Subtropical garden heats up heroic festival

BY JANIE SMITH

The summer humidity may be too hot to handle for some, but it’s the perfect climate for Peter Brady's garden.

It adds to the lush, tropical rainforest feel of the Balinese-inspired Balmoral garden that is overflowing with exotic greenery and dotted with sculptures.

It is also one of 32 gardens open to the public for this year’s Heroic Gardens Festival.

The house was built in 1934 and when Mr Brady bought the property in 1983, he began to transform the bare yard into a subtropical paradise.

"I get a bit of a surprise when I look back at how it was in the beginning. I just go on year after year and don’t realise how much things change."

The area was originally a blue stone quarry site and meant there was a lot of rock underneath the soil.

Mr Brady keeps many plants in pots because once something is in the ground the rocks make it almost impossible to dig out. It also means he can move them around to change the garden.

Mr Brady, who has worked as a florist all his life, shares the pink stucco house with his companion Mr Rainbow, a chatty rainbow lorikeet.

He has been part of the Heroic Gardens Festival since it started 14 years ago and was originally on the committee.

He started his garden at the start of the tropical movement when most people were growing roses and palms were hard to find.

"I’ve just gone on from there, scoping out different ones."

He also has a holiday home in the Coromandel where he spends part of the week tending to his second subtropical garden.

Being a fulltime gardener keeps him busy so he recently got fellow gardener and landscaper Mark Van Karthoven to help once a month with moving larger pots around.

"My first observation of this garden is that it’s like a library of plants. I just pick up ideas each time I come here," Mr Van Karthoven says.

All of the proceeds from the
festival will go to Auckland hospices.

The Heroic Gardens Festival is on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm.

Tickets cost $30 and are valid for both days.

They are available at www.heroicgardens.org.nz and a variety of bookshops and garden
centres.

- © Fairfax NZ News