An inner-city Auckland garden where almost any plant is welcome.

Virtually anything goes, and grows , in this densely planted inner-city Auckland garden

Defying the concrete jungle on his doorstep, an inner-city Aucklander has replaced it with a luxuriant subtropical one of his own. The Sky Tower peeking over the palms is the only hint of urban life in Mark van Kaathoven’s dense if diminutive rainforest in Freemans Bay, just 10 minutes’ walk from the central city. Skinks scurry up palm trunks and the chirrups of small green frogs harmonise with birdsong in a backyard that is teeming with life.

It is far removed from the property Mark bought in 1994, when the 270sqm garden comprised a sloping lawn, low wall of railway sleepers and swathes of oxalis. It has also flourished since NZ House & Garden featured it in December 2005.

The son of a Dutch landscape gardener, Mark knew a thing or two about plants and learned at a young age how to wield a spade. He started by terracing the section with stone walls before creating three distinct garden rooms linked by bricked paths and steps. The groundwork laid, he followed the advice he gives to all plantlovers with small patches: Grow up.

“I love small spaces because you have to think outside the square,” he says. “I’m using the airspace and the council can’t charge me for it.” His verdant vertical

plantation started with queen and king palms, Australian bangalows and kentia palms, with rarer varieties such as the Madagascan dypsis, shade-loving lady palm and cold-tolerant Tibetan sugar palm soon joining the fray.

As the palms grew taller, they became vehicles for more plants, an array of aerial epiphytes that include bromeliads, delicate orchids, drifts of Spanish moss and the beguiling green antlers of staghorn ferns.

“It’s like looking up at a stained glass window,” says Mark, whose number one gardening aid is an 8m fireman’s ladder bought in Kentucky by his American husband Gene Dillman.

Amongst the palm trunks, tropical vireya rhododendrons rub shoulders with flowering cherries, and natives mix with maples. At ground level, no soil is visible with colourful clivias and begonias blooming between succulents and largeleafed ligularia and aspidistra inhabiting the darker areas. Clipped buxus balls are evidence of human hands at work, along with sculptures and whimsical touches such as a “Dr Seussed” cypress clipped into cloud formations by the front steps.

The soil might not be visible, but for Mark it is the lifeblood of the garden and he keeps it well-nourished. Prunings and pulled weeds are left to rot as compost,

with birds scratching in the undergrowth aiding the process. “I don’t take anything to the tip. I don’t see the point in dumping green waste then buying it back.”

Gene, a doctor with a degree in horticulture, has added another layer of botanical knowledge. “He knows all the Latin names,” says Mark.

They are renovating the 1890 house which is now enveloped by flora. The dining room has literally been built into the garden and there is even a bromeliad plantation on the roof. The most recent addition to their “Kiwi jungle castle” is a vaulted Victorian-style skylight which allows views of the treetops from within the house. “This isn’t real estate or a financial investment. This is our home. I invested in it 25 years ago, and this is my return,” says Mark.

The couple willingly share their home with a matriarch who makes her presence felt. “You plant a garden and gradually Mother Nature moves in,” says Mark. “The secret is to work with her and not try to control her.”

With her help and the blessing of the city council, Mark’s zeal for greening has spilled beyond the garden gate. In 1996, he started planting his roadside verge. “Why mow when you can grow?”

Mark re-homes discarded plants from friends and council clean-ups to fill the berm. “I’m not a purist. I encourage assimilation.” Natives share the strip with an array of exotics, bird-sown cherries are allowed to grow and roses salvaged from state-owned flats across the road are enjoying jungle life.

“A lot of people around here don’t have access to gardens. This is here for them to touch and enjoy. People with dogs and pushchairs stop and look, and children love it. It’s my legacy.” By request, Mark is now planting neighbouring berms, tending several local gardens and supervising the planting of a community garden in Waiatarau (Freemans Park).

It’s time to focus on our own backyards, he says. “If we look after our community and our environment, the world will be a better place. We have got to go back to the basics of life.” He looks around at his manmade ecosystem: “If one human has managed to do this in 25 years, what are the other seven billion doing?”

‘You plant a garden and gradually Mother Nature moves in’

THESE PAGES Mark van Kaathoven and Gene Dillman’s inner-city Auckland verandah looks over plants from every corner of the globe with myriad forms and colours; cabbage trees and palms grow amongst flowering cherries and maples, while a topiaried cypress is laden with orchids, bromeliads and other epiphytes.

THIS PAGE (from top) Brick paths and steps link the garden rooms on the once-bare back section: “People often say they feel like Alice in Wonderland when they come here,” says Mark. Even the trees have become gardens, with their trunks home to a plethora of epiphytic plants including staghorn ferns, bromeliads, vrieseas and billbergia. The garden’s canopy, seen from the roof garden, is a botanical tapestry of texture and colour. OPPOSITE (left to right from top row) Pale pink cherry blossom is unexpected company for a subtropical garden; a cypress beyond is clipped to a cloud formation. Bromeliad ‘Rubra’ hybrids in the rooftop garden add colour against the green canopy. An orange clivia flower below the variegated foliage of a ginger plant. Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides). Gene Dillman and Mark van Kaathoven. Epiphytes attached to the trunk of an agave. A limestone figure amidst greenery and the pink sprays of aechmea and begonia.

THIS PAGE Yellow and orange clivia, which Mark pollinates by hand, add pops of colour to the green undergrowth while skeins of Spanish moss hang from the branches overhead. OPPOSITE Staghorn ferns, bromeliads and orchids adhere to the taller trees while fan palms and clivias grow below; Mark simply nails epiphytes to trees, sometimes wrapping them in sphagnum moss to get them started: “Sometimes I just throw them up there and hope they make a safe landing.”