Me Again.

Me Again

Last year I took a bit of a break from the blog. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened. Sometimes life gives you what you need. It didn’t stop doing what I’ve always done in the garden, I just never seemed to find the time to write about it. This year I intend to make time. It was my New Year’s resolution; however, those never seem to pan out well for me. I have come to realize that the 1st of Jan isn’t the only day for fresh starts. I often find myself in December starting over after numerous attempts throughout the year of following through on that ‘New Me.’  So here we are, on the second day of the second month of 2026 with fresh promises to myself to write more. I like writing so it should be easy…  right?!

Who?

Just in case it has been so long that I’ve made myself irrelevant in this fast-paced world of online activity, it is probably best to start with a bit of a reminder as to who I am and what I do, besides there may have been some changes over the last wee while that have gone unnoticed.

Firstly, I’m Sarah the Gardener, but you’d know that because it is written at the top, but introductions are important. (On our recent holiday we met some lovely people, but we didn’t quite catch a name and spent the rest of the time using every version of ‘hey there’ that we could politely get away with.)  I come from a very long line on gardeners – the genealogy records state one of my ancestors arrived in New Zealand in 1842 with ‘Gardener’ in the occupation box on the ship’s records. It’s in my blood. For me, it took kids, a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis and a move to the country to get that blood stirring. It is around two decades since I intentionally started growing food with my kids, and I’d say the rest is history, which is true, but it would cut a long story short. (I’ll try and nip it down to a medium story, but my favourite quote is by a 17^th century philosopher Blaise Pascal who once said, “I would have made this letter shorter, but I didn’t have the time!”)

My first ‘proper’ out of control garden started modestly with four in-ground garden beds and grew to 36 raised beds. The switch to raised beds was because we naively bought our country property in a swamp. But I made it work. I made it work so much I was able to make a modest living from the garden through my writing with brand relationships and book deals – I even ended up on TV a few times, as well as softening the financial burden at the supermarket by growing all our vegetable needs. I’m sure the folk at the supermarket think we are perfect candidates for scurvy.

We’ve since moved out of the frying pan and into the fire, switching swamp dwelling to coastal living. It is only ten minutes up the road but couldn’t be more different in so many ways. The sand is so much easier to weed than mud. Having said that, I downsized a little bit and have 35 raised beds in my edible garden, and they are filled with the lovely swamp soil I brought with me in the move. The sand is surprisingly fertile here and things grow well in it – or they would if they weren’t harassed by the wind straight off the ocean and laden with salt. It has certainly been a steep learning curve and exercising my gardening philosophy of ‘Do or Die’ more regularly than I’d prefer. I was told when we first moved here that the only thing, I’d be able to grow was rosemary, to which I replied, ‘watch me!’  Although to be fair rosemary does indeed grow well here.

I’ve tried to be intentional about what I plant in my garden. The land is hardly pristine native plants with the hills held together with Kikuyu grass and well intentioned but less than ideal farming practices in the early days with boxthorn and gorse all over the place. However, if something new and exotic shows up in the 500m between us and the beach, everyone will know where it has come from because I’m the only one crazy enough to be trying to create a beautiful garden in this wild setting.

Over the years, things have changed. We are no longer feeding voracious teens with hollow legs and find ourselves as empty nesters. I have still managed to justify having a large edible garden by growing a variety of crops in smaller volumes so we can eat like kings! But after growing edibles for years and years and years the thrill and excitement isn’t what it once was and my focus has shifted to the ornamental world, trying to create a pocket of beauty in the midst of the wilderness with The Palace Garden – a multi roomed project to test and challenge the environment to conform to the visions in my head.  So far results have been mixed but I’m determined to see it through and too stubborn to give up on my dreams, even if my weary bones creak and groan more than they used too when I first picked up a spade.

So, there you have it, in a nutshell – a refreshed introduction and a vague outline of where I’ve been and where I’m going. Feel free to follow along as I sporadically but with great enthusiasm, document my gardening activities throughout this new year.

Come again soon – no promises, but 2026 should be an interesting year in the garden.

Sarah the Gardener : o)