Quick answer: Nearly always phytophthora root rot, brought on by wet ground rather than cold. Portuguese laurel handles frost down to about -15C, so cold is rarely the culprit. Look for plants failing in scattered ones and twos along the row, leaves yellowing then bronzing, and soil that stays damp. The fix is drainage, not fertiliser.

Quick answer: A plant guard costs between about $0.69 and $3.65 a plant in New Zealand, depending on material, height, and whether stakes and a weed mat come with it. Our own kit is $2.30 excl GST, in packs of 125. On a 100-plant job that is $69 to $365 on top of the plants, and it only comes back to you where something is actually browsing, spraying or blasting the row.

Quick answer: The most reliable hebes for New Zealand gardens are the small-leaved and whipcord types: Hebe albicans, Hebe sutherlandii, Hebe cupressioides, 'McEwanii', 'Red Edge' and 'Wiri Image'. Every one of them wants full sun and free-draining ground. Expect five to ten years of good looks before replacement, and heavy wet soil or deep shade will cut that short.

Quick answer: Portuguese laurel is hardy to about -15°C, grows 30 to 50cm a year, and clips to a dense evergreen hedge anywhere between 1.5 and 3m. It takes frost that browns off Griselinia, and it reshoots from bare old wood when you cut it hard. Two catches: it wants free-draining ground, and the leaves are poisonous to stock.

Quick answer: European hornbeam grows about 30 to 50cm a year and reaches 2.5 to 3.5m tall by 1.5 to 2m wide after five years as a clipped hedge. It takes heavy, cold, damp ground that beech will not, and it holds dry brown leaves right through winter if you give it its main trim in late summer. Space at half the height you want to hold it, so 90cm centres for a 1.8m hedge.

Quick answer: Photinia 'Red Robin' puts on about 30 to 40cm a year in New Zealand, up to a metre in a warm season on good ground, and fills out in three to five years. Plant at 80 to 100cm spacing, trim in late spring to trigger a second red flush, and hold it at 1 to 2m. It needs free-draining soil. On heavy or wet ground you get leaf spot first, root rot second, and a gappy row after that.

Quick answer: We freight wholesale plants from Invercargill to anywhere in New Zealand, Auckland and Northland included. Pallet freight between the islands commonly runs 2 to 4 working days. Autumn and winter are the best months to move stock, because plants sit cool and quiet in transit.

Quick answer: Instant hedging in New Zealand runs from about $115 a lineal metre for low box up to $350 for tall totara, before freight. The same run planted from 2.5L or PB18 stock costs a small fraction of that. On fast species the small plants close most of the gap in three to five years. On slow ones they never quite do.

Quick answer: On an exposed southern coast, put Ozothamnus leptophyllus (tauhinu) and Ficinia nodosa on the front line where the spray lands, Muehlenbeckia complexa or Veronica (Hebe) 'Wiri Mist' behind that if you want something clipped, and Olearia dartonii or Kunzea ericoides for height and shelter. Leave taupata and karo to the northern coasts. Both are frost tender.

Quick answer: Plant in bands. Sedges and rushes right at the water where it floods, flax and toetoe up the bank, then shrubs and small trees on the drier ground behind. Sedges go in at 1 to 1.5m centres, shrubs and trees at 1.5 to 2m. Environment Southland's costed example works out at 100 plants per 100 metres of bank. Ten years after the fence goes in, a planted waterway stops looking like a job you did. The water runs dark and cool under the flax. Sedges lean out over the

There’s a planting on a road I drive fairly often that somebody got right a good fifteen years ago and has barely touched since. Red tussock catching the low afternoon light. Dark, wiry shrubs holding the line behind it. A couple of trees that have finally earned their height. Nothing rare in there. Nothing that needed nursing. It just looks like it was always meant to be there. That’s what most people down here are after. A planting that settles in, looks after itself, and g

There's a certain look a low clipped hedge gives a place. A soft grey-green line running along a path edge, or squaring off a courtyard, holding its shape right through the year while everything around it comes and goes. No fuss, no drama. Just structure, sitting there doing its job. That's the picture Westringia 'Grey Box' sells. And to be fair to it, it delivers on that picture more often than not. It has become the first thing a lot of people reach for when they want the B

You put a Griselinia hedge in for one reason: that clean, glossy green wall down the boundary. So it stings when you're out with your morning coffee and spot a plant or two gone a washed-out yellow, leaves letting go, and the ones either side starting to look a bit crook as well. Here's the reassuring part before we go any further. A yellowing Griselinia is usually a symptom, not a death sentence, and it's almost always pointing at something happening below the ground rather

Picture the hedge you actually want. A clean green wall down the boundary, thick enough to swallow the neighbour's shed and the wind coming off the paddock, dense right to the ground. The sort of hedge that makes a place look settled, like it has been there for years. Here's the thing though. Whether you end up with that, or a gappy row of sulking sticks, is mostly decided on the day you plant. Not the day you buy. When's the best time to get a hedge in the ground? Autumn, if

Picture the boundary you actually want. A solid green wall about shoulder height, soft in the wind, screening the neighbour's shed and taking the edge off the road noise while it's at it. A backdrop that quietly makes everything in front of it look tidier than it really is. That's the picture nearly everyone has in their head when they ring up asking for a fast-growing hedge. Fair enough. A hedge is the one thing you plant for a version of your property that doesn't exist yet

Picture a hedge that turns the colour of good red wine when the wind gets up. A southerly howling in off the coast, salt on the air, and it just leans into it – leaves flickering bronze and maroon like a slow fire in the hedge line. No browning off. No sulking. Come the dry tail of summer, when half the property is crisping and the lawn’s gone the colour of a biscuit, it darkens to a deep plum and carries on like nothing’s wrong. That’s akeake doing what it does best. What is

It's February in Central Otago. The schist is throwing heat back at you, the hills have gone that dry gold, and somewhere a cicada is going flat out. And there's a garden that doesn't seem to care. Silver tussock catching the light, a low mat of bronze foliage crawling over gravel, a wiry shrub holding its shape while everything around it has crisped off. No sprinkler ticking away. It just sits there looking good. That garden isn't lucky. It's chosen. Central Otago is one of

There’s a reason strappy plants land on nearly every planting plan that crosses my desk. Stand back from a good one, a block of NZ iris throwing bronze against a grey wall, a drift of flax arching in the wind, and it just holds. No clipping, no staking, no dead-heading. It sits there looking sharp while you’re flat out somewhere else. That’s the whole appeal. Strong form for next to no effort. But “low-fuss” only holds if the plant’s in the right spot – get that wrong and eve

There’s a certain kind of Saturday where you end up in the garden section of a big shed with a wonky trolley, a coffee going cold in the cupholder, and a vague plan to “sort the front out.” Everyone’s been there. The plants look good under the misters, the labels promise the world, and half of them are on special. Nothing wrong with that. But if you’re a landscaper pricing a job, or planting more than a weekend’s worth, the question changes from “which one looks nice today” t

Line three plants of the same species up on the bench — a root trainer, a 2.5L and a PB18 — and you’re looking at three very different prices for what might look like one line on a trade list. None of them is a rip-off and none of them is a bargain. They’re the same plant at different ages. What you’re really choosing is how much time you want to buy. And that’s the whole trick to reading a trade list without getting stung: match the grade to the job, not to habit. What does