NZBS GARDEN EXPERTS—2

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 890, 24 August 1956, Page 19

NZBS GARDEN EXPERTS—2

+OR a man who has been associated with gardening all his life, W. G. Stephen is still remarkably humble about his knowledge of the subjectwhich is perhaps not so very surprising in anyone whose interests lie close to the soil. "A man who thinks he knows everything about gardening is making a big mistake," says Mr. Stephen, whose advice to gardeners is heard from 2YA on Wednesdays at 7:15 p.m. "There’s always something new to learn in our game." And to keep up-to-date he reads all the books and periodicals he cari about new developments overseas. He has always been a practical gardener, too, and admits that once when he moved to a new house without a garden and found that vegetables cost him a pound a week, he had a new understanding of the problems of those who look to him for advice. Mr, Stephen has been giving seasonal advice and answering listeners’ questions from 2YA for about 10 years. Before that he was garden expert at 2ZA, and he recalls that a good many years ago he sponsored the first Saturday gardening broadcast from 1ZB. Though Scot-tish-born-"I was -brought up in a market garden near Aberdeen"-Mr. Stephen has lived in New Zealand since he was 15, and finds a wide experience of conditions in many parts of the country a great help when it comes to answering letters from as far north as Whangarei, and as far south as Invercargill. The garden expert at 2ZB, George Phillips, has also had long experience as a horticulturist-30 years of it in a — ‘

Britain before he came to New Zealand to settle at the beginning of 1951. "I started as an apprentice in a nursery in 1921," he says, "but before that had done a lot in the garden at home." Horticulture, he admitted, was in the family, for.a brother had been a well-known daffodil grower before 1914. For many years Mr. Phillips was principal of a Warwickshire firm which specialised in delphiniums, dahlias and gladioli, though at Paraparaumu, where he established a nursery after looking round the North Island when he first came to New Zealand, he is giving more attention to shrubs. Talking and writing about gardening is no néw thing for Mr. Phillips-he oe

has written five books on aspects of the subject. Recently he was appointed editor of the Journal of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture. He tells us he intends to stay in New Zealand, but he keeps in touch through correspondents with new developments in Britain, on the Continent and in South Africa and America. Apart from his regular session from 2ZB at 9.0 a.m. on Saturdays, Mr. Phillips broadcasts in the 2YA Women’s Session on the first | Monday of each month, and is heard in other ‘talks. The Wellington Shakespeare Society is among his other interests, and he has also had small parts in NZBS plays.