Modest Muriel ‘just a gardener’
Muriel Davison isn’t big on receiving awards – she would rather be working in her garden.
Hers is no ordinary garden: it sprawls over 16 hectares and is growing, has thousands of varieties of trees and plants, ponds and birdsong.
Behind it all is a woman who loves gardening.
Despite 76-year-old Davison’s reluctance to be in the limelight, she has received the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture’s most prestigious award.
A maximum of 53 people have the associate of honour award at any one time, and now she is one of them.
Her Maple Glen garden at Glenham, Southland, for which she won the award, is no hidden secret.
It has been open to the public for 40 years and in 2014 Maggie Barry, who fronted the Maggie’s Gardening Show television programme in the 1990s, rated it as one of the top three gardens in New Zealand.
‘‘What did I do to deserve that [award],’’ Davison said before receiving it from the horticulture institute last week. ‘‘I am just a gardener.’’ Maybe so, but she is a very good gardener and yet she credits the plants.
‘‘Everything I learn, I learn from the plants, if you take notice [of them].’’
What started as a small vegetable garden half a century ago grew, and grew – and keeps growing.
She jokingly says it is a case’s garden’’.
‘‘I just found a love for growing things.’’
She also likes birds, and carries bird seed in her pockets to feed the likes of wood pigeons, bellbirds, fantails and tui, every day.
The garden is very much a fam- ‘‘nut ily affair, with husband Bob and son Rob involved in the day-to-day work on the property, which includes a nursery business.
‘‘The nursery is all from the garden,’’ Davison says.
‘‘This is what we have lived on for 40 years, ever since we gave up milking cows.
‘‘It’s not work when you love what you are doing,’’ she says.
‘‘I love getting my hands dirty and seeing things grow.
‘‘You put a seed in and watch it grow every year; it’s satisfaction, I suppose.’’
She has imported seed from around the world to grow plants and trees in the garden, which consists of ‘‘everything that will grow in Southland’’.
‘‘We have found out in the last 50 years what will grow in our climate and soil.’’
Of them all, daffodils are the one thing she would hate to live without. ‘‘[Daffodils] make the spring.’’ A big garden comes with a big workload.
There are always weeds to pull and lawns to mow.
Mowing the lawns, largely made up of an extensive network of grass paths which wind through the hilly 16 hectares, takes son Rob 11 hours at a time on his ride-on mower.
‘‘He’s still going at midnight sometimes.’’
Power still out
Some Auckland residents could be without power for up to another week, according to lines company Vector. Thousands of homes in Auckland remain without power and some have been forced to leave their homes as their properties operate on water and wastewater pumps, leaving them without running water and functional toilets. Vector has advised areas such as Browns Bay, Devonport, Greenhithe and Silverdale may not be back online until next Sunday. Welfare checks are being made on residents in the aftermath of Tuesday night’s storm, with about 2300 properties still without power in the Vector area and a further 350 in the Counties Power area. About 19,000 litres of water has been distributed throughout the Auckland region and close to 200 portaloos have also been delivered to homes, with more expected to go out over the next couple of days.
Bus kills two
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Father dies after fight
A father died after having a fight with his son in the Taranaki town of Inglewood on Saturday. Police received reports of a fight between the two men outside a home in the small town about 20 kilometres south of New Plymouth at 7.30pm. The father collapsed following the altercation, Detective Senior Sergeant Phil Skoglund said. An ambulance was called, but the man died at the scene.
Teenager arrested
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested in relation to a sexual and physical assault on a mother and daughter at a Hamilton house. Police said a man entered the family’s home between 7am and 7.45am on Saturday April 7. The mother and daughter were the only people home.