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!