The New Zealand Plant Conservation Network

Gardening with native plants

Speargrass and Haloragis erecta (bronze form). Photo: Isobel Gabites

Your own backyard offers the best, and certainly the closest, opportunity to experiment with growing native plants and to create a small piece of New Zealand wilderness on your doorstep.

• Native garden plants
• Being weed wise
• Controlling weeds
• Planting to attract wildlife
• Planting for native lizards

Leonard Cockayne also recognised the use to which native plants could be put in towns and cities when he wrote "The Cultivation of New Zealand Plants" in 1923. He included a chapter entitled

"Native plants for town gardening"

Chionochloa, Pachystegia and Muehlenbeckia axillaris in a garden setting. Photo: Isobel Gabites

For more information about restoring gardens see also:

• The Native Garden: Design Themes from Wild New Zealand by Isobel Gabites and Rob Lucas
• Living with Natives by Ian Spellerberg and Michelle Frey
• Going Native: Growing and using New Zealand plants by Ian Spellerberg and David Given
• Guides to environmentally friendly gardenin

This page last updated on 17 Dec 2012