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Case fourteen

Small beginnings in New Zealand

For some decades after colonization began, the settlers continued to use the English gardening manuals they had brought with them. These were still good sources on techniques, but poor guides to seasonal operations. George Chapman's Hand Book to the Farm and Garden (1862) was designed for new colonists in New Zealand with small holdings. Chapman (1824-1881) was a publisher and bookseller in Auckland from 1855, producing the first edition of Chapman's New Zealand Almanac in 1860, and operating a large lending library. David Hay, founder of Montpellier Nursery in Auckland, wrote the section on field, garden and orchard, and H.J. Hawkins of Belvidere Fruit Nursery contributed the article on garden management.

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Felix Wakefield's The Gardener's Chronicle for New Zealand (1870) was one of the first separately published garden calendars. Wakefield (1807-1875), the youngest son of the well-known Wakefield family, was an engineer, who moved from Tasmania to Christchurch in 1851, farming there until 1854. After serving as an engineer in the Crimean War, he returned to New Zealand in 1863 and held various posts as a public servant on the Otago Goldfields and in Nelson. Note Dr Hocken's annotation on Wakefield.

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While the cultivation of vegetables and flowers followed English practice, many tree species that could be grown in New Zealand, including natives, were unfamiliar. Based on his experience in the Hutt Valley after his arrival in New Zealand in 1840, Alfred Ludlam, a farmer and keen horticulturalist, wrote an Essay on the Cultivation and Acclimatization of Trees and Plants (1865) for the Dunedin Exhibition. After Ludlam's death, the gardens he created at Woburn (1850s-1870s) were taken over by James McNab and opened to the public.

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