Gardening

Hedge your bets

Hedge your bets

Every garden needs good bound­ar­ies. And while any basic fence can provide shel­ter and pri­vacy, a well-planted bound­ary hedge has added bene­fits of beauty, fra­grance, fruit or flowers, and habitat […]

Self-sowers

Self-sowers

As the sea­sons turn, gar­dens can start look­ing a bit tired. Not that I’m ageist — there’s as much beauty in seed­pods as in spring flowers — but as nights […]

Bring on the night

Bring on the night

On sum­mer nights, some plants come into their own. Day­time flowers are bold and brash, rely­ing on bright col­ours to attract pol­lin­at­ing insects; night-bloom­ing flowers are more subtle, white or […]

Drink your garden for summer

Drink your garden for summer

Decem­ber for garden­ers is a month of lush­ness: plen­ti­ful rain, warm soil and still-length­en­ing days. Long twi­lights and early dawns pot­ter­ing out­doors are my favour­ite anti­dote to the stresses of […]

Bees Please

Bees Please

Bee­keep­ing is grow­ing in pop­ular­ity in Wel­ling­ton. You might want bees to pol­lin­ate your plants. You might yearn to pro­duce your own honey. Or you might just be curi­ous to […]

Bag yourself some potatoes

Bag yourself some potatoes

You love baby new pota­toes with but­ter and mint, or hanker after some wedges with gar­lic may­on­naise, or yearn for a big pile of mash to serve with your bangers. […]

Concentrated cultivation

Concentrated cultivation

Some of us are short of space for grow­ing things to eat. We might just have a bal­cony or a small court­yard garden. Per­haps there’s only a small part of […]

The seaweed solution

The seaweed solution

Sea­weed is the sea’s gift to our edible garden. After a big storm the beaches are laden with detrit­us — a won­der­ful mix of sea­weed, sand, sticks and the odd […]