Lesley Ingham finds a dog-friendly garden. We know gardeners are true pet lovers and with the affair come a few problems – so this little masterpiece (page 10) is a fascinating doggy delight [...]

CUSTOM rules our lives. Why else, in a world dominated by right-handed and right-eyed people, do websites have their pages index down the left hand margin? Likewise, why does every Kiwi garden need a lawn? Sure, any plant cover is better than concrete or tarseal in environmental terms but mowers burn fossil fuels and add [...]

HOW different plants get their names is sometimes obvious; others are puzzling. You expect a camellia called ‘Pink Perfection’ to have pink, perfectly formed flowers with precisely positioned petals – and it does. And it’s no surprise one name for a popular dwarf cordyline with burgundy weeping foliage is ‘Red Fountain’. But why is the [...]