A retirement that’s gone birds to the bees and the
Lifelong gardener Grant Douglas finally has time to tend his own wild flower-filled space, writes Joanna Davis.
Between 6am and 6.30am, Gaile and Grant Douglas are woken by the chirruping of Birdy, a brown baby blackbird who returns to their deck daily looking for her breakfast – mixed chicken, rice and vegetables.
The bird has been fed by the semiretired couple, both aged 70, since Grant found it stunned and without a mother at a few days old.
Birdy takes off each day about 4pm, but the Douglas’ home in Motueka, Tasman, is a veritable wonderland for birds and bees – why not return each morning?
The Douglases downsized to a brand-new two bedroom home just a few streets away from their fourbedroom family home in Motueka two and a half years ago. Their new section has a better north-facing aspect.
Grant Douglas, a self-taught gardener since childhood, also ensured the couple’s forever home was positioned to leave north-facing land free for the garden.
The couple also drew up house plans so that the dwelling took up only 18 per cent of the 720-squaremetre section, compared to the typical 35 per cent, allowing space for Grant to plant the wild garden that he describes as messy and abstract, with ‘‘a lot of old-fashioned flowers’’.
‘‘The criteria were that it should be good for birds and bees,’’ he says, adding he feels concerned for the lack of diversity in most people’s gardens.
A bark path leads past waist-high flowering plants, mostly exotics: coreopsis, Brunfelsia (yesterday-todaytomorrow), 20 different salvias, fuscias, Alstroemeria, sweet peas, Spiraea (May bush), Osmanthus, Brugmansia (Angel’s trumpets) to attract the moths, and more than 60 poppies, which provide daily fresh cut flowers for the home.
There are buddleias for the monarchs and stinging nettle for admiral butterflies. The Douglases also put out lard for wax-eyes, apples for blackbirds, and sugar syrup and seeds for all.
The flower beds make way for only a tiny patch of lawn, but there’s space for a vege garden that keeps the couple self-sufficient in that supply, apart from a very occasional out-of-season purchase from the supermarket.
Not a huge fan of natives, which he finds lack colour, Grant does however have hebes and a ko¯ whai tree.
Being a new build, the section was bare land when they moved in ‘‘sand and stone’’, but Grant took about transforming it.
‘‘When we came here there wasn’t one worm,’’ he says. ‘‘Now it’s full of them.’’
He feels strongly about the importance of soil. He composts, and also uses a shredder to cut up clippings, which he returns straight to the garden where they act as both moisture retainers and feed for the soil.
Have the birds come too? Yes: Waxeyes (tauhou), thrushes, blackbirds (korimako), bellbirds, goldfinches, chaffinches, sparrows, and just the occasional tu¯ ı¯.
The bees and bumblebees are in abundance too, the bees coming from hives 200m and up to half a kilometre away, by Grant’s calculation.
‘‘In fact, I went and demanded some rental,’’ he says. The beekeeper gave him some honey.
Although Grant still grows tomatoes commercially, he says he is ‘‘pretty much retired’’ and appreciates the time he can give to his garden.
He and Gaile lived for 18 years at Riverside Community – an intentional community in the Moutere Valley that has the mission of ‘‘co-operative living for peace and sustainability’’.
There, Grant established a community vegetable garden that grew to cover 2 hectares, and provided all the vegetables for the 80 people living there at the time.
‘‘It’s the first time I’ve had time to do it properly’’.
Gaile says she does not garden at all, although she does love photographing the insects and flowers. Grant is also a keen photographer, and takes more abstract streetscape images.
‘‘I just feel very spoilt,’’ Gaile says. ‘‘Occasionally I see a weed and, if I’m sure it’s a weed, I pull it out. The garden’s not my thing but I love it.
‘‘Even on wet days, you look out the window, and it’s beauty all around you.’’