Writings...

General comments, caveat emptor

Plant names are given with the botanical name first and a common name following in brackets.

Our climate here in Southland, New Zealand is maritime, USDA zone approximately 8b. Rainfall is reliable and distributed fairly evenly throughout the year. Soil is loam varying in depth from a couple of inches to several feet over heavy yellow clay. Soil is acid (only blue hydrangeas!)

Summer highs rarely exceed 30 degrees centigrade. Winter ground frosts typically are around -7 centigrade. We usually see snow once or twice in a winter but it rarely lies for any length of time.

All in all then, a good climate for growing and overseas visitors are often amazed at the range of things that will survive here but there are still plants that take exception to us.

• Plants from an alpine situation, even many New Zealand natives, dislike our humid, damp climate and our clay based soil tends to lack good enough drainage.
  
• South African Heathers (ericas) are no good here. By contrast, the Scottish, Cornish and Irish ones do just fine.
  
• Plants from dry climates (and sometimes even those from climates with a dry season) are out.
  
• Plants from a continental climate that like well defined seasons. If they grow at all they may not flower well. For example, summer heat and in particular, warm nights are required to make the flowers of Hemerocallis (Daylilies) open properly. We can grow the plant but it produces masses of leaves and does not flower well.

About us, the people behind Maple Glen

This site is about the garden but, very briefly...

Muriel. Muriel started creating Maple Glen from a bare paddock. A plant collecting nut, gardening nut and bird nut ever since.

Bob. Born Co.Antrim, Northern Ireland 1929. Bob emigrated to New Zealand in 1951 and was a herd tester before marrying Muriel in 1965. He once complained about shifting the same fence three years in a row. But not much. Bob died in January of 2024 in his 95th year and is much missed.

Kimmy. Kim brings her own passion and enthusiasm to the garden, we can't wait to see her ideas take shape.

Rob. Rob likes nothing more than something that involves the digger, water and lots of mud. To relax he wanders around in the 'golden hour' with a camera and pretends he knows how to take photographs.

Our garden is never weed free but we strive to keep it reasonably tidy. Choosing "plants for places", that is, plants that like where they are planted and thrive helps enormously. Weeding then mostly becomes the job of keeping the competition in check while new plantings become established.

Spraying. For many people this is a contentious issue. We have never used insecticides, preferring instead to let nature find a balance. The ladybird population fluctuates in step with the aphid population and the starlings and magpies do well when the grass grubs do. It sorts itself out.

To help control weeds along with manual weeding and the use of a petrol powered 'weedeater' we also employ a considerable quantity of Roundup, this being a herbicide that is reasonably safe and one we are familiar with. Roundup is particularly useful around trees and shrubs while they are becoming established. Well grown rhododendrons require little upkeep beyond a yearly wander through with a spade to find and remove the self-sown elderberry, blackberry and mulenbeckia vine seedlings that sometimes take root there. Roundup translocates. You only have to touch a leaf on a plant that is susceptable to it and the whole plant can die. This is an advantage, but only when the plant you touch with it is a weed! If we inadvertently touch a valuable plant with spray the easiest thing to do is immediately break off the leaf or twig that has been affected. Alternatively, grab a handful of clay and rub the spray off. If water is handy then the spray can also be washed off.

Mass plantings of things with a completely dormant period are also amenable to spraying around and in some cases, over. Done once a year, over time this has virtually eliminated weeds from the daffodil, bluebell, astilbe, colchicum and snowdrop patches. When planting this sort of garden though it is important not to mix plants with conflicting dormant periods. It can be tempting to try and combine things like this to extend the season of an area but it does not work! For example, Astilbes and Daffodils (as in a bed of astilbes with a daffodil border) do not combine well because the daffs are through the ground at just about the time the Astilbes completely die off.

Of necessity then we do a lot of spraying in late autumn and winter. Winter is not the best time to be using herbicides as the manufacturers recommend application to actively growing plants but because of winter dormancy that is when we have to use it. It also helps give us a window of 'breathing space' in spring when we are busy with farming and nursery duties. The weeds that germinate in autumn and winter have been sprayed and are dying off and the new spring crop of weeds is slow to get started when the ground is cold. Meanwhile the established winter dormant plants are beginning to grow and will in many cases starve the weed seedlings of sunlight before they get a proper foothold.

Edges and lawns.

Edges are kept with a combination of herbicide spray (Roundup), the petrol weedeater and a sharp spade. Used in late winter, the spade redefines curves and cleans out 'catching ditches' full of dead leaves. It also keeps the user warm on a cold, frosty morning! There is nothing that improves the look of the garden more than a run around with the mower. Blowing twigs and stray leaves off the lawns enhances the shapes of the edges and draws the eye away from any weeds that may be present!

Plants, sometimes even large trees die or are damaged in storms. It is inevitable, ongoing and entirely natural. As a result each year we remove many cubic metres of branches and timber from the garden. We also often decide to remove or cut back quite large trees and shrubs to improve views or provide more space for other plantings. The firewood is split, dried and used to heat our homes in winter. Removing a golden pine

In the late 1990s we bought an old secondhand Hitachi hydraulic excavator. As well as helping landscape new areas of the garden the 'digger' has also been used to create seven new large curving paths through established parts of the garden. This has opened out areas that had become overgrown, helped rejuvenate rhododendrons that had almost ceased flowering due to the shade of other trees and created dramatic 'long views' over areas of garden. The original paths were usually quite narrow and often had extreme sideways slopes as they had been dug solely with a spade.

Gardens are made of living things. Living things grow and change. That's the point, that's a good part of the fascination and interest in gardening. We get so frustrated with visitors who want a plant that will always be covered in flowers, never be more than a metre high and never need pruning or watering...if that's what you want buy an artificial plant, or just paint a concrete wall!

In a similar vein are the people who want to 'have' a garden. As if it was a project you could begin, bring to completion and then forget about. It doesn't work that way.

Warning! Politically incorrect views lie ahead!

We are occasionally asked "why don't you have native plants?" or "where is your native garden?" Well, we do grow and value many New Zealand native plants in our garden. Among them are a very nice Agathis (Kauri) and many Arthropodium (Rock Lily), Astelia 'Silver Spear', Cordyline (Cabbage Tree), Celmisia (Mountain Daisy), Carex secta (Swamp Tussock), Chionchloa (Snow Grass), Clematis forsteri, Clianthus (Kaka beak), Dacrydium (Red Pine), Libertia, Myosotidium (Chatham Island Forget-me-not), Nothofagus (Native Beech), Pittosporum, Podocarpus (Totara) and Sophora (Kowhai). However, we grow these plants not because they are New Zealand natives, but because we like them. Because they grow well in our climate and location and have interesting habit, foliage or flowers. The same criteria by which we choose all of the plants we grow. To value one plant over another because of its country of origin seems to us about as sensible as valuing one person over another because of their country of origin, or to put it even more bluntly, to value a person over another because of the colour of their skin. Over the top? Perhaps, but there is definitely an element of xenophobia in the labeling of plants which have been declared pests in this country. Ongoing attacks on our garden by the local environmental council frustrate and sadden us. Just what is a 'native' anyway? Plants such as that Myosotidium are from the Chatham Islands, 700 kilometres to the east of New Zealand and are aclaimed as 'native'. If there was an island the same distance off our west coast that had been claimed by Australia 150 years ago would the plants and animals from there be 'exotic'?

The waxeye is a common small New Zealand native bird. Except for the fact that an almost identical bird lives in Australia and the Maori name for a waxeye is a dead giveaway - 'little stranger'. That bird got here under its own steam and in the relatively recent past.

Birds and animals are sensible in a way that some humans aren't of course. A native Tui will happily and successfully nest in a hedge of Cupressus Leylandii (Leyland Cypress) and feed his chicks on the nectar of a South African Kniphofia (Red Hot Poker) or a Tropaeolum (Chilean flame creeper). As will the native Bellbird.

Want to provide winter nectar for Tuis and Bellbirds in Southland? Plant an Australian tree. Eucalyptus cordata produces flowers even in the depths of winter and the hungry native birds flock to it. It will also grow faster than most natives and thrive in exposed, challenging sites.

New Zealand consists of some pretty remote islands but we are still (to the consternation of some pseudo-conservationists) on the same planet as the rest of you. The air in my lungs was over Australia the day before yesterday and will be over South America next week. We are all on the one world and we should be working to look after all of it rather than trying to wall ourselves off in our own tiny little corners.

I call these people pseudo-conservationists because as far as I can tell, that is what they are. They restrict their interests and endeavours to one tiny fraction of the worlds biota (and at times to the detriment of the rest of it). Why not take an interest in all living things? Why not care about the future of all endangered species wherever they are living and wherever they evolved?

Then, maybe, you can call yourself a conservationist.