I had to take my car to the mechanic today, as the steering feels slack. He's in the middle of town, just outside the red zone, but the area is quite badly damaged. The area is a mix of low-rise commercial and old residential buildings, and quite a few have been already demolished or are derelict, broken and boarded up. It looks more decrepit now than the last time I visited it, about six months ago, a lot of weeds have grown over the sites and the gardens have gone largely to rack and ruin. But there is a certain charm about these overgrown gardens, still producing roses and jasmine, even though the lawn is now a foot high or more and the house at the centre of the garden has gone. Perhaps it's time for a new Christchurch gardening aesthetic, a looser, less manicured look, something like the naturalistic gardens developed by (I think) Piet Oudolf in Holland, requiring less maintenance and less water, featuring lots of grasses and dry land herbaceous plants.
Certainly this was largely the kind of vegetation that grew here before the city was built over the top of it.
But I'd hate to see gardens revert entirely to natives, we need the exotics to provide autumn colour and winter berries. There are some politically correct persons who believe we should only plant natives in our gardens, that the exotics have no place here. If we follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, we should also get rid of roads and buildings. And ourselves.
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