An Ark in the City — Percy Reserve

Forest and Bird, Issue 312, 1 May 2004, Page 10

An Ark in the City — Percy Reserve

—DAVE HANSFORD,

Many of our rarest and mostendangered alpine plants are clinging to existence next to a Wellington motorway.

ake State Highway 2 north out of Wellington. By the time you've hit third gear out of the Korokoro lights, you've already passed the country’s biggest and most precious collection of threatened native plants. Percy Reserve is a 13-hectare mosaic of cultivated borders, stately exotics and regenerating native forest. Each year, thousands of visitors find tranquility here beside the duck ponds and daffodils, but just behind a huddle of tatty sheds is Percy’s true worth. Put your shoulder to the sticking gate and you've entered a kind of living museum — a frame grab from a time when biodiversity found full, unbroken expression across our hills and mountains, before all those gaping holes appeared in the cloak. More than 400 threatened plants huddle under the partial shelter of the alpine house. For some, this is their last recorded location. There are another 150 in the shade house, countless others spread about outside, and Jill Broome has the job of keeping them all alive and well. Every day she does a slow patrol along the trestles, like a shepherd among her flock, casting a practised eye over ranks of celmisias, ranunculus, carmichealias for the first signs of pests or dieback. The place looks almost shambolic, but every pot is in the optimum place, arrived at by careful trial, error and observation — and more than a modicum of gut feeling. ‘Either you've got it or you haven't, says Jill Broome. This plant prefers the morning sun,

this one likes a bit more wind — many don't do well in the alpine house at all, but are thriving in the fernery. She is making this up as she goes along, because there’s no manual to follow, no website to consult. ‘You can look in a book, but the plants aren’t in there. Or what is in there doesn’t always work. So more often than not, she takes a second guess based on a close relation. She says the key is to establish precisely what conditions a rare plant grows under in the wild, assuming there are any left. Then she sets about replicating those conditions as best she can. But while the sheds have misting systems and heat beds, many of the plants don’t respond to such coddling. That’s when Jill Broome goes low-tech. A saucer of water under the pot helps bog plants. The ones that enjoy plenty of rain go under the leaks in the roof. And because plants don’t live forever, she’s busy taking cuttings, propagating, collecting seed. Jill Broome has become a surrogate for the wind, the insects or the birds that would have kept these lines going, but it’s a numbers game played with daunting odds; perhaps 200 cuttings might take from 1000 attempts. None of which fazes her in the least. A member of the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network, she’s forever looking for ways to build up the collections, doing swaps with other nurseries and botanical groups. Percy Reserve is a kind of ark-cum-halfway house. Some

plants have been brought into for custody here until it’s safe for them to be returned to the wild. Plants such as Sebaea ovata, an herbaceous coastal plant from the Wanganui dunes, have been raised here. Four hundred seedlings have since been planted out in the Kaipara. They are doing well at a site tightly managed to keep out stock, people, vehicles and weeds. Or one of our rarest native brooms, Carmichaelia juncea. All searches of its former home around Lake Pearson failed, and it was thought to have been lost until someone noticed one in Broome’s alpine house, grown from seed brought back from the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. The Department of Conservation is now growing it in its Motukarara nursery. Sadly, others may never leave. Jill Broome’s charges face threats here that even the mountains can’t dish out. Next

year, Transit New Zealand will bulldoze her shade house, the alpine house and much of her outdoor displays to make room for ‘improvements’ to State Highway Two. She has 18 months to duplicate the collections and get them out to safe, suitably qualified havens, spreading her investment. In the meantime, floods, droughts and ageing infrastructure are a constant WOITy. ‘We're right on a fault line here. Or if that old glasshouse broke down...’ she can’t bear to finish her own sentence. But she will be up bright and early doing her rounds tomorrow, and the next day, because Percy Reserve isn’t about next year, it’s about 100 years from now, and 100 years after that. ‘We're planting for posterity, she says.

Origin Natural History Unit. Percy Reserve is funded by Hutt City Council.

Officially classified as a Scenic Reserve, Percy Reserve is part of the national conservation estate. It is leased to the Hutt City Council and is managed on its behalf by Excell Corporation.