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New Zealand Native Plants

When choosing my list of favourite New Zealand Native Plants an extremely embarassing situation arises. I am sometimes hopeless at naming plants, but there are always (in my mind anyway) mitigating circumstances...

With a feathery native grass for neighbour.

Cream Delight Flax

My native list, however, showed me that I take natives totally for granted. There are many types of Hebe and that each has totally different leaf shapes. But do I know the details of my Hebes? And what about the different types of tussocks I use in the borders? Oops.

New Zealand gardeners are lucky to have such a variety of foliages and textures in their natives. Breeders like Jack Hobbs are raising the profile and producing excellent new plants. Council plantings use New Zealand natives a lot, which could affect their desirability in the eyes of some gardeners.

I often see pictures of my cherished hebes, flaxes and cordylines in British magazines and feel quite superior. These are MY PLANTS!!! I also feel a certain smugness when I read the prices of the hybrid flaxes. These are my bargain bin heroes.

I hope you will enjoy my list of New Zealand Native Plants. Please accept my apologies for not using the correct names. I've also only included one tree, though I grow many types in the garden.

New Zealand Natives

Astelias... Sun 29th Jun 2008: Astelias are spiky aristocrats of the New Zealand native plant scene - whether in the ornamental garden, in pots, or in their natural bush surroundings. I love them.
Carex trifida... Mon 11th Feb 2008: Hee hee - a lovely ornamental grass called Carex trifida, with the scariest seed heads, is destined for higher honours in my garden. I just hope I haven't introduced a variegated monster...
Senecio - Daisy Bush... Sat 5th Jan 2008: Senecio is a New Zealand shrub with a heart of gold, and it flowers energetically in mid-summer. I love those yellow daisies - and so do my bees!
Pseudopanax... Fri 18th May 2007: Pseudopanax are evergreen shrubs or trees which grow in the New Zealand native bush and forests, and, of course, in the Moosey garden. A Pseudopanax tree can be transformed in a flash (with a little help from saw, loppers, and secateurs) into a luxuriant shrub.
Beverly Hills Hebe... Fri 29th Dec 2006: Hebes bred in New Zealand normally have sturdy, no-nonsense names like Southern Snow, or Maori names like Wiri Dawn. Imagine my surprise when I found a clutch of Hebes on the nursery sale table called - wait for it - Beverly Hills.
Toetoe - The Real Thing... Sun 17th Dec 2006: High on the list of New Zealand native plants which are taken for granted are the Toetoes, or pampas grasses. They are often banished to country fence lines, well away from a gardener's critical eyes.
Flowering Kowhai Tree... Tue 31st Oct 2006: The yellow flowering Kowhai is a small New Zealand tree whose flowers enjoys iconic status. Each island (north and south) has its own dominant type, but there are also many hybrids in the wild and in gardens. This tree is a sociable separatist!
Flax Fiasco... Thu 29th Jun 2006: Aargh! My love affair with New Zealand flaxes is officially over. We've broken up - well, some of the big Phormium Tenaxes have been, literally, with the axe, shovel and a sharp kitchen knife.
Spikes in Flower... Mon 2nd Jan 2006: Many of New Zealand's much loved landscaping plants are spiky. The big stiff flaxes, Phormium tenax, are a natural feature of much of our land, as are the iconic Cabbage trees, or Cordylines. These plants start coming into flower in early summer...
Bronze Flax... Fri 11th Mar 2005: This is a large weeping flax (or Phormium) with fat, dark leaves in shades of brown and bronze. It grows head high and forms a clump nearly two metres wide, with thick gently arching leaves.
Purple Flowering Hebe... Thu 3rd Mar 2005: I am trying to remember to get more in touch with the New Zealand native Hebes planted in my garden. The first step is to photograph them all and note their flowering times (and colours). The second step should be to find out their names!
Jester Flax... Sun 13th Feb 2005: New coloured flax hybrids are released in New Zealand every year. The latest pink toned one is called Jester, and I have two growing in different parts of my garden.
New Cordyline... Sun 13th Feb 2005: Often my new coloured Cordylines start life in pots, then go into the garden when their trunks start to lengthen. This is a striped variety which I ordered from a mail order catalogue - sorry, name forgotten, label lost.
Little Red Flax... Fri 28th Jan 2005: In all my borders there is at least one little red flax. They brighten up the winter days and stay neat and beautiful throughout the other seasons. This means that they are supposed to stay red, and stay little.
Renga Renga... Sun 23rd Jan 2005: Renga Renga is the New Zealand Maori name for Arthropoduim Cirratum - one of the best landscaping native plants I have ever grown in my garden.
Libertia Perigrinans ... Wed 19th Jan 2005: Libertia is often used in council landscaping with other New Zealand native plants. It has strong and striking spiky growth, with a strong burnt-orange stripe on olive green leaves.
Variegated Hebe... Wed 5th Jan 2005: This variegated hebe is grown a lot in my garden. The variegated foliage always works well in planting combinations, looking clean and tidy in all seasons. Purple flowers appear in summer.
Chatham Island Forget-Me-Nots... Thu 18th Nov 2004: In the Apple Tree Border there are some beautifully majestic Chatham Island Forget-me-nots (Myosotidium Hortensia). They arrived as small seedling plants, all blue flowering, and were planted here when this border was well shaded in summer.
Lemonwood - Pittosporum Eugenoides... Tue 12th Oct 2004: A much loved and admired New Zealand native is the small shrubby tree called a Lemonwood, or Pittosporum Eugenoides. Its leaves are a shiny green and smell faintly lemony, hence its common name.
New Zealand Myrtle... Thu 16th Sep 2004: I have to use the words subtle and stylish to describe this New Zealand native myrtle. It's a small shrub with the most beautiful variegated leaf markings, hardy and easily kept in shape in the mixed garden border.
Cream & Green Coprosma... Tue 10th Aug 2004: This variegated Coprosma is living for now in a pot, sheltered from the winter frosts. I also have several larger shrubs growing in the Wattle Woods.
Olearia... Mon 9th Aug 2004: Olearia is a New Zealand evergreen native plant used very successfully for medium sized hedges. The leaves are a clean avocado green, and the shrubs are easy to keep trimmed to size.
Flax Yellow Wave... Fri 28th May 2004: Yellow Wave is one of the cheeriest new Zealand flax hybrids. It is reasonably large and bulky, and has a weeping form. In this close-up it looks more like a Green Wave - the leaves are much more yellow in Summer.
Hebe Geometry... Mon 19th Apr 2004: I love the geometric symmetry of this hebe. The leaves are like a series of reflections coming up the stem. They are a subtle blue-green colour, and it has small whitish flowers.
Coprosma... Fri 20th Dec 2002: Coprosmas used to be considered a bit boring with their small shiny green leaves. There have recently been some new varieties with leaves of various colour combinations.
Carex... Fri 13th Dec 2002: Anyone who has travelled in New Zealand knows the beauty of the tussocks blowing around in the wind. They hug the ground and their combined colours glow.
Toetoe - Imposter... Wed 26th Apr 2000: Toetoe (Cortaderia) is an iconic grassy feature of the New Zealand landscape. It can be rather too bulky for a small border, and its leaves have cutting edges, but the flowering plumes are magnificent.
Dark Red Flax ... Thu 2nd Mar 2000: There are some beautiful small coloured hybrid flaxes, with a variety of different names, and red-toned leaves. I particularly like this fountain shaped dark red.
Pepper Tree... Wed 1st Mar 2000: The native New Zealand Pepper Tree is a small shrub with red blotches on its leaves. Some are green and some are more a buff or beige colour, depending on how much sun the shrub gets.
Mountain Grass ... Sat 26th Feb 2000: This feathery cascading grass is very light and weightless, with reddish tones from mid-summer on. I know it as Mountain Grass, and have several specimens in different borders.
Hen House Hebe... Fri 18th Feb 2000: When some small hebes turned up in my local bargain bin I was tempted. I bought five of them and planted a hebe hedge above a small stone retaining wall. They trim easily, and look great when in flower.
Flax Tricolor... Wed 16th Feb 2000: One of my most favourite of all the plants in the garden is this beautiful hybrid flax. I think is called Tricolor. This is a three dollar bargain bin flax from the local nursery - it has the most amazing coloured stripes I've ever seen in any plant.ß
Unknown Hebe... Wed 16th Feb 2000: This is a small blue-green hebe which grows by the path through Middle Border. It behaves itself in all weathers and so far hasn't outgrown its space in the garden. I'm sorry that I don't know its name, but it is possibly Hebe pinguifolia.
Striped Leaf Flax... Fri 11th Feb 2000: Another flax detail is shown here. I think this flax is possibly called 'Maori Maiden'. It grows waist high and from a distance looks like the colours of a sunset. Close up the stripes look like an ethnic weaving pattern.
Flax Leaf... Mon 7th Feb 2000: This is an upright compact flax which I have growing in several places in the garden. The stripes look as if they have been hand painted, and are in colours of olive green and dusky rose pink. Some leaves are coloured in two halves.
Cordyline... Fri 4th Feb 2000: Cordylines (or cabbage trees) are THE plant which evokes instant homesickness in New Zealanders overseas, whenever they spy a cabbage tree in someone's garden. The connection with cabbages is a little odd...
Flax Cream Delight... Fri 4th Feb 2000: There are now many different flax hybrids which are available in nurseries and garden centres. A particularly beautiful variety is named Cream Delight.