Quietly Passionate Gardeners: Meet the Norfolk Island Garden Club

President Jan Keeping says she “loves the trading table where we bring cuttings, plants, spare fruit, guava jelly etc., ask plenty of questions and trade among ourselves”. A member of the Club for all but 2 months of its 29 years, Jan says she enjoyed it from the start. These days she finds herself in a similar position as the more experienced Island gardeners of that time such as Doris Wood and Norma Summerscales, answering questions from younger members and new comers unfamiliar with local conditions. Gardening in our isolated location, completely surrounded by the ocean can present some unique challenges.

Top of the conditions that Jan deals with on her beautiful cliff-edge property on the eastern side of the Island, are wind and salt. To buffer the wind she and her husband have grown a hedge of incredibly salt-tolerant pohutukawa, creating a series of protected micro-climates where plants such as vincas, allamanda, roses, geraniums, pansies and daisies can thrive. Mature native White Oaks and pine trees planted towards the cliff edge also provide a frame to the stunning ocean views. On the protected side of the garden behind the house, there are numerous garden flower beds and an orchard with banana, orange, lemon, plum, peach, nectarine, avocado and china pear trees.

Gardening on an Island created as a result of a volcanic eruption, means dealing with porous volcanic soil that requires mulch, mulch and more mulch! The fallen leaves from the White Oaks provide Jan with an essential compost ingredient, topped up with garden cuttings and at times some dynamic lifter and blood and bone. Aside from times of extended dry, Jan says the pleasure of gardening in Norfolk’s sub-tropical climate is not having to deal with extremes of temperature so you can plant all year round. In addition, she says “plants grow here that are considered indoor plants elsewhere, for example some people have beds of maiden hair fern in their gardens”.

Jan’s gardening life started following a visit from her mother who began watering a very thirsty carnation seedling, which after she left Jan then felt compelled to keep alive! As her knowledge of what to do in the garden grew, she found that “the more you learn, the more you want to do” and she eagerly joined the Garden Club as soon as she discovered its existence in 1990. A Life Member since 2011 she says she “would do anything for the Club, it’s so important”. With a membership of about forty, members take it in turn to host meetings where they talk about the features and conditions in their garden. The trading table is always popular with plenty of donated plants, cuttings and produce and the meeting finishes with afternoon tea.

For the past fifteen years the Club’s valued tea lady has been Ria Howell, a job that Ria says she ”does with pleasure as my contribution to the club as a long term member”. Ria’s in-land hillside property lies on the other side of the Island to Jan’s and these days it receives shelter from the wind via a large number of mature native trees. That wind break however, did not exist at all when Ria moved into the house 44 years ago (some years after first purchasing and living elsewhere on the property). The house had been tenanted out to some young ‘bank boys’ who had set up a golf course in the acre surrounding the house, and further back Guava trees had run wild creating an impenetrable barrier across many acres.

Four acres of that impenetrable area are now totally unrecognisable as a fully restored forest of Norfolk Island native trees and plants. Typically understating the daily labour she carried out over a number of years to remove the Guavas as “quite a big job”, Ria gradually cleared and re-planted. The reward of that labour is now felt by her each day especially when she hears endemic and endangered Norfolk Island Green Parrots and other native birds calling through the trees.

As Ria gradually replaced the grass (and a lot of golf balls!) with a garden to surround the house, she laid pathways that today weave in and out of various delightful spaces. The garden evolved as trees grew and offered shaded and protected places and she was able to turn the leaves into much needed mulch to support further growth. To the front of the house an orchard contains mandarin, grapefruit and oranges. Some of the trees are now very old and as the fruit is “really very beautiful” Ria always allows cuttings to be taken, believing it “should be shared”.