True to his roots

Renowned plantsman Gordon Collier has always been unafraid to break the rules of traditional landscaping.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

That gardening genius Gordon Collier has probably never met a plant he didn't like. What he doesn't like are gardens with hard edges, or tidy gardens, or overdesigned ones, and gardens, or garden talk, which might be described as pompous. There is nothing pompous about Collier, or his gardens. They are expressions of his personality: exuberant, a bit eccentric, slightly rambling in a charismatic way.

He likes blurred lines. He likes the unexpected.

He was once described as a subversive gardener, a description he embraced with his customary gusto. He doesn't follow rules. He doesn't mind mixing orange with pink. He says he's a cheeky gardener. "I do that just to provoke people." He once painted a dead tree bright blue. Most people would have cut it down. He liked its shape. The dead tree then miraculously sprang back to life.

The job title is missing from his CV but it should include "magician". And "trickster". If a tree really does die in his garden and falls over, he could well just leave it. It slows garden visitors down, he says. He doesn't want you to fall over said tree and break your leg; he just wants you to slow down and really look. He's mischievous, not malicious. That blue tree. Those toppled trees. A stand of native toetoe, which he has never seen in any other domestic garden. A purple and black garden around blackened macrocarpa stumps. At his new garden, the White House, he grows plants in gravel: lavenders, stachys, grasses, bee blossom, achillea, succulents. In less skilled hands it could be a muddle but, like all of his gardens, it enchants.