Rebecca Fleming’s garden is for the birds.
With tall gum and oaks, an abundance of pittosporums, kowhai, banksias, Pseudopanax, young totara and plenty of flowering cherries, there’s plenty of space for all types of native and exotic bird species to consider the almost six-acre Marlborough property a home and a food source.
Rebecca, a registered nurse at Churchill Private Hospital for 16 years, has been gardening long enough to know exactly what will attract the tui, bellbirds, wax-eyes, thrushes and blackbirds, and also what plants will flourish in a Marlborough climate and soil.
Her love for gardening began as a child, while watching her green-thumbed father tend his plants. She planted her own first garden in Renwick, aged 19 and just married, and has now passed her passion on to another generation; her daughter, who has grown up to become a landscape architect.
Rebecca’s current garden, created from nothing but a bare patch of hillside, is the sixth she’s established with her husband, and it’s one she started before their house was even built. Besides established trees and natives, she has plenty of variety among buxus hedging including alstroemeria, bulbs, irises, carpet roses and orchids, for which she has a particular soft spot.
“I love orchids outdoors, and I’ve got a few. That from a scungy old bulb you can have a beautiful flower, I think that’s amazing. And, they pick well and last well inside.”
She keeps a special area aside for picking flowers, including peonies, and also tends raised vegetable garden beds and maintains fruit trees pollinated by a friend’s beehive.
Having gardened in Marlborough for decades, Rebecca knows the essentials: A sheltering row of gums and oaks to protect the rest of her plantings from the wind, and another to stabilise the hillside.
She’s since removed some of the gums, which were taking more than their fair share of moisture from nearby native plant species, and her variegated flaxes, which mysteriously changed colour as they grew, and were getting caught in her husband’s mower.
“You always learn, you put something in and it doesn’t work out, so you take it out and try again.”
She has learned the tricks to growing New Zealand natives.
“I don’t plant single things, I plant several things together, otherwise it’ll struggle. If you’ve got three or four coming up at once, they’ll have a bit of protection.”
Gardening is an activity Rebecca has always made time for, despite being busy with children and work. But, she admits that after establishing six sizeable gardens, her excitement for a “blank canvas” has been replaced with the enjoyment of maintaining and enhancing what she’s got, particularly now that the garden is at a stage where the weeds are suppressed, and the birds are in abundance.
Rebecca, who each year attends the Garden Marlborough Fete, sometimes chats with Churchill patients about gardening if it’s a shared interest, and says there are a lot of benefits to the activity.
“It lets you go into your own little world. It’s good for stress release, and it’s a good thing to do for your body to keep you fit and healthy.”
Churchill Private Hospital and Specialist Centre is proud to support Rapaura Springs Garden Marlborough, 7 – 10 November 2019.
