Cathy's gardening passion keeps growing

Gardening is a passion that almost amounts to mania for the woman whose garden was judged best of the best in the latest River City Garden Awards.

Cathy Verry's jam-packed Springvale garden also won the prize for the best street frontage and the best garden in that Wanganui suburb.

It's crammed with weeping trees, trimmed shrubs and hedges, annuals, perennials, more than 100 pot plants and hanging baskets, flowering and fruiting vines and her absolute favourite - liliums.

"I've got every colour you can think of," she said.

The Verrys have been in their Waharua Pl house for five years, and Mrs Verry's garden was judged the best in the city four years ago - just a year after they moved in.

The small section was bare when they arrived, and they imported topsoil from Westmere.

With Mrs Verry came more than 100 cuttings from previous gardens. The cuttings got it started, and she loves flowers and is continually buying new plants. She's been told the flowers, trees and shrubs on the property would now be worth over $100,000.

"It's not about the money really. It's my passion."

Her husband does the building work and Mrs Verry plants. She doesn't believe in plans or colour schemes and likes a "cottagey" garden.

She's a bit frustrated at the moment, because there's not much left to do there.

The property is for sale and she wants to start all over again with a new garden in St John's Hill or Springvale that has the space for a bigger vegetable patch.

Now in remission from breast cancer, she does a bit of gardening for Hikurangi Residential Home and spends an hour or two in her own garden every night. Her husband starts telling her to come inside as darkness descends.

"He does get a bit sick of it, but I was a gardener when he married me."

Mrs Verry must have gardening in her blood. Her grandparents, the Hoppers, were market gardeners in No 3 Line. But she said it was neighbour Edith Coleman who got her into it in her teenage years.

"I would be going into plant shops and buying pot plants, things that most teenagers wouldn't be interested in," she said.