COTTAGE GARDEN CHARMER

- This could well be the most floriferous dairy farm in rural Auckland.

Fifty-three years ago, when Bryce Laing brought his wife Glenys to live on his family farm in Waiau Pā in south Auckland, his main concern was whether she could milk a cow. Clearly she passed that test with flying colours, but dairying has never been her passion.

Right from the beginning, what Glenys loved most was gardens.

In summertime, well over half an acre of the land around their home is alive with bees and butterflies. Roses ramble and climb, tall spikes of hollyhocks and delphiniums bloom, petunias cascade from hanging baskets, and everywhere there is colour.

Where now there is the romantic chaos of a cottage garden, when she arrived on the scene more than half a century ago, there was only a solitary liquidambar tree and a few hydrangeas lining the tanker track.

Glenys says the process of planning the garden was mostly “trial and error” but husband Bryce reckons it all happened by osmosis, because both of them came from gardening families and Glenys caught the bug early.

“My Mum had a beautiful big garden with lots of roses and I’ve always loved them,” she says. “I’m a rose freak – Bryce has the scars to show for it. He’s had quite a few nasty cuts from the climbers when he’s been out mowing the lawns on the ride-on and I’m always a bit afraid he’s going to take to them with the secateurs.”

Bryce reckons the garden is strictly his wife’s territory – except he does do the lawns… and he hauls away pruned branches… and sprays the roses if necessary… and also does any heavy lifting.

Oh and a couple of years back, after Glenys used a length of hose to mark out a large new area of garden bed she wanted, it was Bryce who made it happen with his tractor and rotary hoe.

“I don’t help prune the roses though because that causes strife,” he says, admitting that Glenys thinks he is too brutal.

“We’ve decided it’s best if we don’t do that together,” she agrees. “After all these years of marriage it’s better that we don’t fall out over rose pruning.”

There are over 300 roses growing in her garden and Glenys has a sentimental attachment to many of them, even if they don’t always love her back. “There’s the most beautiful orange rose called ‘Alexander’ that

I got because my aunt had one in her garden,” she says. “I reckon it must be about 45 years old and it just keeps going, but it’s a mean rose to prune if you get pricked by its thorns.”

A memorial garden that Glenys had planted after losing her mother is now filled with roses including the large red hybrid tea rose ‘Loving Memory’, the beautifully fragranced ‘Scent by an Angel’ that blooms abundantly over summer, and a pink carpet rose in an old barrel that she brought back from her mother’s last garden and that has now sunk its roots through the rotten wood and into her own.

There are more roses pretty much everywhere. Glenys particularly loves her white ‘Iceberg’ plants and the three ‘Blackberry Nips’ she planted relatively recently. ‘Compassion’ is a favourite climber and another reliable performer is ‘Serendipity’, a yellow rose that continues to bloom well into winter. Then there is the beautiful lilac ‘Forget Me Not’ rose and the David Austin English roses – Glenys particularly loves the one he called after his wife ‘Pat Austin’.

And somehow, she keeps finding space for newer releases. “I’ve got a wonderful one called ‘Green With Envy’ that a friend’s daughter found in the garden centre and brought back for me,” she says.

Auckland’s humid weather isn’t always friendly to rose growers but Glenys tries not to spray too often, instead focusing on fertilising well to keep plants strong and healthy. She gets through plenty of rose fertiliser. Lots of sheep pellets are scattered and a bit of well-rotted cow manure used if Bryce brings some over from the farm. The whole garden also enjoys a regular dose of Ocean Organics liquid fertiliser.

In the earlier years, a lot of the old-fashioned cottage garden plants came from cuttings given to her by family and friends.

Glenys still grows annuals such as petunias and zinnias

Glenys Laing particularly loves her white ‘Iceberg’ roses and the three ‘Blackberry Nip’ she planted relatively recently. ‘Compassion’ is a favourite climber and another reliable performer is ‘Serendipity’.

from seed but while filling holes in her beds and going for maximum colour, she puts in such a multitude of plants – literally hundreds every season – that she can’t raise them all herself.

“They love me at the garden centre in Waiuku,” she says with a laugh. “I go there every week, and I know them all, they’re my friends.”

“They’d actually make a loss if it wasn’t for Glenys,” adds her husband, dryly.

Cottage gardens bristling with annuals are a lot of work but Glenys never gets tired of tending her plants. “That’s what I do and I love them,” she says, simply.

Some of the old-fashioned hedgerow-style plants almost take care of themselves – Glenys is particularly attached to the tall hollyhocks that self-seed everywhere if allowed.

“I started off with hollyhocks many years ago after I went to Howick Historical Village and bought some seed there. I’ve got so many now and in all different colours,” says Glenys, and when Bryce dismisses them as “triffids” and “ugly looking things” she only laughs. Those hollyhocks aren’t going anywhere.

There are some plants she has failed with; for example, although they do get winter frosts, to her great sadness it simply isn’t cold enough to grow paeonies; and for some reason her three ‘Margaret Merril’ roses have also been a disappointment and she has to keep cutting out the dead bits.

And if Glenys isn’t careful, plants are lost to the plentiful snails and rabbits. She recalls that once, “we went away for a few days and got back to find two clumps of ranunculus had been chewed just about to the ground”.

Now in her seventies, Glenys is getting some extra help in the garden with more laborious tasks such as planting, pruning roses over winter and trimming the buxus topiary balls at the front of the house, particularly when getting ready to open the garden it to the public. Naturally, Glenys has supportive friends and family, as well as a regular helper, and is particularly grateful to have had someone in to trim the 27 Pittosporum ‘Golf Balls’ into shape, as it’s a task to make the hands ache.

But there are no plans to retire to an easy-care section. Glenys can’t imagine leaving her garden and Bryce doesn’t want to stop farming.

The Laing property was once a rehab farm for soldiers coming back from war. There were several such farms on this flat, fertile estuarine inland from the southern shoreline of Manukau Harbour. (Waiau Pā is in the semirural Franklin area of Auckland. Its name means river of swirling currents.)

For both of them, there are so many memories here – plants that have been gifted or swapped with great friends, treasures she spotted on tours of other people’s

“I’ll wake up in the morning and think the weather is grotty. Then I’ll look through my kitchen window and the next moment I’m out there,” she says.

gardens and managed to track down for her own, reminders of family members who have gone now.

Unquestionably, life is busy. Glenys does all the paperwork for the farm and is often looking after grandchildren and baking up a storm, but there is never a time when she isn’t happy to get into her garden.

“I’ll wake up in the morning and think the weather is grotty. Then I’ll look through my kitchen window and the next moment I’m out there,” she says.

The newest section was planted after Glenys was asked to take part in the Franklin Hospice Garden Ramble. The fundraiser is well supported by the local community and its gardeners, and has raised more than $200,000 since 2012. Here, it has taken the grandchildren’s cricket pitch out of action – which wasn’t an entirely popular move, she acknowledges.

And Bryce has made it very clear that the fence isn’t going to be pushed out further into the pasture. So Glenys’ bids for expansion are limited to planting daffodil bulbs and wildflowers along the tanker tracks.

Still there are always more plants – sweet peas in the vegetable beds, gazebos to set jasmine climbing over, pots of stock, seedlings being potted up on Bryce’s workbench – and seemingly no shortage of inspiration or ideas. “A cottage garden is a lot of work and I’m no expert,” says Glenys. “But at night I’ll sit with my gardening books and work out things in my head. I’ll try to think about heights and then block out the colours I want.”

Citing the example of her hospice garden, she explains: “I started at one end with yellows, oranges and ambers then brought it a bit of white and gradually went through to the pinks and burgundies at the other end.

“I just do my own thing and it’s trial and error.

If it doesn’t look right then I have to shift stuff,” she adds. “I’m a bit obsessed, but I think it is a good obsession.”