One fine day

There are perfect moments in the garden in spring. My favourite bit of the garden is one that I had no part in making. This is the gravel garden, on the drive in front of the house. I didn't know I wanted a gravel garden. I certainly didn't plan to grow a gravel garden. It grows itself. A gravel garden is a marvellous thing. You don't have to feed it, you scarcely have to weed it or water it, and the best thing about it is that it hasn't cost you a cent. It is perfect for miserly gardeners.

- Michele Hewitson

When I was an Auckland gardener, I was a spendthrift gardener. Which is another name for a show-off, control-freak sort of gardener.

Now, I just let annuals and perennials from the so-called "tended" (not very) beds which border the drive, and anywhere else that takes their fancy, self-seed where they decide they want to live.

Just now, we have masses of aquilegias running wild. In gardening lingo they are sports. They are wildly promiscuous and will hook up with any nearby charmer, resulting in surprising offspring. I now have a collection of varieties, some of which I have spent years, and many dollars and much cursing, attempting to grow from seed. There is William Guinness, which is almost black with a white frill and presumably named after that most Irish of gargles, a Nora Barlow with little pink rosettes (bred by botanist Nora Barlow, a granddaughter of Charles Darwin) and a white Barlow, with a flower-like tiny Edwardian ruff.