Elaine Sanderson
TARANAKI GARDENER, ELAINE SANDERSON IS ONE OF THOSE GARDENERS WITH A SPECIAL KNACK FOR CREATING BEAUTIFUL PLANTING SCHEMES. SUE LINN GETS LOST IN A GARDEN WITH THE ARTIST’S TOUCH.
Most days at the crack of dawn Elaine Sanderson is in her happy place, watering her plants or checking for snails with her head lamp on. “If I don’t water my pots first thing I get too busy”. As a dairy farmer she’s used to getting up early. These days, with help on the farm and her four children all grown up, Elaine gets to spend more of her time engaged in her favourite pastime, calling herself “a full-time gardener and a part-time farmer”.
Asked if her husband John shares her passion she laughs, “He just shudders!” The couple runs a large dairy farm in South Taranaki, where they have lived and worked for over 30 years.
Just a km away is the sea. Driven by the desire to create shelter from the wild salt-laden westerlies, Elaine’s first planting project, with a baby strapped on her back, marked the beginning of an attractive tract of native riparian planting, which now extends over 10km of riverbank on the farm boundaries. Five years ago John and Elaine’s achievements were saluted in the Taranaki Ballance Farm Environment Awards. They received high praise both for the aesthetic enhancement of their property and the economic and environmental sustainability of their farm business.
The way Elaine sees it, “Why have gorse and blackberry when you can grow beautiful natives?”. She chose native trees that were fast growing and self-seeding, including karo and taupata. The successful self-seeding has resulted in multiple generations of native trees and the natural bush areas are now completely self sustaining, leaving Elaine to indulge in her expansive, much loved garden. “I spend much more time and money on it than I used to!” she says.
The shelter has enabled her to grow a wider range of ornamental
Elaine’s flourishing plant combinations deliver a captivating new vista around every bend.
plants in her garden, although the salt laden wind, too extreme for the rhododendrons Taranaki is famous for, remains her greatest challenge. The Japanese maples suffer most, but it’s helpful that her deciduous trees start afresh with new foliage every spring. Pruning, a regular task throughout the year, also helps the garden to bounce back after a burning salt storm. A springtime wander through Elaine's stunning garden reveals nothing of this coastal handicap. Her flourishing plant combinations deliver a captivating new vista around every bend.
Decorative pots and other art pieces provide interesting focal points and there are stories behind a fascinating collection of historic objects, unearthed around the farm over the years to earn pride of place as rustic garden art. An old shipping buoy has a more recent history as a scrub crushing ball from the days when rimu were still being harvested from farms.
Elaine may have inherited the
creative gene from her mother, a floral artist, but say’s her mother’s style of gardening was very different. “Mum had lots of stuff in her garden and a lot of my plants originally came from her, but it was a very overgrown garden. She wouldn’t prune a messy branch in case it might be useful in one of her creations. I never wanted to be so untidy!”
Many of us think of weeding as a chore, but not Elaine. “It’s a great way to relax,” she says. “When you’re weeding, your mind goes blank.” She gardens in a way that makes weeding easy. “There will always be weeds because birds keep dropping seeds, but dense planting and mulching makes the weeds leggy and easy to pull out,”she assures. The garden is regularly mulched with bedding from the calf shed. “It can be very smelly, but the smell only lasts for 10 days or so, and the plants love it!”
A large garden needs a lot of plants, so Elaine grows a lot of her own from division and cuttings, repeating favourite groundcovers and perennials throughout
the garden. March and November are her main months for starting new plants from cuttings. These are popped into propagation trays lined with weed mat and filled with pumice sand.
Growing plants from seed is not her thing, so the garden centre is her place to go for the flowering annual seedlings she loves to plant as colourful fillers and to give a new look for each new season. Elaine enjoys old fashioned flowers such as sweet william, salvias and daisies. She prefers rugosa type roses for their incredible perfume and good disease resistance. “I don’t spray the roses. If it looks like it’s going to die I just dig it out and plant something else.”
Elaine’s mind will often turn to her garden in the middle of the night when ideas for new planting schemes flow in her head. She says she can never envisage how things are ultimately going to look like in a few years time, but “I know the shapes I want and foliage is really important to me when I’m deciding what to plant. I'm always digging things up and shifting things about until I’m happy with what I see." Some of the best combinations happen by accident.
When a tree succumbs to age or storm damage and a whole area of garden needs reworking, Elaine is philosophical. “You have to have change. That’s part of what makes gardening so much fun.”