Emma Sage: The Gardener Inspiring A New Generation To Get Growing With Sage Journal

Emma Sage is on a mission to reframe gardens as outdoor rooms, reconnect communities, and ensure the wisdom of past generations continues to flourish.

If anyone can inspire you to get your hands in the soil, it’s Emma Sage. The editor, writer and gardener has a way of talking about the art of gardening that makes you immediately want to pick up a spade or sprinkle some seeds in a pot.

Founding the gardening website Sage Journal might seem like destiny (especially with a name like Sage), but Emma’s love of gardening grew slowly.

“I never identified as someone who would get into gardening,” she admits from her Hawke’s Bay home office, where she’s preparing to launch the inaugural print edition of Sage Journal alongside a series of spring and summer gardening events.

You wouldn’t know it from peering out the window of her ’80s brick home, which has been renovated in a mid-century modern style, with a garden to match. Its fluid design is alive with greenery, curves, ornamental structure, native plants and a big flush of perennials just coming into bloom.

Her mum was an early influence, an “amazing gardener” who took her along to garden circles to explore neighbours’ backyards, swap tips, and talk plants. Other family memories shaped her too: a grandmother carefully saving seeds in hand-labelled envelopes, a grandfather mowing the lawn into a perfect cricket-pitch shape. Still, it wasn’t until 2014, after renovating her first home in Christchurch, that gardening took root.

“When I became really enamoured with gardening, it was mostly centred on the realisation that we spend so much time and money creating our indoor spaces, but so often no one is thinking about the outside. You can make your space feel so much more like home, and so much bigger, by using the outside space.”

By the time gardening really clicked for her, Emma wasn’t just sowing things in soil, she was growing ideas about how we live, and how the spaces around us can shape that. Emma sees gardens as “outdoor rooms” that are full of potential.

Anything from decking to awnings, pockets of seating areas or raised vegetable gardens can help achieve this.

“You can grow a hedge to conceal an area, create little surprises around a corner, or screen things off with trees. Maybe you love wild flowers and create a little patch of colour with those.”

In her Christchurch garden, she built big vege gardens, planted fruit trees and had chickens roaming around. She created structure through hedges and filled flower beds with roses.

“The gateway for me was the wonder of being able to grow veges, which is the same for a lot of people. Then they realise they can grow flowers and create structure, so it kind of flows from there.”

Of course, this expert knowledge came with time, but when Emma embarked on the redesign of the 1930s villa, a small house on a big, empty site with one camellia bush and nothing else, she didn’t have the tools.

“I went deep into Pinterest, websites and Instagram. I would spend hours drawing up plans and looking through magazines but I really struggled to find good information that was at the level that I was at.”

She was passionate, with a good design eye, but had no idea what could grow where and what was possible in the garden.

“I felt like there was a massive gap for people who liked the idea of gardening but just had no idea where to go.”

With compelling photography and thoughtful writing, Sage Journal captures the essence of a garden. In Havelock North, a woodland-inspired design is alive with trees and birdlife, while in the Waipara Valley, the grounds of Pegasus Bay Winery are a series of hedges, topiary and seasonal plantings of roses, dahlias, cherry trees, rhododendrons, hydrangeas and a laburnum walk. Emma is careful to include variety. It’s not only grand estates but also more intimate projects, such as Jared Lockhart’s naturalistic garden at Deadly Ponies’ flagship Auckland store, an urban retreat that channels the quiet beauty of a Japanese tsuboniwa, or courtyard garden. It’s a rare mix of aspirational and practical gardening advice that makes transforming a bleak courtyard garden into a lush oasis somehow seem achievable. That’s intentional.

“I want people to think, ‘how can I turn a tiny little space into something that brings a bit of joy’,” says Emma.

The first print issue of Sage Journal hit shelves this month, comprising 15 new gardens, practical pieces, plant spotlights, recipes and a photographic series. A long-held dream for Emma, she’s been blown away by the response, with pre-orders rolling in.

“It’s something people have asked for for a long time. We’re tactile people, gardeners, so having something physical to flip through is nice.”

Just like spending quality time with a magazine, nothing beats gardening for a moment to yourself.

“Life is so busy, but time in the garden makes me stop and just be. Whether I’m trimming, planting or weeding, it’s the one moment where I feel grounded and fully present.”

Enjoying the fruits of your labour – “eating your fresh produce, seeing your spring bulbs finally pop up, your seeds grow” – is one thing, but community is at the real heart of gardening, says Emma. It’s why events are becoming a big focus, bringing like-minded people together, away from screens and into real-life conversations.

When Sage Journal turned five recently, Emma thought she might gather 50 locals in Hawke’s Bay; instead, 140 people showed up, selling out the event in under 48 hours with a waitlist to spare. The morning featured a talk, a mini plant market and plenty of swapping of stories and seedlings.

“People came up to me afterwards and said it was just so nice to do something for themselves that wasn’t for the kids, the house, or work. Just two hours to sit, learn something, and go home with a bundle of plants.”

Her vision with Sage Journal is to bridge what she sees as a generation gap in gardening knowledge – the risk that wisdom once passed down through backyards and conversations could be lost.

“So much of it comes from trial and error, and from sharing. If we don’t preserve and pass it on, we risk losing not just skills, but the joy that comes with them.”

At home, that passing down is already happening. Emma’s three children are often by her side in the garden, sometimes armed with secateurs, sometimes just playing nearby. She loves the idea that while they may not always be enthusiastic now, the rhythms of gardening will take root in them.

“I hope that down the track, when they’re my age, it’ll just be part of their lives.”

Emma’s top gardening tips for beginners

For anyone beginning their gardening journey, Emma says the key considerations are structure, sun and soil.

Structure: “It’s important to create a bit of structure first, as opposed to just the beauty or just the veges, because in winter, it’s not going to look good,” says Emma. Structure can be anything from hedges and screens to evergreen planting, trees and pathways. “If you start with zones, you can scatter the beauty around that.”

Sun: When it comes to light, Emma says some plants are never going to grow in full sun and vice versa, and some plants are more adaptable. “I think that’s the biggest piece of advice for beginners is where something will grow.” Navigating this is as simple as looking at the plant tag at the nursery for instructions on where it’ll grow, says Emma.

Soil: Every region in New Zealand has a different type of soil, be it clay or pumice, loam or sand, as well as levels of acidity and alkalinity. “That sounds really fancy but it’s actually not. Just ask someone at the garden centre or someone who is good at gardening. No matter what type your soil is, most places around New Zealand don’t have super fertile soil so we need to work on that first with a dollop of compost, for example.”

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