That is understandable, as northern hemisphere settlers brought massive numbers of plants, decorative as well as useful.
However, in A History of Gardening in New Zealand, Bee Dawson begins with Maori settlement and how the ease with which crops such as kumara grew dictated settlement patterns.
She moves on to the early Europeans, including James Cook's gift of "two handfuls of potatoes" to a Coromandel chief in 1769, the first recorded introduction of a food crop by Europeans.
The potato dramatically changed Maori horticulture, particularly south of Banks Peninsula, where kumara, taro and other sub-tropical plants could not be grown.
Dawson moves on to the whalers and their settlements, noting that in Otago, one visitor recorded in 1840 that cottages were surrounded with gardens "containing all the vegetables of Europe".
She devotes more than 20 pages to the missionaries of the North Island before tackling the post-1840 gardens of New Zealand and recording successes - such as the monster cabbages, one of 25kg, grown in Dunedin in 1849 by nurseryman David Bower - as well as crop failures.
Although food crops were still the focus post-1840, numerous ornamentals were brought from Australia and North America as well as Europe.
Horticultural societies were formed, including the Dunedin Horticultural Society in 1851, and shows held.
Dawson continues through the years, leaning increasingly to the social history of gardening (school projects, Depression-era gardens and Dig for Victory).
This section, interesting though it is, comes across as somewhat disjointed and could have been better organised.
Those interested in the past 65 years will be disappointed: World War 2 is covered in 20 pages and the final chapter, The 1990s and Beyond, merits just three.
The illustrations are helpful and the book is a useful addition to our gardening history but tries to cover too much in 300 pages.
An Illustrated Guide to Common Weeds of New Zealand, saying many of our weeds are garden escapes.
In fact, it seems, anything is a weed if it pops up in the wrong place.
Excellent photographs make this a useful guide to identification, even if only to quarrel with the writers' choices for inclusion.
A weed is inevitably a great survivor and in many areas unwanted imports have pushed out native species.
Many of our natives are relatively insignificant, "not sexy", as the authors put it in Threatened Plants of New Zealand.
Habitat loss has been historically the major threat to our flora, as forest and wetlands shrink and human settlement spreads as towns reach further into the countryside.
However, the writers consider competition from invasive plants is now the biggest threat.
The book is divided into extinct (six species) and threatened plants, the latter subdivided into nationally threatened (almost 100 plants), nationally endangered (46) and nationally vulnerable (44).
Carmichaelia species) and Chatham Island forget-me-not (Myosotidium hortensium).
The gardener can play a part but there is a need for care in promoting natives for garden use as a way of saving them, as many are hybrids - for example kaka beak (Clianthus puniceus varieties) and many hebes.
Threatened Plants of New Zealand is a sobering look at what we have done and are continuing to do to our land.
A little volume by a former Otago woman who has lived in Nelson's Orinoco Valley for many years, The Bird Garden is a mix of fact, anecdote and photographs.
The "garden" is very loosely interpreted, as the book includes photographs taken in spots outside Fay Bolt's property - but all within the valley.
A pleasant book.
• Gillian Vine is a Dunedin writer
