03 Magazine: February 03, 2024

Gardens | Magazine 49
Violet’s garden
The second in a series of extracts from gorgeous new gardening tome
Secret Gardens of Aotearoa, we travel to Violet Faigan’s whimsical
woodland-inspired garden set in the Dunedin hills.
On a hilltop in suburban Dunedin is Violet’s
Garden, an ever evolving collage of
botanical curiosities, foraged weeds and rare
flowering perennials.
In the 10 years she has gardened here,
Violet has created numerous gardens, including
a woodland area, a planted berm, vegetable
patches, a bog garden and a shade garden. Each
is distinct but exists in considered connection
to its neighbours.
Violet describes her gardening influences as a
materials-led mixtape of textures, colours and
feelings: the warm bright flowers set against a
dark background on her childhood eiderdown
quilt, the Sussex woodland countryside painted
in blocks of colour by Ivon Hitchens from
his home caravan, Victorian block-printed
wallpapers, summer horse rides through dusty
tracks of yarrow and cow parsley.
ABOUT THE GARDEN
When Violet and her husband Malcolm bought
their Dunedin house in 2012 their daughters
Clara and Emerald were still young, so Violet
prioritised getting a vegetable garden started.
The house was grey with a grey roof, net
curtains, a square rose garden with a few
neglected inhabitants, some overgrown shrubs,
and a straggly pittosporum hedge separating
the property from the street.
But the section was bigger than any she’d
had before, and Violet knew that this would
be her ‘forever garden’. She could see past the
bark chip layered over black polythene, and
relished the idea of releasing its potential.
With the vegetable patch started, out came
the pittosporum hedge and in went the main
border, now the sunniest, most abundant
garden. Most of the shrubs came out too,
retaining just a smoke bush and a pollarded
maple, and that area is now a woodland garden.
Where black polythene once dominated is now
the shady border or ‘spooky bed’.
During Covid lockdowns a pond was dug
to replace the rose garden. Most of the roses
were past it, and besides, Violet could never
make sense of roses being planted all together
just because they’re roses.
Aside from a little glasshouse, the back
garden was bare lawn. The neighbour’s
discarded glasshouse has now been connected
to the existing one, and Violet dug out the
floor space to lay down a terracotta tiled floor.
She now has a nursery area where she raises
plants for her own garden and to sell from a
street-side stall.
The vegetable beds and flower beds are
slowly expanding into the lawn space, ever
evolving. She has also planted the grass berm
out front, so that the garden extends beyond
the property, blurring the public–private
space boundary and providing enjoyment
for passers‐by.
Most of the soil is heavy clay, with the
exception of a few loamy patches that Violet
supposes are vegetable patches from times
gone by. She has been painstakingly breaking
up the clay with compost and mulch. Her
preferred mulch is pea straw – for its insulating
qualities and the ‘silkiness’ it adds to the soil as
it breaks down.
She doesn’t introduce anything inorganic into
the garden – just homemade compost and
seaweed tonic, or a little neem oil spray.