Hydrangea love
With 160 different hydrangeas in her garden, there’s no mistaking Jan Mathers’ favourite plant
As the Cambridge Garden Club arrives back from one of its trips, the bus pulls up and spills out its load of happy, chatty gardeners and their leafy haul – shrubs, perennials, rose bushes, sometimes a tree or three.
“The plants always come off the bus first before we can get off,” says Cambridge gardener Jan Mathers. “On one trip to Thames, there were plants all down the centre aisle. We’d all bought maples.”
Jan is one of the club’s committed plant hunters. The half-hectare garden she and husband Bill have developed has more than 1000 different specimens, but it’s her hydrangea collection that stands out.
“Some people think hydrangeas are oldfashioned. It was the colours that attracted me first, but the more I looked the more I realised they’re all different,” says Jan.
She has 160 different hydrangeas, from the traditional blowzy mopheads our grandmothers grew, to pretty lacecaps with tiny tight central buds surrounded by delicate flowers.
Jan grew up in Cambridge but spent decades in Canada before returning. She met Bill on her OE, while teaching in Canada. The couple settled near Niagara Falls, where the harsh climate was a trial. “When our second child was born there
was a blizzard and we were snowbound for weeks.”
Gardening was difficult and the growing season very short. “In summer it was so hot you couldn’t get out in the garden. The property was all clay and it would bake hard in the summer. The deer would wander through the garden and chomp on everything. It was a bit depressing.”
Frequent visits to see family made Jan homesick, but it wasn’t until daughter Deb decided to go to university in New Zealand that Jan returned to Cambridge and began teaching at her old high school.
Revamping her parents’ garden in Cambridge gave her the chance to experiment. “It was a very formal old people’s garden with concrete edges around the rose beds.” She tried out natives and learned that she is partial to big “scoopy” curves, not straight lines.
As she learned about gardening, she made notes. It’s the teacher in her, Jan admits. Today, her immaculate albums and ring binders are full of plant names and hundreds of photos.
When Bill took early retirement and came to join her, they bought a farm paddock on the outskirts of Cambridge and built a house designed to make the most of the garden they planned to create.
Bill was keen to get to grips with being a
Kiwi, so they focused on natives – astelias, ponga and flaxes. Few of those early plantings remain. “They outgrew this garden... things grow unbelievably fast here. It’s all the rain,” says Jan.
As they settled in, Jan got involved with the Cambridge Garden Club. “Every garden I visited I cottoned on to someone who knew what they were talking about. You’re better to learn from the practical people who have been there done that.
“I took photos and learned very quickly what I liked. I’ve also found out what doesn’t work in this garden. If I plant something and it gets killed by frosts I don’t replant. I plant things that work.”
Jan first fell for hydrangeas during a visit to John Purdie’s Havelock North garden (NZ House & Garden April 2015) where she spotted an unusual pink hydrangea (an old Japanese variety ‘Domotoi’). A cutting thrived, but its flowers were blue. “I thought, ‘What happened to my pink hydrangea?’ That’s when the learning started.”
Alkaline soils produce pinkish tones in hydrangeas while acid soils encourage blue hues. “My soil is acid and I don’t change it. If I want pink, I grow them in pots – a hundred of them.” The lure of hydrangeas? Jan says they look good for six months and it’s fascinating to watch the flowers change colour through the seasons.
Although hydrangeas are her first love, Jan likes to mix things up. Along with 300 hydrangeas with duplicates of favourites, her garden records document 33 clematis, 297 hostas, 26 rhododendrons and 30 roses. Maples offer a great contrast in texture, she says.
“My one regret is that I didn’t start gardening until I was in my 60s. If I started again I’d have a wedding cake tree in the middle of the lawn. And I wouldn’t have so many cherry trees because the blossom sticks to the hydrangea leaves.”
Does she ever bypass a garden centre? “Not if I’m driving... and Bill’s getting pretty good now too.” And when her Canadabased sister retired and took up gardening, Jan’s plant collecting took an international turn. “There are hydrangeas over there you can’t get here. I took her hydrangea shopping and went nuts.”
‘YOU’RE BETTER TO LEARN FROM THE PRACTICAL PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN THERE DONE THAT’