Editorial

Jo McCarroll reflects on happiness.

Have you ever stopped and looked – and I mean really looked – at an Aloe polyphylla? You, like me, might have dismissed this plant as yet another spiky succulent. But next time you happen to come across one, I urge you to stop and look closely.

If you do, you will see the fleshy grey green leaves form a perfectly symmetrical crisscrossing phyllotactic spiral. As you might know already, dear reader, a phyllotactic spiral is one that can be numerically represented by what is called the Fibonacci sequence. And as I am sure you, my learned reader, already know too, the Fibonacci sequence is a recursive numerical progression that is generated by adding the two previous numbers together to give you the next one. So it goes: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89... and I could (literally) go on forever.

Keep looking and you’ll see the same exact pattern occurring in the buds on the pointed florets of your ‘Romanesco’ broccoli. It’s also to be found in the arrangement of seeds inside a sunflower head or the scales of a pine cone or on the outside of a pineapple (fun fact: most pineapples have their scales arranged in five, eight, 13 or 21 spirals of increasing steepness on their outer rind).

And why I am flaunting my very limited scraps of mathematical erudition, you may ask? Because it’s something that is amazing that I have noticed in my own garden. But it’s also something that I completely missed until I stopped to look.

In this issue we’ve deliberately included a lot of ideas for creating Christmas magic with what you can find in your own backyard. From our glorious cover wreath, put together by the clever Davina Prankerd from Auckland florist Vida Flores from a mix of exotic and native flowers and foliage – foraged for free from her own garden – to clever, crafty wrapping and decorations you can grow.

We’ve done that because we can all probably admit that this time of year can quickly become both stressful and hectic. Sometimes it starts to feel like everywhere you go there’s something you need to either do or buy. And Christmas starts to feel like just another job on your list.

So I’m encouraging you to just stop for a moment and reflect on what is already there. I’m assuming, since you are reading NZ Gardener, you love plants and gardens. I hope you are lucky enough to have a garden that you can enjoy yourself. But it’s easy – particularly at this time of year – to forget to pause and look at what we have. I was amazed at how pretty and how Christmassy the wreath Davina created was, and it’s made of what I might have easily dismissed as quite ordinary plants. It made me stop and look at my own garden anew, and see so much that was beautiful there.

So this year why not try and grow your own Christmas. Harvest fresh food for your family and friends, give flowers, seeds, plants and preserves made with your homegrown harvests, and decorate with what you find and forage from your garden. I think that’s a great thing to do at any time of year actually, but particularly now when it’s easy to think that happiness can only be achieved in a ceaseless whirl of acquisition.

But I don’t think happiness is something you can buy. I think happiness – and in fact love, generosity and gratitude too – are all things you need to grow. So maybe our gardens are where we should look to find them.

From me and everyone here at NZ Gardener, wishing you all a happy and safe Christmas and New Year.