Best friends forever
Some of Julia Atkinson-dunn’s closest friendships have grown from a shared love of gardening.
The emergence of garden friends in my life has been an incredibly rewarding surprise. On moving back to Christchurch in my mid-30s, I felt very satisfied in a treasured friendship circle scattered across the country, finding no desire to rush out to better populate my new local one.
When I fell into this gardening adventure five years ago, I quickly realised my growing obsession wasn’t of much relevance to most of my regulars, so it was mymumand sister who bore the brunt of the endless questions, musings and need to discuss.
As my hunger for knowledge and plant-based conversation grew, so too did the web of people I was exposed to. Garden visits, festivals and social media plugged me directly into a scene that I previously knew little about.
Just like aweb, each new connection led to another, until one day it dawned on me that my most regular communication was with an entirely fresh group of people. They had quite literally grown out of my garden and challenged my preconceived notions of what friendship could be and who it was with.
I have found my garden friends, more than any others, barge through peer groups or generational divides.
Just this week I have been bouncing emails back and forth for an upcoming garden-focused road trip with my best garden friends, spanning in age from their 80s down.
Our itinerary of visits and possible nursery stopovers provoke exclamations of glee in each reply, combined with plans for car passenger swapping, so we can all learn from each other while on the road. They are the garden geeks I never knew I would ever crave.
It could be mistaken that these women take on a motherly role for me, but no, our relationships are knitted in the earth, and the gossip around our favourite topic is no different to the chatter I share with my oldest girlfriends, simply with a different focus.
Garden friends are those who eagerly await an invitation to see your meagre little patch, with zero care if it’s as grand as their own. The ones who explore your garden at a creep, taking in each specimen, asking for seeds, cuttings or a division when you have the time.
They share their knowledge freely, sprinkling ideas and encouragement into every conversation, gently correcting you as you repeat a species name out loud for the first time.
Garden friends can easily understand your vision via verbal delivery and gain an immediate mental picture based on the plants you recite.
They will drag hoses around the lawn to draw imagined new borders and send links to their latest favourite garden websites.
They constantly boost your own excitement with theirs, as this nature-based creativity is what spins their wheels, too.
Gardening has also created a bridge to my older connections.
Recently I attended the lovely Autumn With Art In Gardens event in Hurunui, my childhood stomping ground. At each garden visited I stumbled across friendly faces from the past, parents of friends or friends of my parents.
They greeted me with a different vigour, eager to chat about this column or wander the spaces together, sharing our plant observations. We were crossing paths in a new way, finding delight in a shared interest as adults, not simply from former social circles.
I have found too, that existing friendships forged over the years have been refreshed by the garden. As long-time friends find their way to gardening, our relationships have expanded to meet there.
Our conversations are still about weekend plans and who is bringing the wine, but they’re now longer to fit in a to-and-fro on what is happening in the ground outside.
Home visits have moved from the sofa to the backyard, where we can pick each other’s brains and troubleshoot our plants together. I’d never guessed this would be in my future.
As my garden grows, it becomes a physical record of these valued human connections, reflected in the gifted plants and the advice absorbed. This is proven in the fact that my bulky, unattractive camellia wasn’t pulled out and instead limbed up into a trendy multi-trunked tree, thanks to Jenny’s advice.
My shortlist for my new rose garden is strong thanks to the knowledge shared by commercial grower Claire.
The inspiration to push the boundaries of my planting combinations is fuelled by Jill.
The hard-to-find Stipa gigantea grass and Dierama pulcherrimum growing to maturity will forever remind me of the hours spent with Penny, and the minute I wonder if I am ‘‘doing it right’’, I’m reminded of Robyn’s encouragement to just do it any way I want.
My list of support and the value I have for my garden friends is enormous, and I can only encourage other new gardeners to open up the friendship gates and find their earthy people too.