Love in a cold climate
Gardening in the mountains
Love in a Cold Climate is a wonderful book by Nancy Mitford. A firm favourite of mine along with the earlier The Pursuit of Love. Published in 1949 but set between the two wars it is a funny and very observant story about the aristocracy in Britain. Ironic, based on actual family stories and a wonderful look into that time in history, in that part of the world. Anything about the Mitford sisters is just wildly amazing - all with such different personalities, stories and sliding door moments. Worth reading their letters between themselves.
So why the title for a post about gardening?
I have always been fascinated by the English style of gardening. Borders, roses, climbers, neat hedges, wild and rambling cottage garden flowers, the Monty Don style of vegetable gardening, strawberries and rhubarb, creeks and giant old oak trees. Heaven. I am not entirely sure where it comes from (and living and visiting the UK hasn’t helped).
I have so many nature books from English writers such as
, (Why Women Grow is on its way!), , Monty Don, Charles Dowding, , Katherine Swift (The Morville Year is great), Clare Nolan, Emma Mitchell, Raynor Winn and so many more. And don’t get me started on the interior design (hello Jasper Conran, Flora Soames, Paula Sutton from Hillhouse Vintage). That’s not to say I don’t have my US, Australian and NZ favourites as well. But, I can spend hours soaking up writing or visuals that transport me to Sussex or Devon or Dorset or the Cotswolds. Funny thing is my ancestors are Scottish and the pull is nowhere near as strong.I was talking to my mum about it the other day (as I took her out for a Victorian High Tea for her birthday) and partly we think it stems from how the women of our family (mother-line) grow flowers. Not so much food (that came later with mum and I) but flowers. In a time when you read about how to grow roses in books and wrote letters to growers to buy the specific one you wanted. My great-grandmother adored roses (and new to me a type called Moss Roses which look like they have moss growing on the stems) and had whole botanic garden style beds for them.
Maybe its comfort, layers of history, stability, beauty or just an innate calling to do so. The fingers itch if I don’t get them in the soil. It’s calming, grounding and quiet as well. [Although some overwhelm creeps in when I need to deal with kgs of tomatoes].
There’s tension here
Living underneath a giant mountain range and beside a huge lake makes for an interesting climate. We have a very short, sharp summer with high heat for maybe two months if we are lucky and then by late March, early April we slide into cold again. November is the month we finally start to feel like things are warming up. That doesn’t leave much time for ripening.
So how does one love the land when it is not conducive to growing the way you would like to grow? Or feel the frustration at not being “in the dream” yet?
Okay, so I am not trying to grow melons (yet, I need a green house) but after 9 years of tending this land to grow food and flowers I understand what I can and can’t grow (and taking into account specific micro-climates in my garden). Queenstown is a place of micro-climates and I have seen prolific lemons in a huge tree at one house - it is possible! I recently spied an 80 year old pear tree near Arrowtown that was at least 7 metres tall and 5 metres wide. It was huge and beautiful. Some early bulbs were just coming out around its base.
And we clearly have some introduced species that make it feel like an english country garden - blackbird, chaffinch, kingfisher, song thrush (but they’ve got nothing on the sounds of a bellbird/koromako or tūī) and the ones many don’t like - hedgehog, rabbits, stoat, weasel, ferret. Luckily no foxes tho. Even occasionally you might see a pheasant.
As a custodian and gardener I feel we need to listen to the land, be observant, work in partnership with nature while at the same time giving ourselves little moments of joy with those things that you love. Be accepting of what you can and can’t grow, be accepting of, cherish and build up the native flora and fauna ( our house is surrounded by a native beech forest) and then create the beauty that fills your heart with joy.
And for me thats flowers, fruits, vegetables. Take the cold climate and Love what you can, experiment and try again. (And then pop to Arrowtown for a walk amongst the exotic trees along the Arrow river).
Maybe I shouldn’t be lusting over or dreaming of that type of garden but a garden that, holistically, works so much better because it is of its place. It works for here. When I came across Charles Dowding’s How to Grow Winter Vegetables I suddenly could see how to grow for a cold climate. Working with it not against it. Removing old colonist ideals of imposing structure and elements that just will rub against the land rather than weave into it and make it stronger.
Reminders:
I need to keep looking and searching for the beauty of here. The gnarled trunks of the elder trees, the 100m of road that is covered with 20m hawthorns, the prolific wild roses, the drama of the mountains, hearing the waterfalls coming down the side of The Remarkbles/Kawarau after a heavy rain fall…even loving on the super spiky matagouri for its nitrogen fixing properties. And occasionally popping to the west coast for a long ramble amongst the rain forests with the lichen, moss and towering beech trees.
Love where you live and work with it
Love the coldness, love the harshness, love the giant mountains, towering waterfalls, small rambling rivers, and the short growing season. Love that we can grow beautiful stone fruits, amazing wine and beautiful flowers and that within an hour we can reach it all. Love that we can be so close to spaces where there is no one. Not a single sole. We can follow old miner’s trails and talk of the women who supported them. We can walk straight up to giant boulders at the top of waterfalls and look out across a lake that can change from sparkling blue to murky grey in an instant with the change of the weather. Love the deep frosts to keep out the bugs and the stifling summers when you can sleep with the doors open because most of the time there are not mosquitoes.
Maybe this is the best of all.
For now I am off to make marmalade with oranges and lemons grown in Gisborne.
Because that’s where they grow best.
xOlivia
