Our inter­views with cool peo­ple con­tin­ue!

1. Hey, who are you and what do you do?

I’m Zoe and I run The Very Green Gar­den­er, which is a lit­tle gar­den­ing com­pa­ny in Pōneke. We main­tain peo­ple’s gar­dens as well as sup­port them to do their own gar­dens. (Edi­tor note: Zoe also writes an excel­lent newslet­ter about gar­den­ing too)
 

2. Am I just a gross bourgeoise swine exploiting the working class getting someone else to do my gardening? What kind of people are your customers?

The world has changed a lot since I start­ed in 2014, when it was more of a class divide. My clients used to be fam­i­lies with young chil­dren or wealth­i­er peo­ple. Nowa­days most of my clients are either very busy, or inca­pable (phys­i­cal­ly or men­tal­ly!) to com­mit to doing their own gar­den. (Ed note: It’s me, hi! No, lit­er­al­ly, me inter­viewed on Zoe’s blog)
Quite a few of our clients have us do the parts of the gar­den­ing that are repet­i­tive or phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing, so that they can focus on the parts they real­ly enjoy. I can hon­est­ly say that I don’t take on cus­tomers I don’t enjoy being around- life is far too short- so the worst I can say is that some of our clients just aren’t that inter­est­ed in their gar­den, but need to make sure it does­n’t com­plete­ly swal­low their house. (Prob­a­bly also me, hi)
 

3. You have chickens for rent! The info about them on your website is pretty comprehensive but do you think anyone ever rents them for rehabilitation? I don’t think I’m the only person with a traumatic chicken story from Staglands

Zoe cuddles a chicken

Our real­ly friend­ly chick­en pre­tends that we are try­ing to mur­der her when we pick her up, and she makes a huge song and dance about cry­ing, lying flat and stamp­ing her feet, so if you want to feel like you have won the pow­er back from a chick­en I have the per­fect one! Anoth­er one hates me despite, at one point, hand feed­ing her four times a day for a week when she was unwell. I’m still a bit salty about that.


4. I know there’s all kinds of different microclimates around Wellington, but do you have any advice for what grows well here or what should be avoided?

The best advice I have, that every­one can take, is that the plants at the gar­den cen­tre are not there because they will grow well for you. They are there because nurs­eries decide those are the plants they will send out to every region, and often they are sent out at the wrong time of year for plant­i­ng. Be very leery of what is in front of you. Read the label and then google the exact vari­ety, and think about if that match­es where you want to plant it. If you are try­ing to decide what to put in your gar­den, remem­ber that the inter­net is full of advice from peo­ple world­wide, so a lot of it won’t apply to you, how­ev­er if you eval­u­ate your sources you will do fine. Also, just don’t both­er with vibur­nums. They are a bea­con for bug prob­lems and will nev­er look great, they’ll just attract pests to your gar­den.


5. I can’t imagine you’d be much of a “must follow the crowds!” person, but are there any trends in gardens you’ve been noticing clients asking for lately?

Every­one start­ed mov­ing away from hedges a few years ago, and tried wild­flow­ers, which are quite messy and com­plex to main­tain. Now every­one is look­ing around won­der­ing what the heck to do. My pre­dic­tions are rust and sandy colours for hard land­scap­ing, and I’ve noticed peo­ple are start­ing to get tired of inflo­res­cences (clus­ters of tiny flow­ers) and are look­ing for some­thing with big, wham­my, obvi­ous flow­ers. I think we are going to move back to a bit more for­mal­i­ty to be hon­est. Some clean, obvi­ous lines.
 

6. What are your favourite public gardens/outdoor spaces to spend time in around the city?

The Bego­nia house at the botan­ic gar­dens is an all-time favourite. It is also heat­ed, so good for win­ter! The park around the Hutt City library is also fan­tas­tic. My daugh­ter has recent­ly got­ten into star­ing at the city from up high, so we’ve been spend­ing a lot of time at the Brook­lyn wind tur­bine at night- it’s beau­ti­ful, but you can’t see much in the way of plants there!
 

7. What’s your wish for Wellington in the next five years?

I am super con­cerned that we are going to move into a more con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion, so if we can cling to a greeney left­ist gov­ern­ing body, that would be great. I would like to see the library fin­ished ASAP, and I would very much like for Caffien­at­ed Drag­on Games to sur­vive, because the con­struc­tion is killing their busi­ness.
I want to see cycle lanes every­where and for the enti­tled car own­ers to accept that they need to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce their car usage so less­er abled peo­ple are able to con­tin­ue to use theirs.
I want us to all invest in grey­wa­ter sys­tems in our homes and work on a sus­tain­able method of elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion in our homes. My part­ner is an elec­tri­cian and he swears blind that solar just won’t cut it unless tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops quick­ly. I want us to all keep being nice to each oth­er!


8. Who’s a cool Wellingtonian we should speak to next?

Brid­get Cassie is a plumb­ing appren­tice who is an all round fan­tas­tic human, work­ing on sup­port­ing women in trades in her free time with lots of fin­gers in lots of pies.
Ana Hen­der­son runs Oh Good­ness, mak­ing amaz­ing soaps on the South Coast
I know too many fan­tas­tic peo­ple! I could list all day!