Learning as they go has been a positive experience for a Dunedin couple. Gillian Vine reports.
''This is the first real garden we've developed,'' Jenny Roxborogh says, ''so we've learned a lot as we've gone along.
''We've lived overseas and we've lived in rented places,'' she explains.
When she and her husband, John, moved to Dunedin in 2000, they had two challenges: gardening on a bigger plot and getting to grips with plants different from those they had known while growing up in the North Island.
''I wanted paeonies and roses, as they don't grow so well up north,'' Jenny says.
They had always had silverbeet, beans and parsley, but growing blackcurrants, garlic, leeks, yams [oca] and even parsnips were new experiences, as is celeriac, being tried this year for the first time.
''We've got a few nostalgia things, too, like a feijoa,'' she says.
In recent years, since he retired, John has had time to do more in their Northeast Valley garden, and as well as building the terraces and raised beds and installing soak hoses, he grows potatoes.
Asked what appeals about spuds, he laughs and says: ''You see so much for your effort. There's no subtlety.''
He has installed handrails at strategic points, the latest a rather classy op-shop find.
Tucked out of sight is a three-bin compost system.
A neighbour is able to take advantage of the proximity to her boundary by adding her lawn clippings.
John considers it a win-win situation.
When they bought the property, there was a large eucalypt in the front garden which they removed, and Jenny developed this area for her paeonies and other flowers.
There was a large clump of naked lady bulbs (Amaryllis belladonna), too, ''like a nest of turtle eggs'', Jenny says.
Divided, with groups put in other areas, they add add touches of pink in autumn.
In the early days, the lower garden ran steeply down from the house to a boundary of large macrocarpas.
There was a battered playhouse, whose steps John recycled elsewhere in the garden, the remnants of a chook house, shrubby cotoneasters and a couple of manuka bushes.
''One of the really nice features was a pink prunus,'' Jenny says.
''We also have a white prunus, Shirotae, I think, that flowers at a different time, another lucky accident.''
These two flowering cherries also change to their autumn tones at different times.
In the beginning, to get a feel for what could be done, they employed Dunedin landscaper Don Barham to draw up a plan, one that did not include plants.
''That was the best $500 we ever spent,'' John says.
''That was our budget but I'm sure we got more than $500 worth.''
Jenny was keen to grow rhododendrons but, not having done so before, initially planted the shade lovers in a very sunny spot and had to move them.
''There's been a lot of learning,'' she says.
Many plants cost nothing, having been grown from cuttings - like the lavender from Jenny's mother's garden and Martha's rose that her grandmother bred - or were, like their dahlias, given to them.
A large yucca and evening primroses came from their crib at Otakou.
''And all my aquilegias came from John's mother's garden and they seed themselves,'' Jenny says.
Rather than remove them, they have welcomed what they call ''happy accidents'', self-sown plants that have popped up around the lower garden.
One of the best of these adventitious plants is a cabbage tree, which appeared in exactly the right place.
Jenny is a hardworking volunteer at the Northeast Valley community garden and feels this has helped her vegetable knowledge.
One thing she learned there is that runner beans, usually grown as annuals, are actually perennial plants.
If cut to ground level when the tops die, they will regenerate when the soil warms up next spring.
The intention is to try this not only with Scarlet Runner but also Painted Lady and a purple-flowered bean a friend sent from Auckland.
They have added fruit trees - a Starkrimson pear, which this year is covered with red-skinned fruit, Peasgood Nonsuch apple and a quince - but their two olives are yet to fruit.
A couple of elderberries, which many people pull out as weeds, have been left as John's favourite spread is elderberry and apple jelly.
Indoors, there are pots of African violets, which came from Jenny's mother, who died in 1993.
Keeping them going for so long suggests that the family gardening genes have been passed on.
