"Could have fooled me," muttered judge Jim Mora.
The November competition, the brainchild of Dunedin city councillor Fliss Butcher, was the final event in a series run by the Dunedin City Council to celebrate 2010 as the Year of Biodiversity.
Entries did not have to be all-native, but gardens had to have some New Zealand plants to qualify.
The runner-up, Brian Tidmarsh, has an extensive garden largely devoted to natives, while third placegetter Mike Riches has used natives to cover a steep area at the top of his Caversham property. In contrast, Liz Payne and Murray Garland's garden, very highly commended by the judges, is an integrated native-exotic delight.
In 1993, Joy and her husband, Charlie, sold their Long Beach crib and bought a 1500sq m section a couple of hundred metres from the sea. It was, Charlie says, covered with gorse, had a dozen pine trees and some Spanish heath.
But the upside was plenty of established kanuka (Kunzea ericoides), "a couple of really nice lancewoods and a kowhai", Joy adds. Like the lancewoods, the kowhai is probably a remnant of the original coastal flora, she says. "I can't imagine it would have been planted."
The plan was to have a house without a formal garden, just natives that would do well in the very sandy soil and need little or no attention.
In the 10 years before the house was built, the Pringles worked on the section, clearing gorse and other weeds, and felling the pines. The kanuka was thinned, the Pringles retaining as many good specimens as possible and removing as few as necessary to clear space for the house.
As the ground was cleared, the couple planted trees - rata, rimu, native cedar, celery pine, totara, beeches, more kowhai - giving them two dressings a year of Nitrophoska Blue until they were established. That was necessary, Joy says, because "the soil here is virtually pure sand".
The rate of growth has been impressive, given the unpromising soil.
"A lot of people think natives take a long time to grow but they don't, at least not all of them. A lot of ours have doubled [in size] in five years," Charlie says.
In 2003, a survey of the Long Beach area was followed by the creation of a list of plants suitable for the area and the Pringles have made use of this. They say they are employing the same approach as the Mopanui Ecological Society, a Long Beach community group to which they belong, that has been beautifying the area by planting native flora in reserve areas.
Two of the Pringles' trees that mean a lot to Joy are a celery pine - "each `leaf' is a crushed twig," Charlie explains - and a New Zealand cedar, as these were gifts from her late father, who worked for the New Zealand Forest Service and was passionate about native trees.
"I wish I had him here now for his knowledge," she says.
People asked whether they were going to have grass but the answer was always no, in keeping with the commitment to an easy-care garden which, except for a small raised vegetable garden, is all-native.
Instead of lawns, they have encouraged self-sown native ferns, including Phymatasorus pustulatus and blechnums, as ground cover. Unlike grass, they never need watering, an important consideration in an area on tank water.
Once the house was built, smaller plants were added. In front is a line of a bronze Astelia nervosa cultivar; a patch of rengarenga (Arthropodium cirratum) flourishes alongside the dune plant pingao (Desmoschoenus soiralis); and a row of hebe cultivars takes advantage of a shady spot behind the house.
Charlie's favourite spot, though, is one "where nothing's planted and everything is self-sown", including some pittosporums, one of which came up just below a window and is starting to block light into the lounge.
Asked to estimate how much time they spend keep it looking good, Joy says, "apart from the vegetable garden, probably not more than an hour a week".
It fulfills their wish for an easy-care garden, looks great and shows what can be done by a couple that claim not to be gardeners.
As Jim Mora said, could have fooled me.
TO VISIT
• Joy and Charlie Pringle's prize-winning garden is open to visitors, strictly by appointment. For details, phone (03) 482-1115.
• Jim Mora, DCC community and recreation services manager Mick Reece and Gillian Vine jointly judged the city's Let's Grow Native competition.
