Hillmorton Hospital gardener and the 40-year wait for a flower to bloom

On the grounds of the South Island’s largest mental health facility are two exotic plants putting on a display that’s been 40 years in the making. Caring for them now, as he has throughout every one of those 40 years, is a gardener who has outlasted them both. Mike Thorpe went to meet him.

Ron Hanton reckons his “temporary” gardening job might soon be coming to an end. After all, it was only ever a stop-gap solution.

“I was a bricklayer. It was my dad’s business and he decided to do a bit of a world trip,” says Hanton, looking back to April 1979, when he was a 21-year-old newlywed.

Ron Hanton, the accidental gardener, has had a 40-year love affair with his furcraea plant. Photo / George Heard

The building trade was in a slump at the time – so he found work in the gardens of Burwood Hospital and then Sunnyside, now Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch.

“It was only for four or five weeks ... until the old man got back,” he says.

Now past retirement age, Hanton is still there – and still gardening.

“I’m still making my mind up if I’m gonna stay or not,” Hanton says with a smile as he goes about his daily duties.

Ron Hanton in his shed at Hillmorton Hospital, full of memorabilia. He has worked there for just over 45 years. Photo / George Heard

Things were markedly different in the 70s and the groundskeeping operation that he was part of had a vast reach.

“I was in the nursery originally – that grew plants for all the hospitals then. A central hub for 21 hospitals, Chatham Islands as well,” Hanton recalls.

He was one of 17 gardeners when he started. Now he’s one of one.

“The grass [mowing] is contracted out, there’s a gardener at PMH [Princess Margaret Hospital] and me here,” says Hanton, crossing the sprawling Hillmorton Hospital site that he maintains. He wants to show a project he unwittingly started about 40 years ago.

“I bought a packet of Yates mixed cactus seed for 45 cents. I sowed it when I was in the nursery and these two plants seemed different to the others,” Hanton recalls with enthusiasm.

“So, I kept them in the nursery for however long it was. And then the nursery closed down, so I took them home for 10 years”.

Ron Hanton with his two furcraea plants within the grounds of Hillmorton Hospital. The 40-year-old plants are putting on an end-of-life display. Photo / George Heard

Growing plants has always been Hanton’s favourite part of the job. There are plants and trees all over the Hillmorton site that were cultivated and planted by his hand – as well as the two he heads towards.

“They got a bit big [at home], so I brought them back [to Hillmorton]”.

The plants he sowed in the early 1980s, and cared for at his place of work and then at home, are furcraea.

He’s only recently bothered to find that out – but hasn’t yet determined which variety it is. They are succulent plants belonging to the family Asparagaceae, native to tropical regions of Mexico and South America.

“It’s in the Tequila family,” Hanton says excitedly, before pointing to the tips of the plants now poking up above the roof of the building in front of them.

Finishing his story, the accidental gardener says the two odd-looking plants had another home before their present one.

“But they started to get full of cigarette butts and stuff like that. So I planted them where they are now, which is probably 15-16 years [ago],” says Hanton.

The plants are peculiar to say the least. The bottom looks like a regular flax – but the 6m towering flower spike that sprang up from the middle of them took even Hanton by surprise.

“I was around here a couple of weeks ago just doing some spraying and I thought, ‘What’s that’? A couple of big asparagus sticking up.”

After 40 years of nurturing the plant, he has received a payoff he had no idea was coming.

“It’s not the prettiest thing in the world but it’s ... unique,” says Hanton with admiration.

The flower of the furcraea plant, with a once-in-its-lifetime appearance. Photo / George Heard

The flower spike signals the beginning of the end for the furcraea. A once-in-a-lifetime display before it spreads its seeds.

“Once it’s finished flowering, the plant’s finished,” says Hanton, adding he’ll have to wait another 40 years for its new seeds to flower.

Hanton isn’t finished yet, though. He’s still pulling a 40-hour week in a place that he loves to be. But, as he makes his way back to his shed, he admits he’s thought about how much longer he can continue in such a demanding job.

“One day I’ll probably wake up like I can’t do that anymore. But so long as I can still physically get up and come to work and do what’s required to a certain degree, I’ll do it.”

An old aerial photograph of the Hillmorton Hospital site (then Sunnyside) from 1970 hangs in Ron Hanton's shed. It shows how vast the grounds were around the time he started work there. Photo / Mike Thorpe

His shed houses a collection of hospital history, like an unofficial museum of relics.

“That’s what they say about me, Ron the relic – is he still here?” he jokes.

He is. The furcraea, however, will be gone by Christmas.