Adrian’s a wizard of a gardener
A man with a lifetime of horticultural experience has reinvented himself. Virginia Winder meets New Plymouth garden guru Adrian McLeod at his home.
On a rain-sodden Monday, Adrian McLeod’s garden glistens in the gloom. Before venturing outside – in short bursts – we sit at his kitchen table admiring a giant beech tree. It was just two metres tall when the McLeod family moved into the Carrington Rd property 41 years ago.
‘‘Now look at it. I think I must be getting old,’’ he says.
The tree was planted on this land, an old poultry farm, by Eva Greenway. She was one of a few, including Harold Newton, of Urenui, who would get a call from Sir Victor Davies at the end of his driveway sale. These plant lovers would turn up with their trailers and buy a full load.
‘‘She would bring them home and not know where to plant them,’’ he says. Often, trees would be placed just two metres apart. ‘‘I’m still thinning them.’’
McLeod, who has more than 52 years’ experience in horticulture, had McLeod Garden Supplies in Devon St, opposite the Mayfair Theatre, nearly 50 years ago. He was the manager of Duncan & Davies for six years, manager at Palmers for the same amount of time and then he and wife Cherry owned Fairfields Garden Centre for close to 20 years.
The land on the corner of Mangorei and Junction Rds is owned by another plants authority, Roger Watkins. The men met at a cafe´ , talked over the possible plants business and it went from there.
The garden centre was a huge success and people would travel from all over the North Island to buy plants and receive learned advice.
‘‘We were very much a resource garden centre. You can’t tell people to go home and look it up on Google.’’
Fairfields was sold in 2015 and the new owners put in a cafe´ , which McLeod says was much needed.
But the business model changed on the plants side. ‘‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’’ he says, quoting a visiting American lecturer.
The business went on the market again at the end of 2016 and then closed. For McLeod, his last days at Fairfields are cloaked in deep sadness and great thankfulness.
Three years ago, last September his beloved Cherry died from a brain aneurism. ‘‘It was out of the blue. It happened at work on a Friday night after the staff had left.’’
They had put the business up for sale just the week before and were looking forward to a fresh future. McLeod had to keep going with Fairfields. ‘‘If I didn’t I would lose everything. I knew had to focus on the business and the (home) garden suffered.’’
He didn’t do it alone and that’s where his gratitude stems from. ‘‘The staff took over. They all pulled together and did a wonderful job.’’ Now he’s back in his own garden and has started McLeod Garden Consulting Service.
‘‘After I sold the garden centre, people would come up to me in the supermarket and ask advice. I would get phone calls at 9 at night and my friends said, ‘you should be charging for that’.’’
In his latest horticulture role, he consults with people in their garden, and writes a full report covering such things as pruning recommendations, plant food needs, weed control and prevention, including chemicalfree alternative spraying programmes, a plant ID list, replacements and removals of plants. He leaves garden design to other experts.
He also offers schedules of what to do in the garden each month, something he used to do regularly for the Taranaki Daily News garden pages.
‘‘I’ve redirected,’’ he says. ‘‘I want to keep my brain active.’’ On his website, the father of three, and grandfather of eight, describes himself as a plant doctor. But his appearance hints at a more magical plant persona.
With white hair and matching beard, he looks wizard-like. It’s easy to imagine him in a long robe, staff extended, enchanting plants to grow.
We enter his spell-binding garden, where two original nikau palms stand like tufted towers above seedlings of different heights. There are also totara and lancewood seedlings. There are also verdant plants. ‘‘I have a weakness for hostas, I’ve just bought another 14,’’ McLeod says. By the fence, is Empress Wu, the largest of the hostas varieties.
Below the front verandah of the house, built in 1931, then completely gutted and rebuilt, are bushes of an intense hot pink hydrangea called Paris planted in pots. There’s a wee hedge of the fuchsia Lottie Hobby and clumps of variegated honesty, which he’s also keen on.
Golden-coloured woodchips add nourishment and keep the weeds down. ‘‘I’ve got a good farmer friend and these are from cleaning out the calf pen.’’
The same farmer has given McLeod a pallet load of bricks, to be used for a path. In another place, he’s sprayed the lawn, in preparation for putting in a herb lawn. ‘‘I’m trying to encourage organic sprays,’’ he says.
He’s gone greener in the last few years.
His go-to for pest control is a mix of organic refined neem oil mixed with pyrethrum. This mixture is sprayed on plants as the sun disappears and the pyrethrum works for 12 hours, killing the live bugs before the sun makes it ineffective. Meanwhile, the neem keeps working for two to three weeks, breaking the cycle.
As his story unfolds, we’ve been in and out of the rain a few times, taking shelter in the back porch. In a minor lull, we venture into the backyard to check out three large nut trees over the fence.
There’s a macadamia laden with nuts, which the McLeods crack open, dip in chocolate and give as Christmas gifts. A walnut is also abundant this year, but the chestnut is not a great producer; it’s value is in its heritage.
‘‘It’s a graft off the original chestnut in Brooklands Park.’’
He often drives down Cumberland St, by Welbourn School, to see a flourishing collection of eugenia (Lilly Pilly) he grew from seed when he owned McLeod Garden Supplies. ‘‘I just get a real buzz to think this was just dust in my hand.’’
By the porch, is a purple salvia, which was Cherry’s favourite, and nearby is a shaggy stand of bamboo planted to screen a concrete water tank. But the bamboo and a camellia may go to give a view down to the valley, grazing land for five Arapawa sheep, five Murray Grey cattle and a vocal bantam rooster and his harem.
Also over the fence is a laden Bramley apple tree, ‘‘the best cooking apple you can ever have’’, and a vigorous pumpkin vine. Plantsman Glen Parker may get a gift from this crop. In the backyard again, some of the stars are the wedding cake tree (cornus), which survived a strong south-easterly that broke the middle leader. McLeod worked his magic again.
A dwarf kowhai, Sophora tetraptera ‘‘Otari Gnome’’, is over 30 years old and behind it is a variegated climbing rata discovered in the Karangahake Gorge by native plants expert Mark Dean during a comfort stop. He took a little sport from the plant and propagated it.
At the back of the garden is a shaggy beast. It’s the dwarf Acacia ‘‘Limelight’’, which McLeod recommends to people seeking to grow a weeping maple but have a section that is too hot, dry and exposed.
As he talks, the advice flows – soak sweetpea seeds overnight before planting them and then cut the flowers off every three days. When starting a garden, use a professional landscaper, like Chris Paul. Don’t rush into making the garden – get a feel of the climate and surroundings; prepare the soil; go organic where possible.
If you want raised beds build them east to west so the plants are put in north to south and get sun on each side of the row. Crop rotation is important, so follow leaf crops with root crops. McLeod is an endless source of plant knowledge. Some could say he’s a plant doctor. To others he’s a plant wizard.