COMFORT ZONE

A gardener must, I feel, take responsibility for the well-being of plants he or she brings into the garden that’s far from home.

If you want to grow cacti, providing a hot, dry environment is a prerequisite to bringing those curious plants on board; if alpine beauties are your passion, you must provide an environment where those delicate plants can survive or better still, flourish. But it’s not easy.

Southland’s not tropical, and Riverton – coastal fishing village with a maritime environment best suited to leathery leafed natives and low growing succulents – is not ideal for hummingbird-pollinated moon flowers and monsoon-dependant vines and fruiting trees!

At times, I’m sorry to say, I failed to honour my contract. My ambition has sniffed out all sorts of would-be wonderful additions to my garden: flowering plants like hibiscus and tecomanthe that caught my attention and imagination but, once planted and subjected to winter, turned up their vegetative toes and became compost. I’ve chilled to death all sorts of plants and fried some as well, overprotecting them with upturned plastic water bottles and an unconscious regime of under-watering that led to their desiccation and eventual demise.

It’s hubris, I suppose, for a gardener to think that they can grow anything they fancy, using modern materials and the wisdom provided by the internet where any amount of advice is offered, but sometimes, it just doesn’t fly. Plants die because conditions are just not right.

A trap I fall into often is set in the fruit and vege section of our local supermarket.

Here, exotic temptations such as guava, pomegranates and mango are offered. These ripe fruits filled with seed or stone cry out to me to save, plant and grow them in my garden, so far removed from where they were grown.

I succumb to their pleading with monotonous regularity. Why not, I reason? They just might… but usually, they don’t.

Sometimes, I succeed! At least, I draw from the stone or seed, a tiny seedling, green and fresh with promise, but over time I find they can’t fulfil their original intent and languish, failing to gain height or bulk, and remain the hint of a tropical beauty, more a bonsai version of what I had hoped for.

I plant them out in my garden anyway, hoping for a miracle or a climate changedriven turn of events, but one Southland frost usually deals to that fantasy.

It doesn’t stop me though. When next I see something juicy and new on display at the market, I can’t help but buy a bagful and instruct my family to “save the seed!”.

I have had successes; trees mostly, that somehow survived conditions they were not genetically designed for.

My loquat has passed the critical mark and looks happy, spreading its sun-loving leaves among the apple and plum trees. A rapidly growing paulownia is forming a broad crown above every other tree in its corner of the garden. Mulberries, red and white, look quite tatty over winter, but grow on and upwards as soon as spring arrives and look set to become huge.

I’m pushing the limits with some of the newer bamboo varieties, especially the “giant” that’s entering its third year and finally pushing up thick canes; bamboo often presents thin, tentative growth for a season or two before firing up.

I do sometimes protect these “trial” plants from the elements when they are small, by draping net curtains over their young crowns when it feels like a frost in the night air or mulching their trunks with straw.

Nowadays though, I rarely feel I need to, as the forest garden itself forms a moderating, warming blanket that serves to ease the new arrivals through the colder seasons.

The under-soil fabric of fungi and plant hyphae and roots also helps, somehow, to make the transition from garden centre to outdoor garden. I’ve been reading about the role of mother trees in wild forests and believe I have trees here now able to nurture adopted “babies” through the challenging early years.

I haven’t abandoned my responsibility, but feel I’m now sharing the role with mature plants I looked after years ago when it was their turn to face the challenging southern elements. ✤