‍ ‍By Susan Gifford

‍ The New Zealand Gardens Trust is lucky to have had Dylan Norfield as an assessor for our NZGT gardens since 2014. Now the deputy lead assessor, he came to the ‘job’, following the 2013 the NZGT conference in Dunedin, when he was asked to talk about ‘What makes a garden stand out’. Following that talk and sharing his horticulture experience with members, he was asked to join the assessing team in 2014. This was his ‘shadow’ year and he helped assess Dunedin gardens with Kerei Thompson from Bark Ltd. As the Manager of Collections at Dunedin Botanic Gardens, he certainly knows plants and gardens very well. What’s new is that Dylan has just had his own intriguing garden assessed for NZGT. For good reason it was awarded five stars: a Garden of National Significance.

Dylan and his wife’s 1.25 acre property is at Doctors Point, a much-admired enclave of the Otago Peninsula. It’s certainly a special place, with views from the house and garden down the valley to an estuary, a small creek running through and on down to the sea and it faces north-west so sun and shelter are optimal for gardening.

The planting is amazing. Part arboretum, part woodland, part subtropical, this is a garden with an incredibly diverse mix of sub-tropical to hardy plants. Dylan is a self-confessed plant collecting fanatic - something which is obvious to visitors. He has planted more than 1400 different plants/cultivars so the garden is literally but artfully packed. But it totally works and there are wonderful surprises to be found – some of his plants are so rare they number one of just two or three in the country. Needless to say, pruning is a big part of garden maintenance given that trees especially, need space to grow and collectors need space to add to their collections – even if you already have hundreds and hundreds.

Clearly Dylan is not going to give up on his habit. He says when he left the UK and had to leave his plants behind, he found that more traumatic than he did leaving the people he knew. Of course, when he got to New Zealand and saw the range of plants here, he wanted to collect them all. He says he’s noticed that the range being offered commercially in New Zealand is decreasing and he firmly believes that as gardeners, we need to preserve what we have. Dylan is certainly doing his best to collect and share the plants that he can.

Plants and gardening are part of Dylan’s DNA. While at school in UK he helped out in his grandparents’ and parents’ gardens during his school holidays. His parents owned a nursery so he started to learn about horticulture at a very young age. At around age 12 he entered his first flower show and won first prize in his age-group. Modestly, he suspects he was the sole entrant in his age category.

So what brought them to Doctor’s Point, a 20-minute commute from Dunedin?

‘I had a good friend who lived there and every time I visited, I could see the microclimate and beauty of the area. Around 18 years ago, when a property came onto the market we snapped it up. It is a wildlife haven of woodland and the coastal climate allows me to grow a wide range of plants. But there’s still enough cold weather for me to grow maples. When asked about his favourite plant, he said he will always have a soft spot for Japanese maples because these are what he sold and displayed in the UK. He says the range of species and cultivars never ceases to amaze him and he has of course bred several cultivars himself. As he says ‘they are a plant for all seasons with spring colour, summer lushness, autumn colour and winter branch structure. They come in all sizes and shapes and my collection now numbers over 80 species and cultivars’.

Although his day job is working with plants, there is nothing like having your own place in which to experiment and enjoy. His days at work are spent managing staff, doing financials, H&S and overseeing the plant collections at Dunedin Botanic Garden, so his own garden is his escape. Of an evening he’ll wander around the garden and he greets his plants by name. This is a friendly and practical approach - by always using botanical names he gets to retain the vast horticultural knowledge he has built over the years.

It took Dylan a while to decide whether his garden was one for the NZGT family. He says he was envious of garden owners he visited when assessing, who were obviously willing to allow the public to peek into their worlds – their garden. It takes courage to expose oneself to comments from outsiders and there’s a niggling doubt that one’s own garden might not be ‘good enough’ to share. Thank goodness he made the right decision as this garden is a stunning showcase of the beauty and range of plants that can be grown in New Zealand. Dylan is also enjoying the other huge benefit of having an NZGT open garden and that is meeting so many enthusiastic gardeners and receiving their positive feedback. A fitting reward for years and years of hard work.

Visit Doctors Point Garden https://www.gardens.org.nz/visit/doctors-point