By David Bayly, Kaipara Coast Plant Centre. This article first appeared in the October 2020 edition of the Valley Voice Lifestyle Magazine.

The yo-yo lockdowns in the last few months have encouraged a lot of people into DIY gardening, creating a nationwide shortage of plants. Even when people have been allowed to move out of the Auckland area, being seen as a Covid19-ridden Aucklander by the rest of the country, has made it much easier for most people just to stay at home and garden.  

Fortunately we grow most of our own plants, so have been able to keep Kaipara Coast Plant Centre fully stocked of plants during this time from plants from our own nursery, but there are some gaps in our product range for some of the specialty lines we stock.

One of the disadvantages of locking people at home is they become a lot more aware of their neighbours, and while this may be a good thing in some cases, in other cases having your neighbour watching and hearing your every move doesn’t appeal.  From your neighbours perspective, they probably don’t want to see or hear you either.

It seems that for most people, our inherent preference is to be living in our own private little ‘bubble’ with our families or friend group, and while it is nice to have other people nearby, we don’t necessarily want to be watching over them or vice-versa.

Our biggest selling lines in the last few months (after native revegetation plants), have been fast growing hedging to ‘Hide the Neighbours’ (or maybe ‘Hide from the Neighbours’.)

Traditional hedging choices such as Photinias, Pittosporums, Bottlebrush, Crytomeria, Sheoak and the ubiquitous but floored Griselinia, have all winter been going out our gate in their thousands, and a few lesser known hedging trees such as Ficus tuffi and Bay trees have also been popular.  The requests have been flowing in for the attractive but evil LillyPilly trees, and despite our constant recommendations to try something else, people seem to be fixated on planting the pest ridden, myrtle rust susceptible, invasive Lilly Pilly hedge.

A harder sell has been one of Europe’s favorite hedges – the Hornbeam. Popular overseas because it grows anywhere, holds on to its leaves in the winter, trims well, and what I like about it, only needs trimming once a year. A few expat English Landscape designers are confident enough to use it, but Kiwi’s are definitely not brave enough to try something that doesn’t have the word ‘Gris’ or ‘Pilly’ in the title.

Judging on the number of hedging plants we have sold this year, there will be lot of very private houses and lifestyle blocks in the years to come, and a lot of busy arborists trimming hedges.