The bamboo renaissance

And the Auckland nursery leading the charge.

WThe palm collection at Landsendt is now flowering and producing seed, so many of these rare plants can be saved from extinction.

hen your dad is a fully fledged plant hunter spending months at a time in the jungles of South America searching for exotic fruit trees and palms to grow back in New Zealand, chances are you’ll inherit a love for plants.

When his parents were also keen horticulturalists, it’s even more likely that a life with plants will be part of your future too.

Carolyn Melling grew up at Landsendt, the lush subtropical garden created by her father, renowned nurseryman and plant enthusiast Dick Endt, and her mother Annemarie. And today, Carolyn and husband Anthony live on the Oratia property on the fringes of west Auckland, and run specialist nursery

Jungle Flora Bamboo.

Working with plants is something she has done from a young age. “As kids, we worked every holiday picking or packing fruit. It wasn’t an option. We learned a few business skills along the way.

“I was a teenager when my parents’ South American journeys began. At 17, I travelled alone to Ecuador as Mum and Dad thought I should learn Spanish. I learnt a lot about life in six months but not much Spanish and nothing about plants.”

Carolyn’s interest in plants actually came a bit later, “when I left home and lived with my new husband and baby at my grandmother Anne Endt’s place nearby. She had a wonderful heritage rose garden. She taught me how to garden and it became an obsession.”

Dick and Annemarie had bought Landsendt in 1962, filling it over the years with many subtropical South American plants, some now very rare in the wild. Dick’s initial travels were in search of Ecuadorian babaco plants to grow in tandem with the feijoa, tamarillo, passionfruit and other subtropical edibles he grew at the property. Later, he “fell in love with palm trees”, as Carolyn puts it, successfully growing from seed the Andean coconut Parajubaea cocoides, a cold hardy coconut thought to be a relative of the long-extinct

New Zealand coconut ( Cocos zeylandica) which grew 65 million years ago when our climate was much warmer.

Dick, who co-founded the New Zealand Palm & Cycad Society, brought back seed from many other palms, including the Geonoma and Ceroxylon species that are now endangered due to deforestation. The palm collection at Landsendt is now flowering and producing seed, so many of these rare plants can be saved from extinction. Horticulturalist Dr Keith Hammett has described it as a “mature botanical garden of considerable significance in terms of preservation of exotic biodiversity”.

When Carolyn joined the family firm after initially running her own small business making children’s clothes and designing her own fabrics, she knew little about growing palms. “Mum and Dad were on another

When people started asking if they could get married in the garden, she decided to turn Landsendt into a wedding venue.

overseas trip. I just fell into the job really, looking for a change. It was a steep learning curve, starting with a new catalogue. A great way to learn new plants.”

She soon discovered that many Landsendt customers were coming in with landscape plans that specified plants that wouldn’t grow in New Zealand. So she decided to enrol at Unitec to study landscape design. “I figured I could do landscape design as I knew my plants but needed to know how to draw plans. This was followed by doing a display garden at Ellerslie Flower Show highlighting plants that my parents had collected. This was another very steep learning curve, but we had so much fun.”

The effort and expense of doing a show garden made Carolyn realise it would be better to put the same effort into Landsendt. “The bones were here with Dad’s plant collection. We removed the orchard tractor ruts and old bananas, and created layered underplantings, lawns, pathways and mass plantings to create a tropical jungle garden. We also built a tropical fale featuring bamboo to give a sense of another world.”

When people started asking if they could get married in the garden, she decided to turn Landsendt into a wedding venue. “By this time, the palm craze was

Mountain coconut palms ( Parajubaea torallyi) behind the rare Encephalartos cycad.

Carolyn and Anthony Melling. Opposite: the Landsendt office, which had been the wedding bar, in front of the moso bamboo ( Phyllostachys edulis).

Bamboo archway made by Mark Mortimer from Bambusero.

Ceroxylon quindiuense, the tallest palm in the world (reaching 60m), is endangered in its native Colombia due to deforestation.

Parajubaea cocoides, the palm with seeds similar to New Zealand’s extinct Cocos zeylandica.

One of the many interesting foliage plants in the Landsendt garden, Bocconia frutescens has wood lighter than balsa.

Slender weavers bamboo ( Bambusatextilis ‘Gracilis’).

Carolyn showing the ‘Green Goddess’ hedge in the new bamboo display garden.

Taking advantage of the fertilised bamboo stock block, Carolyn grew a picking garden of cornflowers and zinnias.