GREEN THUMBS & GOLD MEDALS

WE’RE PROUD TO BE PLANT-PEOPLE, BUT WE’RE CHUFFED TO fiND OUT OUR customers think we’re as good with people as we are plants. So good that we’ve won a gold medal in the Reader’s Digest Quality Service Awards. Thanks to everyone who gave us a big green thumbs up!

Abeth Mckerchar had a collection of houseplants at home in the Philippines which she loved. So when, more than a decade ago, her sister in New Zealand asked Abeth to come over and help with her children, she left them in a friend’s care – temporarily, or so she thought.

But while in New Zealand she met Lindsay, whom she married after a whirlwind courtship. So all of a sudden she was resident in Mataura, Southland without a plant to her name.

“And I missed them,” she says. “I wanted to have my plants again to brighten my home. So I started Googling where could I buy them and how could I grow them in this different climate.”

Now she is surrounded by lush green leaves and the bright coloured foliage she particularly loves. She estimates her collection numbers an incredible 700 or so plants. “My husband calls me a hoarder. I would rather say obsessed.”

She propagates a lot and as well as trading the odd plant for meat and fish with colleagues at the two resthomes where she works – “the other day I got a salmon“– she sells plants online to fund plant food and the purchase of any plants she doesn’t already have. When buyers come to the house, they are gobsmacked. “The first thing most people say is wow.”

But she admits she struggles to let too many plant babies go. “It’s hard for me to sell them. Before they get picked up I often take a picture and sometimes I look at it and think of them in their new home. I hope they are behaving there!”