Gardening good for soul in hardship

file picture:GET kids into the joys of gardening. AS our treasured Garden City starts to pick up the pieces, gardeners and non gardeners alike are turning to Mother Nature for some "soul food".
Appropriately, autumn is the time for putting in some hard graft in your garden. Preparing the soil thoroughly and planting spring flowering bulbs now will bring colour aplenty come spring.
As summer slips away and autumn sidles in to replace it, planting spring flowering bulbs and seedlings can be therapeutic - an ode to brighter times ahead.
Visit your garden centre now for bulbs and seedlings of poppies, stock, snapdragon, primula and pansies.
Don't forget to include on your shopping list bulb food, compost and something to deter those nasty slugs which will devour your bulbs and seedlings given half the chance.
Check with your local garden centre staff for advice on the safest option if you have small children or pets.
Now's also the time to put some effort into your vege patch.
Many people in Christchurch have been very grateful for their backyard vegetable stashes over the past few weeks.
Garden centres nationwide will have seedlings available now of cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli. As long as you prepare the soil well, these are relatively easy to grow, even for those new to gardening.
If you have had success with common vegetables why not try something a bit different this year? Your garden centre will be able to guide you on what will be best suited for your local conditions. While you're at the garden centre pick up your free copy of Go Gardening Magazine which is crammed full of useful tips.
Of course gardening won't restore the deep sense of loss that many New Zealanders are feeling, but it may calm the nerves of those who can't offer practical help but would dearly like to.
"We may have had to miss out on the premium event in everyone's gardening calendar, the Ellerslie International Flower Show, but the way that industry members involved in EIFS pulled together to help others in their time of need makes me extremely proud to be part of this industry," says John Liddle, chief executive of the Nursery and Garden Industry Association of New Zealand.
In the hours immediately following the February earthquake, marquees that had been erected in preparation for the Ellerslie International Flower Show were used to house shaken Cantabrians.