Garden Guru: Jungle vision

In the Palmco display garden this grand avenue fringed with palms leads to a large central lawn. Photo / Supplied

The Palm tree - like the open-air fireplace, the lap pool and so much schist facade - has become something of a badge that stamps your garden with contemporary credentials.

But too often you see these trees lined up awkwardly around the edges of the modern section - their toes tickled with a smattering of bromeliads poking out of pebbles, perhaps - their head in the clouds and nothing but a bare midriff of board and batten fencing showing in between.

Yes, palms can be hellishly boring, whether bangalow, butia or the great white shark of the family, phoenix. They all look much like shuttlecocks perched on poles.

Well, they don't look that way when you visit the revamped display garden at Palmco, near Kerikeri, which helps you see these trees in a new light.

Landscape manager Adam Shuter reckons it was time spent in the north Australian rainforests that re-educated him about how these trees grow naturally and how to have them look their best.

In nature they don't all stand beanpole straight - they bend to seek the light. Neither do they stand alone, but cluster cheek by jowl, jostling for space on the forest floor. It was this dense jungle vision that won Shuter and his team a handful of awards for their show garden at the 2007 Ellerslie Flower Show, with a boardwalk slicing through a tapestry of textured trunks - all carpeted in soothing green native groundcovers.

Now he looks set to repeat the winning formula on a much bigger scale up north - especially since the Gardens Trust has just given the garden its top award. Palmco has been growing palms from seed on this 24ha site for 16 years, but since being bought by Udo and Kristin Lammerting a few years back the company has found a new sense of enthusiasm.

While Ellerslie was being put together Shuter was scouring specialist nurseries to get exotic plants for the Kerikeri project. Visitors enter the garden through a polytunnel revamped to resemble a luxurious tropical Eden full of heliconias and philodendrons. Beyond, a grand avenue of palms funnels you to a central lawn that branches into various intimate garden rooms. There are areas devoted to the usual boy-toy trappings of modern outdoor living - fire pits, petanque

pitches and a wharf lookout hovering over a dry riverbed traced out in pebbles.

The heart of the garden is a large reflection pond that stays mercifully clear of weed and has been hemmed in with bold swags of foliage such as large-leafed Ligularia reniformis. Shuter is keen to maintain a restful green and subtle feel that he reckons fits better with the indigenous flora.

But it is the majestic palms - about 100 heavyweight specimens, as much as 10m tall - that steal the show.

Because all the palms are field-grown and not pot-produced, Shuter explains that you get much thicker trunks - hence the impressive colours and markings that add character to each tree. Shuter reckons that palms fail to impress if not planted sensitively.

Although a multi-stem species can be used as a single specimen in a lawn or container, most of the single trunk species look best in family groups of varying heights to achieve a layered look.

Although the company has been slow to market the garden - as yet there is no fee - they plan to expand its use for weddings and corporate events.

A Kawakawa Hundertwasser-style toilet block is on the way and next year the garden will double in size. Already word of mouth and the Garden Trust accreditation have seen visitor numbers swelling.

"Locals have been really supportive," Shuter says.

"We've seen 40 to 50 visitors a day in summer and it's great to see the look on their faces when they arrive."

For some it's the high standard of maintenance that appeals, but for most it is the sheer wow factor that brings the smiles - the feeling that you really are stepping into a brave new world.

Could do this week:

* Having cleared ground of grass and perennial weeds, you can sow wildflower seed mixtures. These are great to try in hard-to-mow corners.
* Cut down the first of the perennials that are looking straggly as summer ends, such as Montbretia physocarpus, sedum and aster.
* Sow or turf new lawns and feed, spike and rake existing turf to give it a boost.
* Try collecting and sowing your own seed. Native berries need their soft pulp washed and scraped away. Shake dry heads of flowers such as echinacea, Queen Anne's lace and rudbeckia into paper bags.
* Plant strawberries in soil enriched with plenty of compost and fowl manure.
* Feed citrus with sulphate of potash.

Adam Shuter's favourites:

Dypsis baronii: Discerning customers are catching on to this handsome clumping species, which is fairly fast-growing and tolerant of sun and wind. Adam loves its clumping, lime-green trunks with bamboo-like segments.
Chamaedorea atroviren: An unusual dwarf that makes clumps just 1m high. Palmco have it massed under a group of nikau - it appreciates the shade and produces scented flowers.
Chamaerops humilis: A slow grower that eventually forms a multi-stem bush. With trachycarpus, it is one of the mainstays Shuter chooses for exposed or colder gardens.
Strelitzia nicolai: Not really a palm but a tree-sized bird-of-paradise flower. Forms a fast-growing specimen with huge banana-like leaves and white and blue flowers. Keep well groomed for best effect.
Phoenix reclinata: A very hardy muti-stemmed palm - a habit that shows off its handsome golden trunks.