Our Land

Choose winter bloomers to add a pop of colour to your garden.

Hunting for truffles is not for the impatient or the olfactorily impaired. Success calls for a sniffer-out of buried bounty – in other words, a dog.

Twelve years ago, an enterprising couple started creating a permaculture food forest and perennial farm on a dusty, bare block in a dry Hawke’s Bay valley. Today, it’s unrecognisable.

Make the most of the chilly weather by growing hardy, nutritious crops.

Growing kits are an excellent way to get started with your first crop of home-grown mushrooms.

Kay Baxter and her family faced the biggest challenge of their lives in their quest to save New Zealand’s heritage seeds and fruit trees.

Creating a Garden of National Significance in the remote foothills of inland Otago with its extreme climate and heavy clay soil takes a body of strong bones, a will of iron and a soul of magic.

How to keep a lime happy, even in the cold.

In the Business of Farming Beauty – Banks Track Akaroa

The Banks Track in Akaroa describes itself as a feast for the senses, a feed for the soul and a feat for the spirit. But the heart is the story of how the landowners have tirelessly dedicated themselves to regenerating the land ravaged for its resources, back to its natural state.

Canterbury farming leading by example

After a candid interview with Christchurch-based accountant Pita Alexander, reciting his list of reasons farming businesses work, his number one was ‘marry well’. Sarah Perriam was inspired by Canterbury’s recent Ballance Farm Environment Award winners demonstrating the power of marrying together complementary skill sets to achieve the highest honour.

Rose Trees: A Double Take

It has been said that a garden is a friend you can visit anytime, and from a gardener’s viewpoint time has been on our side in recent months as plants continue to follow their normal seasonal routine. Lately there’s been an opportunity to ‘keep it local’ and take the chance for a second look at familiar plants closer to home. Rhododendrons, named from Greek via Latin rhodon (rose) and dendron (tree) are a good case in point.

Keeping Honest Practice in the Family

Gold at heart, down to earth and appreciated by many; the qualities of the Hislop family, one with a rich and fascinating history, are wonderfully similar to the product that has defined their industriousness over time: honey.

The Krummenacher family business is based on an ancient and dynamic natural system that is going about its important business silently beneath their feet.

Mushrooms are so much more than their tasty flavour.

Mushroom foraging can be dangerous even in the age of Google.

Plant the right trees and you can enjoy the amazing flavour of heritage apples for most of the year.

Very few things in life are free, but a wonderful garden resource is lying around, going to waste, and it will only cost you a trip to the beach.

Prepare the paddock and animals for wetter, coolor weather.

A little ingenuity and the right plants can help you overcome one of the biggest landscape challenges, the awkward slope.

Plan your feijoa season ahead of time by selecting the ideal variety for your garden.

Use autumn leaves to supercharge garden soil.

If you’re a current subscriber to NZ Lifestyle Block, this digital edition is yours to keep and read forever.

Some well-placed pots can bring a cold-weather harvest to any small garden.

It's time to get ahead of your cold-weather harvest and flower garden.

In just 12 years, permaculture gardeners Jo and Aaron Duff have transformed a dusty, bare block into a perennial food forest including some unusual edibles you might never have heard of.

A creative woman on a beautiful farm branched out beyond her flower-free, well-hedged garden to plant herself a business. It’s growing divinely.

This time of year should bring bountiful fruit, but not in this orchard.

Microgreens are an easy way to add homegrown nutrition to breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Shannon Wright has turned a passion for nutrient-rich food into a growing business of goodness.

It's time to start sowing cool-weather crops.

Whether it's sunshine slicing through snow-capped mountains or sheep trundling down a hillside, there's an undeniable magic to the rural corners and peaks of New Zealand.

Being 'fire aware' can make all the difference for protecting your property.

March is a good time to do soil testing, and apply fertiliser and lime. But do you know what your soil is telling you?

Volunteer schemes are not a way to get things done for free around your block, but Sheryn has still found it very profitable.