Garden design in West Auckland
Garden design companies and plant filled nurseries and garden centres are humming in West Auckland, as smart buyers continue to look west for affordable housing. This ‘West is Best’ thinking has seen a new lease of life for many run-down properties, and let's face it, no home renovation project is complete until the garden has been tackled and conquered.
Plant your West Auckland garden
Fortunately, West Auckland is home to a number of great plant nurseries and garden centres. If you have your garden design sorted and time on your hands, I highly recommend taking the drive out to Awa Nursery in Waimauku. This is a favourite destination for me. You will find friendly staff, spacious walkways, a well laid out extensive range of trees, shrubs, perennials, palms and New Zealand native plants. All at great prices too, hence their moto - ‘Why pay garden centre prices’. Why indeed?
Well, sometimes it’s all about convenience and inspiration. Those garden centre folk have the design of their planting displays down pat, making it easy to achieve beautiful plant combinations from a vast array of options. It’s hard not to get tempted and before you know it you are happily paying garden centre prices just so you can take home a treasure or two. The best West Auckland garden centre I’ve found since my move out west is Kings Plant Barn in Henderson.
Another common go-to of mine when a quick garden design fix is needed is my local West Auckland Mitre10, in New Lynn. It’s all under cover and they have a great range of healthy plants, plus a dedicated checkout and conveniently located carpark. Great for grabbing some colourful annuals to cheer up the winter garden or one replacement plant for a group, but what I love most about this place (other than the quick drive time) is the wonderful range of perennial plants they stock, a favourite of mine for the seasonal change they bring to a garden.
Seasonal change is a lot more subtle if you have gone with a native New Zealand planting theme for your garden design, however tough natives do make a good choice for the more challenging conditions of many West Auckland properties, such as the ruggedly beautiful, but exposed coastal location of a west coast beach or the vast, expanse of a lifestyle block. The unique and demanding growing conditions experienced in these stunning West Auckland locations can be a real challenge, especially for the novice gardener. In these situations, it’s wise to look to nature for planting design choices so for someone like me, gardening in the dense shade of the Titirangi bush, ferns play a big role in my garden design. The picturesque journey out to Gordons Native Plant Nurseries on Scenic Drive is not only enjoyable but also rewarding . Retailers of eco-sourced New Zealand Native plants, they stock a good of trees, shrubs and ferns as well as bromeliads and succulents.
A big range of succulents seems to be on offer at Nikau Grove, in Kumeu. This is a new-to-me nursery and yet to be visited in person, but their website design is great and the plant range looks promising. The nursery is ‘open to everyone’ they say ‘we have literally thousands of plants and trees at our nursery! Everything we sell is grown by us on site and all of our photos are of plants we have in stock. Nothing we sell is grown in a hot house so all plants are fully weather hardened and ready for your garden.’ Sounds good to me and a visit is definitely pending post current lock-down! While they feature heavily on the website clearly it’s not just succulents on offer there. Sounds like a great range of ornamentals and exotic shrubs and palms are also available, along with a range of palms and bromeliads.
Bromeliads remain popular in garden design, especially for those creating an easy-care garden or for introducing a touch of the tropics to their West Auckland property. Buy plants and get inspired at Totara Waters with a visit to their 2 acre subtropical garden set on the upper Waitemata Harbour, or just check out their online store. Subtropical garden design will no doubt become a re-emerging garden design trend, as many of now begin to embrace the ‘holiday at home’ concept.
Garden Design in West Auckland
Certainly, with the expansive Waitakere ranges visible from most West Auckland suburbs there is no need to travel to far away locations for breath taking views. A good garden design can capitalise on this unique landscape backdrop, while still creating privacy and sanctuary where needed. When trying to establish privacy, take care not to block these fabulous views with plants that will grow too big. The size on those plant labels are usually their size in 10 years, not at maturity.
Understanding what plants will do one overtime is just one of the tricky aspects of garden design. So while you now know where to go for your plants if you live in West Auckland, the hard part might be coming up with a good design for your garden first. Deciding what to do with the large sections that accompany many houses ‘out west’ can be puzzling and coming up with suitable garden design ideas and achievable solutions leaves many inexperienced gardeners floundering, especially as plants play such a big part in a garden design project.
Whether you are a keen DIYer or forced to do the work yourself due to a tight landscaping budget, hiring a professional to design a landscape or planting plan for your garden before you hit the nurseries is worth considering. They can help you take advantage of the best your site has to offer and suggest clever, creative and practical landscape solutions to overcome site issues or aesthetic challenges you may be facing. Plus, they can give you a plant list to take to the garden centre or nursery. In the long run, they can even save you more money than the design fee charged!
Having a professional design your garden at the outset also enables you to approach the makeover of your garden in stages and takes away the worry of what plant to put where. If DIY is your thing, you can still do the actual landscape implementation yourself.
I am experienced and familiar with the West Auckland growing conditions and have creative and robust solutions for whatever the west is throwing at you!
Get your garden design project underway today. Online or on-site services available.
