Bugg

Next year's colour. This years garden 💙🪻🩵 Delphiniums, cornflowers, tweedia, forget-me-nots... twelve beautiful blues for NZ gardens. Now's the time to get them in. Lead the trend, not follow it.
New blog: Ancient Blue: The 2027 Garden Colour, Done the NZ Way https://bugg.co.nz/blogs/news/ancient-blue-garden-colour-nz

"Cuts like a hot knife through butter." S. Starr in Kawerau, on the Harvesting Sickle.
Flax, long grass, overgrown edges, harakeke for weaving. One tool, one clean pull. S. reckons everyone should own one. We're not going to argue.

Anyone else impatiently waiting to see what colour zinnias you’ll get from saved seeds this year? These little beauties are ready to go in the ground, trusty Hori Hori on the job.
The suspense is half the fun.

Spring: the seedlings are up. So are the freeloaders. Powdery mildew, rust and black spot all run the same play, warmth plus humidity plus soft new growth, which means the counter play is the same too. None of it requires panic. 🐛

Start with the three things that are free. Crowding is contagious, so plant with room and thin hard. Spores hitchhike, and a wet leaf is an open door, so water at the base and in the morning. And compost remembers, because a home heap never gets hot enough to kill the spores, which means a sick leaf goes in the bin and not on the pile.

Then open the arsenal. EnSpray 99 suffocates aphids, mites, thrips and scale at every life stage, eggs included. Free Flo Copper shields the roses and the garlic from black spot and rust. Or mix the kitchen one: a teaspoon each of baking soda, oil and soap in a litre of water.

For the night shift, torches on and go hunting. Every slug found in September is a hundred that never meet your lettuces, and the kids will love it. Sprinkle Quash and crushed eggshells where you cannot patrol.

Raise the fortress, because our net tunnels do not rate 4.8 stars across nearly 400 reviews for nothing.

And grow your own army. Ladybirds work for free and eat dozens of aphids a day each, so plant the yarrow, dill and calendula that bring them in, and skip the broad spectrum sprays that take your side out along with theirs. The full guide to the good bugs lands next week.

Both spring guides are on the blog now, pests and diseases.

Some people bond over wine. We bonded over a Hori Hori. Hayley from .flowers and I bonded over her story about how brilliant the Hori Hori is. When we posted that we were heading to Wonder Grow in Hawke's Bay, she instantly replied offering her help. And then she turned up with the most gorgeous bunch of blooms.

A market day. A road trip back to Auckland. A full week later and they're still going, still beautiful, exactly like their grower.

The tulips have found the one bit of wall the sun hits at four o'clock and they are making the most of it. Red, orange, a bit of both. Leaves catching the light. Nothing to do here except stand and look for a minute.

She's here. Sage Journal Vol. 2, Our Creative Nature, is now at Bugg.
Getting to know Emma has been one of the treats of the last few years. She is exactly the person you'd hope makes a journal like this: curious, generous, and and seriously inspiring. Congratulations Emma, Vol. 2 is stunning.

This year's theme is Our Creative Nature. 196 pages, fifteen gardens and the people behind them, planting guides, art and recipes. Vol. 1 is still on the shelf if you're collecting the set. .journal

Weeks of work. Seeds chilled in the fridge, coaxed along on the heat mat, hardened off, finally planted out. Gone in an afternoon. Birds after the worms. The neighbour's cat after the freshly dug soil. Either way, all that work undone before dinner.

A Net Tunnel sorts it. And they're not just for the vege patch. Pop one over your pansies, poppies or sweet peas and they'll still be there in the morning. Ask . Hers lives over the seedlings. Not just a pretty face, that one.