Photography: Jacob Leaf
If you love a good roadside stall, you’d be delighted by the charming upcycled shed at the end of Holly Brown’s driveway. Bunches of kale, homemade jams and preserves, heirloom tomato seedlings and pretty posies are just some of the seasonal produce on offer. What’s available depends on the time of year. There’s no honesty box either, because the keen Waiheke Island gardener gives it all away for free. This is because Holly is a generous, good sort who enjoys sharing her passion with others in the close-knit Waiheke community. It also helps her use up the surplus.
“I love abundance around me, in the garden and the home. I like to grow a lot of plants and I don’t waste anything.”
As well as growing vegetables for her own use, Holly also supplies some of the produce for her husband Tim Pickering’s popular Italian restaurant, Fenice, which is just up the road in Oneroa.
“I grow a lot of the menu items that Tim uses in his restaurant, like kale, parsley and fennel, the flowers for the tables and edible flowers, like calendula, borage and alyssum, for decorating the cakes.”
Any leftover scraps go straight to Holly’s mum’s hens.
“They love them and the egg yolks are so orange.”
Green beginnings
Holly’s mum, Mandy, has always been an enthusiastic gardener. However, Holly says she didn’t really catch the gardening bug until she was a stressed university student in her early twenties.
“I was sitting there one morning, cramming for my law exams and I looked out my window and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got so much information that needs to go into my brain. I’m going to go and buy some flowers and plant them because I can’t be bothered studying.’ It provided a really good balance – getting into the garden, studying, then going back out into the garden.”
Holly, who now works with Mandy as a real estate agent selling homes on the island, says that gardening still provides her with a wellbeing boost.
“If I’m stressed or I’ve got too much going on in my head, I go out to the garden and touch plants. I really believe that it calms your nervous system down.”
Call of the Wild
All plants are welcome in Holly’s garden, as long as they’re hardy enough to hack the hot Waiheke Island summers. She doesn’t subscribe to particular colour schemes either.
“People are kind of fussy with colours in gardens. They might only have white in one area, but I love everything, so I give it a go. If it grows, it stays and if it doesn’t, I pull it out.”
The plants that thrive in the dry include sages, particularly fragrant pineapple sage, hollyhocks, which self-seed readily, and sea lavender (Limonium vulgare).
“Most people would call sea lavender a weed, but when it grows tall, it has big, beautiful purple spikes and the bees love it.”
In order to maintain moisture in the soil, she’s happy to let the garden go a bit wild.
“I maintain the weeds, but undergrowth doesn’t bother me. I like long grass around my plants because it mulches the soil, particularly in summer. It’s also better for beneficial soil microbes.”
The entire island relies on tank water. Holly waters the garden using rainwater collected from her roof and stored in several tanks around the property.
“I’m very conscious of saving water in summer and sometimes will also use the water from the kitchen sink to water plants over the dry months.”
Applying a thick layer of mulch around plants to help lock in moisture also prevents the garden from drying out over summer. Fortunately, she has an arrangement with Danny, a local arborist. He’s happy to drop off loads of mulch he needs to get rid of — for free. Holly attributes her garden’s lushness to gardening by the moon.
“The moon calendar guides you on things like when to plant, feed and grow root crops. I always thought it was wishy-washy, but then I decided to give it a go for a year. My garden had never been so productive or healthy. I do think the garden is connected to the moon, the seasons and space, but it also brings structure to my gardening and knowing when I should feed my plants helps me keep up with it.”
Propagation princess
Holly grows many of her plants from seeds and cuttings. She multiplies her collection of geraniums by snipping off stems and planting them in the soil or in pots to give away. She also grows a lot from seed and particularly loves growing heirloom tomato varieties.
“I bought some really rare types from some growers on Trade Me who are based in Motueka. Some were collected during the war and came back in soldiers’ pockets. Another comes from Peru and is called the ‘traveller’ tomato. It’s a clustered cherry tomato that looks like a little brain. Apparently, the travellers would keep it in their pockets and tear off sections to eat while they were travelling.”
Holly also grows dahlias and has experimented with collecting and growing her own seed. Unlike growing dahlias from tubers or cuttings, where you get a clone of the parent plant, seed-grown dahlias produce new varieties that can look completely different from the original plant.
“Nine of them were ugly and awful, but I got a dusky-coloured one with a pink centre that is so beautiful I’ve grown it ever since.”
Holly also provides flowers for weddings on the island, filling jars with dahlias, cosmos and other blooms.
“I tell the brides it’s very much a wild garden look. It’s nice to share the garden with them.”
For her own wedding, she picked her own bouquet from the garden just an hour before the ceremony.
Second time around
A serious op-shopper, Holly loves vintage botanical wares, from prints to gardening books and tools. A proud hoarder, she has an extensive collection of baskets, including some she’s salvaged from landfill.
“The thought that someone has made those baskets and they’re being thrown away hurts my feelings, so they get put to good use. Tim would probably say, ‘No more baskets this year’, but I can’t pass one by.”
Repurposing items is also practical.
“Being on an island without a highway to the large stores, we’re very conscious of buying items from town. You kind of need to use what you can here.”
All the materials for the roadside garden shed came from the recycling centre down the road. She and her dad built it over the winter a few years ago. It has deepened her connection with the community, and friends sometimes leave her plants there.
“Waiheke is a great place to live. Everyone knows everyone. When I put out a whole lot of bunches for Christmas one year, the whole street came out and said, ‘This is so cool,’ and they all came and got flowers for their Christmas table. Things like that make me really happy.”
To see more of Holly’s garden, check out her Instagram @hollyamberbrown
Related articles:
- Blooming amazing: Floral stylist Kate Williams shares her favourite flowers
- This New South Wales coastal garden offers peace and seclusion, surrounded by native flora
- Presenter Kara Rickard on growth, healing and living with te taiao
