Insights
Choosing New Zealand Natives for Shelter, Screening and Colour
New Zealand natives have moved well past the bank planting and motorway berm reputation. Used deliberately, they screen, shelter, feed the birds and flower, and they do it in conditions that defeat plenty of exotics. The trick is matching the plant to the job you need done.
For screening, the workhorses are pittosporums, griselinia and corokia. Griselinia gives you a dense, glossy hedge that handles coastal wind and trims cleanly, and it stays well behaved at two to three metres. Pittosporum varieties grow faster and suit taller screens, though they like free draining soil. Corokia is the pick for a lower, tidier hedge with bronze and silver tones that change through the year.
For shelter on exposed sites, look at the plants that hold the coastline: taupata, flaxes, cabbage trees and akeake. These take salt wind that burns most foliage, and a staggered double row will filter wind far better than a solid fence, which just throws turbulence over the top. Plant the toughest species on the windward side and the choicer plants in their lee.
For colour and bird life, kowhai is hard to beat, with its spring flowering pulling tui from across the neighbourhood. Rewarewa and flaxes bring nectar feeders in as well, and coprosmas load up with berries through autumn. If you have the space, a puriri flowers and fruits almost year round and becomes a full time bird tree.
In shade and damp corners where lawns sulk, the fern family comes into its own, from ground ferns up to the tree ferns that give a garden instant structure. Underplant with rengarenga lilies for a reliable white flowering ground cover that asks for nothing.
Two pieces of advice apply whatever you choose. First, buy for your conditions, not the label photo: a plant rated for frost in Northland may still burn in a Central Otago winter, so check how a variety performs locally. Second, plant in groups rather than singles. Natives read best in drifts of three, five or seven of a kind, which is also how they grow in the bush. A smaller palette, repeated, always looks more deliberate than one of everything, and the maintenance is easier too.