I was lucky enough recently to have a reason to visit renowned plantsman and gardener Gordon Collier in his Taupo home, Anacapri. It’s an inspiration for those of us with suburban-size plots and a desire for a larger garden – throw away the lawn and fill every inch with plants, winding paths and a pond or two!

As you might have seen in the latest NZ Gardener magazine (February), Gordon has written a book about his Taupo garden, made on a flat, pumice site after he and his wife Annette retired from their Taihape-area farm – and the well-known Titoki Point garden – in 2001. Anacapri, named after a village on the Amalfi coast in Italy, has recently been judged a 5-star garden by the NZ Gardens Trust.

Gordon freely admits he always wanted to garden and not sheep farm but the farm gave him the space, if not necessarily the time or income, to start realising his dreams. Titoki Point became a destination for garden buffs and just before he left was attracting 5000 visitors a year. (The garden has since closed to the public.)

Several years ago, Gordon says, he noticed a Geranium seedling in the Anacapri garden that he thought was worth keeping. “A visiting nurseryman took it back to Auckland and eventually patented it.” It has been named ‘Annette’ in honour of Gordon’s wife who died in 2014.

Gordon caught the Geranium (as opposed to Pelargonium) bug when he came across a catalogue put out by Philippa Foes-Lamb of the Heirloom Perennial Plant Nursery in Nelson – and another interesting plant in his garden apparently arrived by mistake and is not available at present.

Geranium Philippa “starts off as a pale grey hassock of pleasantly scented leaves; come summer, it literally erupts into a cloud of foliage with myriads of pale lilac flowers”, he says. “In season this plant will measure a metre across and as much high. It’s a stunning sight with, I believe, a great future as a garden plant.” Apparently it’s a chance hybrid between two uncommon species from South Africa which are growing in Philippa’s garden.

Did you know we have a couple of native cranesbills? Geranium traversii is endemic to the Chatham Islands. Flowers are most often pink, but occasionally white or purple forms are seen. According to Shirley Stuart, NZ native curator at Dunedin Botanic Gardens, it’s one of the few Chathams plants which are relatively easy to grow throughout the country, although doesn’t like high humidity.

Geranium solanderi was among the plants collected by botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander (a Swede) on their first day ashore in New Zealand in 1769 (East Cape). These days it’s a rare plant and is often found on cliffs, out of reach of introduced herbivores.

Geranium retrorsum looks very similar to G. solanderi and both plants can apparently be found in a remnant of a lava field in one of Auckland’s most intensely populated industrial areas!