Precious time

No budget, a little help, lots of hours, but these two volunteers keep gardening. Every week, Brian Kimber gets on his bike, and with plants and tools on board, cycles to the spinal unit at Burwood Hospital.

Brian and his fellow volunteer gardener, Bede Boland, have been looking after the gardens around the unit for the past seven years. This includes not only the unit’s beautiful courtyard garden but also the garden beds outside the Tapper and Milner flats where families of patients stay, sometimes for months, supporting their family member.

Each of the bedrooms in the spinal unit has huge glass sliding doors that open onto the courtyard. These are a window to the garden for those inside the rooms and give easy wheelchair access for those able to leave their beds. Once outside, patients and their families and friends can walk the garden’s paths with ease as they are wide and smooth which makes negotiating a wheelchair trouble-free.

Whether looking out onto the garden, sitting while enjoying it or being wheeled around, the garden is a peaceful environment for those rehabilitating from a life-changing injury. Patients frequently comment to the gardeners that “it’s lovely to look out and see the garden”.

In the courtyard garden, sinuous paths wend between large beds of shrubs such as pieris, maples, dogwoods, Mexican orange blossom and lavenders while perennials add additional texture and colour. Flax, kōwhai, rengarenga (reinga lilies) and pittosporums give a New Zealand flavour. An edging of bergenias around one of the beds thrives in the Canterbury climate and provides colour in spring before plants such as osteospermums and roses take over. The large dark green leaves of Acanthus mollis and the swaying greenlime Lomandra ‘Lime Tuff’ add colour and texture. An unknown rose climbs over a trellis, flowering profusely. Elsewhere, a leggy euphorbia has an alien-like quality.

Some areas in the gardens have been overplanted so Bede and Brian are working on rationalising each of the beds. “We dig things up and move them somewhere else,” Bede says. “I’ve tried to add a bit of colour around the place.”

The huge wooden wheelbarrow in the courtyard bears testament to this and pops with colour from annuals such as pansies and polyanthus, while succulents and sedums provide continuity through the seasonal changes.

Bede raises seedlings at home and he brings in any he has over as well as plants he’s divided. “Whatever I have spare, I bung them in.”

The pair tend the garden every week – twice weekly in spring and autumn, and once a week in winter and summer. They work for three hours (including a break for morning tea). Deadheading is done twice a year.

Bede, who retired 12 years ago, has always been a keen gardener who enjoyed “pottering around in the garden”. His wife was already doing volunteer work in another part of Burwood Hospital when he retired and told him they were looking for gardeners. “Maybe I can do that,” he thought.

Brian read about the need for gardeners in the local newspaper and went along and offered to help. Volunteers come and go but for some time it has just been Bede and Brian weeding, planting, mulching and watering the spinal unit’s gardens.

There is no budget allocated to the garden. When Brian started volunteering there was no wheelbarrow, but after a request to the unit’s social worker, one appeared. The tools that have been bought for use in the garden are cheap and of poor quality so the pair now bring their own.

However, things looked up recently when the batterypowered hedgetrimmer they asked for was bought out of money fundraised by the volunteers. With no budget to buy plants the greenfingered pair bring in lots of things from home – cuttings, plants they’ve divided and seedlings.

Recently, Kelly Bingle, the Burwood Hospital’s contracted gardener, has also helped Bede and Brian with the more difficult jobs.

Wayne Ramsay, who is the caretaker for the eight accommodation flats, is “a keen dahlia man” and adds dahlias to the mix, planting them in the gardens around the flats to add extra colour and cheer for those staying there.

Before the dahlias start to flower, these garden beds are full of flag irises. Unfortunately, agapanthus are a problem; they’re everywhere and no matter what the two gardening stalwarts do they just can’t get rid of them.

For the families staying in the flats, the lovely gardens surrounding the units add a bit of cheer to what is a challenging situation.

The people in the accommodation often compliment the gardeners and are grateful for their commitment. With the beds in the spinal unit in constant demand, the gardeners’ work will be appreciated for many years to come.