Hard work pays off for couple

Photo: BEN WATSON

PROUD GARDENER: Chengru Pang in her award-winning garden.

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A Bayswater couple are national runners-up in the vegetable section of the Housing New Zealand Garden Awards.

Chengru Pang and Daxiong Lu, originally from Beijing, had also won the North Shore category.

Their garden includes tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, capsicum, spring onions, silverbeet and pumpkin. There are also strawberries, plum, feijoa and peach trees, hot green chillies, bok choy and cabbage.

Mrs Pang says she spends about four hours a day tending to her patch, watering, weeding, and planting.

She says she enjoys the process of planting seeds and watching them grow.

She also likes sharing her homegrown produce with neighbours.

"It gives me great joy to pass them on."

The awards are run in 11 regions, covering each of Housing NZ’s 43 neighbourhood units.

They aim to recognise the pride and effort tenants put into taking care of properties, encourage more people into gardening, and promote its health and financial benefits.

Entries were open to Housing NZ tenants and just under 2000 were received in the general garden, vegetable garden, small garden, children’s garden, and community group housing garden categories.

An analysis of entries over the years reveals a marked increase in the number of people growing their own vegetables.

Since 2004, the number of entries to the vegetable garden category have risen from 17.5 percent of overall entries to nearly 26 percent.

Judging panel chairwoman Maggie Barry said entries in the vegetable garden category were particularly impressive this year.

"In these hard economic times it is understandable more and more people are growing their own. We are lucky to be blessed with a climate that allows people to do so much with their gardens."

- © Fairfax NZ News