ARBOR DAY SPIRIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 185, 7 August 1935, Page 10

ARBOR DAY SPIRIT.

TREES AND FLOWERS.

CULTIVATING NATIVE PLANTS.

WORK AT RAILWAY STATION,

(By M. HURST.)

Arbor Day falling this week inevitably sets the mind dwelling on the bush preservation movement, reafforestation schemes, and the like. For it is quite possible that in years to come the twelve months between Arbor Day, 1934, and Arbor Day, 1935, will be famous as being that in which the tide definitely turned for New Zealand as far as tree-consciousness is concerned. Late in the last 1934 session of Parliament was passed the Native Plants Protection Act, by whicn all native plants, with the exception of bidibidi, manuka, the lichens, and certain other plants so common as to be in no danger of extermination, were declared protected, and their removal or destruction ie by this legislation made an indictable offence, unless with medicinal, scientific or similar justification. While to some this may seem rather a drastic enactment, analysed it resolves itself into the simp'le statement that New Zealand's unique plants and flowers are too precious to be other than a national trust. As scientific research, discovers new ways of farming hitherto wild country, there was the danger that rare species might be wiped out, and, what is more,, the whole balance of the natural life of our country, plant and tree, insect and bird, sunshine hours and rainfall, be upset by the heedlessness of individuals.

Railway Gardens. Side by side with the protection movement has gone the beautification impulse to adorn with living growth public roads, parks and home surroundings. Instances of this are well known to all, but a little known though deeply interesting aspect of this movement concerns our railroads —hitherto usually loveless things. In England many country stations are almost buried in a. riot of flowering shrubs such as laburnum, lilac and guelder rose, while the flower beds invade the platforms and surround the station buildings. Along the lines, too, are acres of embankment gardens. England in general has of course become very garden-minded of late years, as the humorous magazines disclose —in a recent very funny drawing in the "Passing Show" a suburbanite leans over his garden gate to warn a person entering a telephone booth on the curb that he is using the windowed structure sjs a glasshouse for his ferns. In the United States of late rambler roses have been used to beautify the railroad embankments. Trimmed once or twice a year, these also have the merit of holding the banks firmly and checking erosion and slips. New Zealand generally is climatically too encouraging for the rambler rose; it takes charge, and is almost as formidable as blackberry to check, since 20-foot shoots may grow in a year.

Aucklanders may admire the gardens adorning their new station site, but because the miracle of transformation has been spread over a year or more they are accustomed to it. Visitors from other centres, however, become most enthusiastic, and it was the interesting privilege of the writer to hear some of the comments made by recent visitors from the South to a women's conference, many of them able and expert horticulturists. Since there is far more behind the Auckland terminus gardens than the average person would dream, it may be of interest to describe a little of the work resulting in the transformation of a site which eighty years ago was deep sea water and which even after reclamation up to eighteen months ago was a filling of rubbish and that terrifying substance known as Parnell clay. Quantities of sand are used every year by the Railways Department for concrete constructional and repair work, and much of that used in the Auckland district comes from the Department's own sandpits in the Ngaruawahia district. To unearth, the sand, the rich, alluvial deposit of earth from the heart of the North. Island has to be removed, and this has been brought to Auckland in returning rolling stock to make possible the growing of trees and plants on an otherwise inhospitable site. The emerald lawns and the luxuriant growth of the perennial borders are founded on this transported earth. The work is no haphazard affair, however; the scheme is under the wing of the district engineer, Mr. H. W. Beasley, while Mr. R, L. Thornton, an experienced and idealistic landscape gardener, oversees and plans its progress. Collecting from seed from as far afield as Okaihau, lie has raised 750 manuka plants ranging from white, single, and double, through three shades of lovely pink to scarlet, bright red and a rich, dark red. Many of these are to be seen at present just coming into bloom under the retaining fence of the southern exit from the station, and it is later intended to have the native clematis growing over the fence itself.

A Roof Nursery. This manuka hedge, which was a source of epecial interest to southerners, is selected from the seedlings. Its achievement has been :by no means simple, for of the bright red only about 25 per cent come true to type, and of the pink about 50 per cent. Many of these plants are now higher than the 4ft wall, and are covered with masses of large blooms. Much new growth is noticed in the plantation of pungas and native trees and shrubs bordering the line, and eoon this will be a bank of soft, feathery foliage. Very soon the summer blooming annuals will be planted out before the main building, and naturally one wonders where the tremendous number needed will come from. The answer is simple though unexpected; they are raised on the roof of the station. At the northern end of the main building a block of offices runs out some 40ft by 100 ft, and on the flat roof of this block, occupied only by tops

of ventilator 6hafts, gravitation ■water tanks and the terminals of the building reinforcing, tons of earth have been deposited to form a garden. Here are growing puriri trees from three to six feet high, and shrub cuttings such as hydrangeas, also flax plants, while tubers are spread to dry in the sun. Rows of boxes on a stand contain seedlings, sheltered by a roller curtain of canvas. In them are tiny antirrhinum, delphinium,' asparagus fern, nemesia, anemone, ! lobelia, eweet pea, pansies, cineraria, primula, primroses, stock, linaria, ranuncula and larkspur. Small and ssm P lv constructed, stands near—but what treasures are within it! Kept at an average temperature of 60deg P to TMeg* the interior _ has the rich, moist, aromatic scent of true bush after rain. Here ar« more seedlings-tree Wto, r SeSa^,

larkspur, cinerarias, while in one box are tiny shamrock-like plants which one day will be anemones. But it is the 4000 or so native plants which are most wonderful. There are king ferns growing in leaf mould, young pungas in pots, young slender nikau plants, branching and creeping ferns of all kinds. There are 500 golden kowhai plants, lacebark, tanekaha, kaiwaka, raurekau, whauwhaupaku (live-finger), kahikatea, rimu, karamu (coprosmos). Many of these give rich dye stains and tanning agents, as well as being beautiful to see. Here manuka are being tested for colour; beside them are kumarahou, puriri" (of which are are 300), makomako with sharp serrated leaves, neinei (a lily-like plant with small white tassel flower), native orchids, and the quintinia, which turns copper in autumn.

Looking over the wall of Hie roof is seen a garden under the road entrance to the station. Here are kauris, rinm, tanekaha and totara, and a grounding of manuka. Houhere (lacebark) will soon hide the present sand-dumps. Under the walls of the basement are 900 pohutukawas. All these are well-grown and established, although planted within the last twelve months. In the little garden at the end of the Concourse, adjoining No. 1 departure platform, is green lawn, studded with the large-leaved pukanui— not a mainland tree this, bttt found on coastal islands such as the Hen and Chickens —native yellow hibiscus, copper akeake, koromiko, rohutu (copper manuka), and, crowning wonder of all, a young kauri which apparently has decided to devote itself to the breaking of the kauri world speed record, having achieved a growth of 18in in just twelve months.

All passing through the Concourse of ]ate will have admired the native trees set out along the walls in concrete tubs. Here are the raukawa (three-finger), hinau, rewarewa, houhere, pohutu, ramarama, miro, taraire, toru, pukanui, puriri and nikau, while there are also two specimens of the tawari, usually so hard to grow when transplanted. When it is reflected that many of these have been raised from, as it were, wayside seeds and seedlings, and that in the course of time they will form a nursery from which the needs of half the North Island railroads can be supplied, and that their maintenance costs little more than keeping waste ground tidy, it must be felt that such outstanding results in a little over a year reflect great credit on all concerned. Auckland city undoubtedly has a wonderful civic asset in this little-known activity of the Railways Department, for at present there is nothing comparable to it in all the Dominion.