Battling the mudbath

Winter transformation of the butterfly garden

June 2025

There is mud up my legs, mud on my jumper, mud in my hair. Winter gardening in Auckland is not recommended. This was when I was planning on curling up in front of the fire and writing about the baby birds we saw in spring, or the visits to local wild places that are well worth visiting.

Instead, it's heavy work in heavy soil. I've been digging up trees and shrubs and moving them around the garden. If you haven't read back in the blog, you will not know how lomandra messed up all my planning, by taking sooooo long to dig out in spring that the ground became hard before I'd finished. When the autumn rains came and the ground softened up, I was digging them out again. Now I'm digging out the trees and shrubs that were planted in the one sunny spot in the garden in order to make space for flowers. It's hard to show photos of progress because it just looks so bad. I'm not precious about not having an insta-worthy garden, but to show you photos of mud and debris and go, "hey, look at what I've done" just seems wrong.

Little Miss 7 helping dig the borders. You can tell she hasn't helped for long because she's still clean. In the foreground is a new garden bed marked out.

I feel guilty about throwing away perfectly good plants, even if I wouldn't have chosen them myself, so the camellias that are in the way will become a short hedge at the top of the butterfly garden. We've found the wind swirls around, so protection of the area from multiple directions would be useful. Camellias prefer a bit of shade so they are in the wrong place anyway and they may come in useful as a winter food source, although I've got the feeling they are low nectar varieties.

I've also dug up a couple of dead griselinia at the end of the drunken hedge and replaced them with a couple of extra griselinia that were randomly planted, because they were probably spare when the hedge was put in. That's cleared some of the space in the sun as well.

Replaced hedge plants with erosion control

The lacebarks, if they survive the move, will only go short distances, as they are a great tree with beautiful flowers. Fortunately they have seeded, so if the big trees don't survive the shock, their offspring are a lot easier to relocate successfully. The makamaka will also be moved into a shadier spot where we can still enjoy the flowers, or the moths feeding from the flowers, freeing up the garden bed. A cheesewood has survived a move up to the edge of the top bush and a ribbonwood can now push back the bamboo that keeps trying to invade from next door. Once all the trees have gone, I'll have most of the bed to plant up with tree dahlias and tree daisies and other plants grown on from cuttings. Hubby will also construct a pergola there and we'll have a seat underneath so you can sit and watch the butterflies from a shady spot.

The other thing we are working on is extending the existing garden beds and digging new ones in the lawn. I measured this out at the start of May, but it took until June to actually begin (see list of excuses below), We have already cut and turned the sod where we are widening the existing beds, but we are swapping the edging of stones for black plastic edging, which will look smarter once it's not all covered in mud. One of the kids' friends hurt herself on the sharp stones, so a plastic border is more play-friendly too. It's the installation of this that is ultimately making the most mess, although a mini-retaining wall so the lower grass path running around the new bed was more level created a fair bit of mud too. This is still a work in progress, so we'll see if we finish it off, or give up for now due to the abuse of the wet soil by constantly walking all over it.

Widening the existing border

I've also installed an arch at the end of the boardwalk so you'll enter the butterfly garden under it, and I've planted David Austin Wollerton Old Hall climbing roses to go over it. I hope these look good, because I nearly had to take out a home loan in order to afford them. They are by far the most expensive plants in the garden. Ultimately, I'll also move the roses from the courtyard garden, where its too shady and shallow for them, into the main garden, but this is dependent on both new beds being dug.

Really, we should have finished all this work in the autumn, but again I'll blame the lomandra. The weather has also been against us with thunderstorms and gales and the on-off-on-off typical winter showers on the weekends to keep us on our toes and out of the garden. I've also been working on planting the natives in the bush, which I'll blog about separately, but also isn't very photogenic. What are photogenic are the few flowers still going. Without the space to plant a lot, I am really pleased with the flowers I did put in for last summer and I'll write a review of the first season later to rave about them. If mud is the price we'll pay for having lovely borders next year, I can live with that. Actually the price we'll pay is the cost of a Rug Doctor to clean all the entrance carpets. Hey ho.

Bright orange strawflowers with purple ageratum in the background