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- Garden designer Ross Palmer advocates playing to your garden’s strengths.

Gardeners should play to their garden’s strengths, says Wellington garden designer Ross Palmer. His own garden proves the success of this approach. The practicalities of gardening in Wellington often overwhelm those looking for the floriferous, gentle gardens possible in other areas of New Zealand. But in planning and developing his northeast-facing hillside garden in Melrose, Ross has embraced the challenges of the Wellington climate. “Trying to grow irises or roses on my hill, forget it,” he pronounces.

Instead, Ross has turned what many would see as the disadvantages of gardening in Wellington into positives. The northerly – the predominant wind of Wellington’s summers – can be intense, and “big flowers tend to get smashed”. Add to this the wind and lack of rain mean in summer the hillside is dry. So, in Ross’ garden you’ll find a lot of Mediterranean-adapted plants. “They will sail through our dry periods and want to grow in winter when there’s excess moisture.”

With such an exposed site, the garden does get a bit of salt spray, but fortunately it’s not in the brunt of the southerly so plants don’t suffer from salt burn.

Clearly, Ross’ approach to gardening is well suited to the adaptations necessary as our climate continues to change. “It’s a bit of a bag of mine in that I’m trying to create resilient gardens,” says Ross.

To this end, he has worked with a matrix of regenerating forest. “We have an extraordinary biota around us.”

When Ross first started gardening in Melrose 15 years ago, he was surprised to find creatures such as geckos and skinks as well as native birds in his garden. He realised he had to keep their needs in mind when planting, and increase the diversity of native plant material so that he would end up with “a much bigger larder” for the critters.

This meant planting things that would provide food not just in one season but give enough variety so there was something for the animals and birds to eat throughout the year. As he researched further, he realised that areas of thick cover were also needed for various animals

When Ross Palmer first started gardening in Melrose 15 years ago, he was surprised to find creatures such as geckos and skinks as well as native birds in his garden.

to nest or hide in, and has enjoyed creating these conditions. “It’s been quite a wonderful journey for me.”

Ross is a strong advocate for the positives of our capital city’s climate. “Increasingly, our winters are incredibly warm. Frost never visits this garden. I’ve been looking at our climate and it’s so maritime,” he says. “We’re a maritime nation but Wellington is truly uber coastal which is why its summer temperatures are so low. Plants from cloud forests really love it; things from very highland tropical forests that hate heat, can do very, very well in Wellington because of our very moderate climate.”

Included in these are the plants that grow at the top of the mountains in Lord Howe Island which “love the Wellington climate”. Several of Lord Howe Island’s umbrella palms (Hedyscepe) can be seen in the garden as the plant “literally grows like a weed in Wellington and can cope with the wind”.

Like most gardeners, Ross is a keen garden visitor and he talks of the similarities between Wellington and San Francisco where, in the Botanical Garden, the fog off the sea during summer depresses the temperature which has enabled the planting of a magnificent cloud forest garden – “it’s the most amazing, extraordinary place.”

Epiphytes are an important part of New Zealand’s flora and are a feature of Ross’ garden. “They caught my imagination as a child,” he says, and he has been working with them for as long as he can remember. “They’re part of our biota, in our forests, in the trees. Our forests are unusual as they have lots of tropical characteristics in a thoroughly temperate land.”

Although epiphytes can be seen throughout the 1400 square metres of the garden, it’s in the courtyard that they take pride of place on a bromeliad wall. Originally, the wall hosted bromeliads and orchids, but “the bromeliads did so well the orchids had to go”.

Ross’ approach to green walls was shaped after talking to a gardener in Sydney who specialised in them and told Ross that in creating one, you had to make an ecosystem. “He was so right; bromeliad cups leak so they supply water.”

The site’s steepness poses challenges too. Wheelbarrows are no use, so moving large amounts of compost is not possible. In any case, compost just washes or slides away so Ross has a “chop and drop” policy – leaves or branches that drop on the ground or any prunings, even of trees, is laid on the ground to feed back into the garden. Larger pieces are chopped up.

From top: Rengarenga (Arthropodium cirratum); The

was a pot plant in Ross’ sister’s uni flat several years ago and was later tended by his mother.

Salvia buchananii; Masdevallia coccinea.

Left: The blue grey leaves of Agave americana franzosinii complement the pinky red Euphorbia rigida. Above: Ross’ newly planted bromeliad wall.

A problem with Wellington’s hillside gardens is that the combination of wind and rain causes the topsoil to flow down the hill. The bulk and weight of this chopped up vegetation helps stop erosion. When planting, Ross covers the surrounding soil with this mixture and then lies larger branches across it.

If drainage needs to be improved, pumice is added and when planting ferns, he adds compost.

The only composting Ross does is of problematic weeds which he puts in a bin in a dark spot with no water. Once they’re dead, they’re put back into the bush.

Ross was obsessed with plants from a young age. “Horticulture has been my thing forever. It’s just what I do.” His mother, Patsy, was a great gardener and greatly influenced his plant journey.

With a Diploma of Horticulture from Lincoln University and a BA (Hons) in Garden Design from the University of Greenwich in the UK, Ross has lived, and designed gardens, in New York, Sydney and Thailand. Now back in New Zealand, he has several local commissions underway and Welton House, his sister, Wendy’s five-star New Zealand Gardens Trust garden in Marlborough, is an ongoing project.

Wendy is the Chair of the New Zealand Gardens

The only composting Ross does is of problematic weeds which he puts in a bin in a dark spot with no water.

Trust and Ross will be deeply involved in the Trust’s 2023 Conference which is being held in Wellington. His Melrose garden and another he has designed in the Wairarapa will be toured as part of the conference, and he is organising the conference’s plant auction. He will also present a paper at the conference on the importance of fostering biodiversity in the garden as one of the design pillars in garden creation in the time of the Anthropocene.

For Ross, gardening, particularly in one’s own garden, is a giant experiment and you have to be reactive to hits and misses. “Trying things, monitoring progress and seeing how much of what you read was true, where you’ve gone wrong, that’s the stuff I love, that’s what keeps you going,” he explains. “The driving plan for my garden is its aesthetic. It’s not a collector’s thing; these plants are all connected. In terms of plant choices, it’s about what Wellington is.

“My message to the world is look for the plant choices that are right for your garden because they’re there, you just have to find them.”

And of gardening in Wellington, in a city he clearly loves and enjoys living, in he grins. “Wellington moulds you, you don’t mould Wellington.”

For Ross, gardening, particularly in one’s own garden, is a giant experiment and you have to be reactive to hits and misses.

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2022-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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