Extending the hunt for hard to find plants
/Of all the seasons, spring gets my blood pumping.
The smell of cut grass is like a garden aphrodisiac, pulling me back outside on the daily watch for new growth and rewards. Flirting with the temperature gauge, it distracts with the staggered arrival of blossom, then slams in with a devastating late frost, or raging wind storm.
When I think of springtime in my own garden, it is daffodils, outrageously fragrant jasmine and a carpet of cherry blossom. As the freshness of these earlier months starts to melt into the mildness of summer, tulips, anemones, aquilegia and bearded irises make way for the first roses and eager perennials. Greening crowns of echinacea, thalictrum and rudbeckia stretch to fill in the gaps, as I continue to cross my fingers for at least one peony from my temperamental lot.
Buoyed by this injection of seasonal enthusiasm, this is also the time my mind starts racing around the new plants I might be able to introduce. As an avid researcher, reader and social media stalker of all things “flower garden”, it has been a learning curve to discover so many of the specimens I covet can be elusive to find here in New Zealand.
In the same way that architecture and interiors drift through trends and design movements, so too do domestic garden fashions.
As I was recently reminded by an experienced friend, when she began planning her garden over 50 years ago, formal layouts, combined with bustling herbaceous borders, were all the rage. She instead struck off to create structure and seasonal interest by focusing on shrubs and trees, a direction that many others headed in the years following.
In more recent times, we have had huge experimentation with native-only planting, exploring the balance of what is and isn’t going to thrive in our own gardens and a delightful re-emergence of mixed perennial planting, but this time with the formality dialled down and ambling softness dialled up.
It’s this last, seasonally-focused approach that has got me excited, but, as so many flowering perennials experienced decades on the outskirts of popularity, most commercial nurseries simply stopped breeding many of them, causing them to fall out of rotation.
Rudbeckia ‘Irish Eyes” with Sanguisorba officinalis and Echinecia purpurea
Verbena bonariensis mixed in with rudbeckia and echinacea
Once I discovered that I was going to have to hunt a little harder for my desired plants than simply wandering the limited selection at my local hardware store or garden centre chain, I ploughed in some online research. Searching both the common and botanical names of my desired plants followed by an “NZ” almost instantly opened the virtual doors to a whole new class of growers. There were home gardeners offering treasured seeds and specimens from their own plots, as well as small and medium- sized independent nurseries that seem to dedicate themselves to satiating plant hunters just like me. Trade Me and Facebook Marketplace are incredible places to source the unique and beautiful.
Enthusiastic gardeners have discovered the opportunities of income via their own plant collections and many have mastered the art of packaging healthy plants to courier all over the country. So too have fantastic nurseries that no longer are limited to creating a cult following in their region, instead reaching out nationally to offer postage deals based on volume.
Verbena bonariensis and Sanguisorba obtusa
Of course, postage in general is an irritating expense, but I always reassure myself that perennials are a good investment for their ability to multiple via division, seed or cuttings. Some personal favourites of mine to peruse online for interesting perennial options are Puriri Lane, Russet Gardens, Parva Plants, Heirloom Plant Nursery, Sea Flowers Nursery, Marshwood Gardens, Villaleigh Plants and the catalogue of Blueskin Nurseries.
Those that love the challenge of starting everything from seed will disappear into the libraries of beauty with the likes of Susie Ripley Gardening, Owairaka Seeds, Koanga Seeds, Kings Seeds, Nourish Gardens , Emerden Flower Farm and Setha’s Seeds.
While these suppliers are sprinkled from one end of the country to the other, they are united in reviving and introducing us to those hard-to-get varieties that will aid our garden dreams. Arm yourself with your plant wish list and an internet connection and see if you can find what you are after.
This is an expanded version of the article featured in my Stuff ‘Homed’ gardening column for beginners , The Press, Dominion Post and other regional papers on October 14th 2021
All words and images are my own, taken in my home and garden in Christchurch, New Zealand unless otherwise captioned.
