Made a quick trip to Auckland at the end of last week for some minor surgery, so I was away from Struan Farm briefly. The good news part of it was that John and I had time to visit Manukau Institute of Technology's School of Horticulture. The school has an extensive nursery open to the public that offers low cost native shrubs, perennials and bedding plants for sale.
We filled the car with native renga renga lilies, kowhai, totara, manuka, rimu, ake ake, and a number of other native shrubs. Most will be planted along the top of the roadside bush at the new house, the one that I've been busy cleaning out over the past two weeks. I've been pulling out and killing bracken fern, blackberry, buttercup and black wattle, while nephew Mike has helped with some of the more problematic weeds like barberry and cotoneaster. We're going to fill in densely with totara, rimu and kowhai, basically extending the existing line and look of the native bush from the back near the veggie garden, since we love the look and texture plus the fact it attracts native birds. We'll also plant native shrubs on a rather steep bank out from the house in tiers, to landscape and stabilise this area on the edge of the drive.
The renga rengas will be planted at the entrance to our big tawa grove, where they're waiting patiently by Ringo along with the others. They'll be watered daily until the weather is such that they can be planted.
John is already planning his next section of native planting on another area of the farm down by the river, he'll return to MIT to fill up the car soon. This is the first installment of what will be a very busy autumn and winter planting at Struan Farm.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.