With zeal and enthusiasm

摘要

THE CHALLENGE for a visitor to Ayrlies garden (on the coast, a few miles east of Auckland, in the warm North Island of New Zealand) is where to find its industrious creator. Turn up at eight in the morning and you are bound to find Beverly McConnell at the tractor shed, laden with scribbled notes to pass on to her gardening team of three. Arrive later, and it is anyone's guess where Bev might be. She could well be scrambling among rhododendrons, pulling out self-seeding cinerarias that don't subscribe to the desired hue; she might be walking the paddocks marking out places for new trees, or up to her knees in mud in the 'canal bog', clearing Louisiana iris to reveal the knobbled roots of the taxodiums that grow so well here.