Niche plant group sets scene for friendships to flourish

NZ Trillium Group founder Joy Leonard, of Timaru, shows off a

Trillium luteum (left) and Trillium erectum during the group’s annual gettogether in Dunedin at the weekend.

Some of its 160 members, who travelled from around the country, met in the garden of Richard and Myra Wells on Saturday morning ready for a weekend filled with garden tours, lunches, and a dinner at the Green Island Rugby Club, where they were joined by gardening writer Gillian Vine.

It was all in celebration of the flowering woodland plant, which is native to North America and Asia and thrives in a cool climate.

The Wells’ 24yearold garden at their Abbotsford home was filled with trilliums, including the first bunch of red trilliums they received some 35 years ago when they lived in Clyde.

It was that bunch that sparked their passion for the plant.

They liked to make their garden, which had a hobbit house built by Mr Wells in it called Hobbitsford, ‘‘different’’, Mrs Wells said.

‘‘Neither of us like runofthemill’’. Ms Leonard founded the group 18 years ago after waking up on St Patrick’s Day in 2002, wondering why New Zealand did not have a trillium group.

There was no committee or boss which was what made it the friendly group it was, she said.

‘‘I was standing back looking at everyone and thinking ‘look at all the friendships made’.’’