Emma Sage is on a mission to reframe gardens as outdoor rooms, reconnect communities, and ensure the wisdom of past generations continues to flourish. <\/p>\n
\n If anyone can inspire you to get your hands in the soil, it\u2019s Emma Sage. The editor, writer and gardener has a way of talking
\n about the art of gardening that makes you immediately want to pick up a spade or sprinkle some seeds in a pot.\n <\/p>\n
Founding the gardening website Sage Journal might seem like destiny (especially with a name like Sage), but Emma\u2019s love of gardening grew slowly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI never identified as someone who would get into gardening,\u201d she admits from her Hawke\u2019s Bay home office, where she\u2019s preparing to launch the inaugural print edition of Sage Journal alongside a series of spring and summer gardening events. <\/p>\n
You wouldn\u2019t know it from peering out the window of her \u201980s brick home, which has been renovated in a mid-century modern style, with a garden to match. Its fluid design is alive with greenery, curves, ornamental structure, native plants and a big flush of perennials just coming into bloom.<\/p>\n
Emma Sage\u2019s Hawke\u2019s Bay garden is alive with greenery and perennials in bloom. Photos \/ Supplied, Sage Journal<\/p>\n
Her mum was an early influence, an \u201camazing gardener\u201d who took her along to garden circles to explore neighbours\u2019 backyards, swap tips, and talk plants. Other family memories shaped her too: a grandmother carefully saving seeds in hand-labelled envelopes, a grandfather mowing the lawn into a perfect cricket-pitch shape. Still, it wasn\u2019t until 2014, after renovating her first home in Christchurch, that gardening took root.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I became really enamoured with gardening, it was mostly centred on the realisation that we spend so much time and money creating our indoor spaces, but so often no one is thinking about the outside. You can make your space feel so much more like home, and so much bigger, by using the outside space.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time gardening really clicked for her, Emma wasn\u2019t just sowing things in soil, she was growing ideas about how we live, and how the spaces around us can shape that. Emma sees gardens as \u201coutdoor rooms\u201d that are full of potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about creating zones like you do with your living spaces to create a whole extension of your home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anything from decking to awnings, pockets of seating areas or raised vegetable gardens can help achieve this.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can grow a hedge to conceal an area, create little surprises around a corner, or screen things off with trees. Maybe you love wild flowers and create a little patch of colour with those.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her Christchurch garden, she built big vege gardens, planted fruit trees and had chickens roaming around. She created structure through hedges and filled flower beds with roses. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe gateway for me was the wonder of being able to grow veges, which is the same for a lot of people. Then they realise they can grow flowers and create structure, so it kind of flows from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
A woodland oasis in Havelock North. Photo \/ Pippa Marffy, Sage Journal<\/p>\n
Of course, this expert knowledge came with time, but when Emma embarked on the redesign of the 1930s villa, a small house on a big, empty site with one camellia bush and nothing else, she didn\u2019t have the tools. <\/p>\n
\u201cI went deep into Pinterest, websites and Instagram. I would spend hours drawing up plans and looking through magazines but I really struggled to find good information that was at the level that I was at.\u201d <\/p>\n
She was passionate, with a good design eye, but had no idea what could grow where and what was possible in the garden. <\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like there was a massive gap for people who liked the idea of gardening but just had no idea where to go.\u201d <\/p>\n
The seed for a business idea sown, Emma started a gardening Instagram page to feed her passion. Then lockdown hit, and seemingly everyone, including Emma, whose background is in communications and marketing, became interested in making over their homes and gardens. Emma decided it was \u201cnow or never\u201d, launching Sage Journal in winter 2020, creating an online platform showcasing beautiful gardens from New Zealand, but also Australia, the UK, Poland, Denmark and the US. It\u2019s also a resource for practical gardening advice and design series, with tips for everything from digging up and dividing dahlia tubers to planting spring bulbs, composting and seed saving.<\/p>\n
The blooming garden of Pegasus Bay winery in the Waipara Valley. Photo \/ Liv Leeuwen, Sage Journal<\/p>\n
With compelling photography and thoughtful writing, Sage Journal captures the essence of a garden. In Havelock North, a woodland-inspired design is alive with trees and birdlife, while in the Waipara Valley, the grounds of Pegasus Bay Winery are a series of hedges, topiary and seasonal plantings of roses, dahlias, cherry trees, rhododendrons, hydrangeas and a laburnum walk. Emma is careful to include variety. It\u2019s not only grand estates but also more intimate projects, such as Jared Lockhart\u2019s naturalistic garden at Deadly Ponies\u2019 flagship Auckland store, an urban retreat that channels the quiet beauty of a Japanese tsuboniwa, or courtyard garden. It\u2019s a rare mix of aspirational and practical gardening advice that makes transforming a bleak courtyard garden into a lush oasis somehow seem achievable. That\u2019s intentional. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want people to think, \u2018how can I turn a tiny little space into something that brings a bit of joy\u2019,\u201d says Emma.<\/p>\n
The first print issue of Sage Journal hit shelves this month, comprising 15 new gardens, practical pieces, plant spotlights, recipes and a photographic series. A long-held dream for Emma, she\u2019s been blown away by the response, with pre-orders rolling in. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something people have asked for for a long time. We\u2019re tactile people, gardeners, so having something physical to flip through is nice.\u201d <\/p>\n
Just like spending quality time with a magazine, nothing beats gardening for a moment to yourself. <\/p>\n
\u201cLife is so busy, but time in the garden makes me stop and just be. Whether I\u2019m trimming, planting or weeding, it\u2019s the one moment where I feel grounded and fully present.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jared Lockhart designed this courtyard garden for Deadly Ponies\u2019 Auckland flagship. Photo \/ David Straight, Sage Journal<\/p>\n
Enjoying the fruits of your labour \u2013 \u201ceating your fresh produce, seeing your spring bulbs finally pop up, your seeds grow\u201d \u2013 is one thing, but community is at the real heart of gardening, says Emma. It\u2019s why events are becoming a big focus, bringing like-minded people together, away from screens and into real-life conversations. <\/p>\n
When Sage Journal turned five recently, Emma thought she might gather 50 locals in Hawke\u2019s Bay; instead, 140 people showed up, selling out the event in under 48 hours with a waitlist to spare. The morning featured a talk, a mini plant market and plenty of swapping of stories and seedlings. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople came up to me afterwards and said it was just so nice to do something for themselves that wasn\u2019t for the kids, the house, or work. Just two hours to sit, learn something, and go home with a bundle of plants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her vision with Sage Journal is to bridge what she sees as a generation gap in gardening knowledge \u2013 the risk that wisdom once passed down through backyards and conversations could be lost. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo much of it comes from trial and error, and from sharing. If we don\u2019t preserve and pass it on, we risk losing not just skills, but the joy that comes with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
At home, that passing down is already happening. Emma\u2019s three children are often by her side in the garden, sometimes armed with secateurs, sometimes just playing nearby. She loves the idea that while they may not always be enthusiastic now, the rhythms of gardening will take root in them. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that down the track, when they\u2019re my age, it\u2019ll just be part of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma\u2019s top gardening tips for beginners<\/p>\n
For anyone beginning their gardening journey, Emma says the key considerations are structure, sun and soil. <\/p>\n
Structure: \u201cIt\u2019s important to create a bit of structure first, as opposed to just the beauty or just the veges, because in winter, it\u2019s not going to look good,\u201d says Emma. Structure can be anything from hedges and screens to evergreen planting, trees and pathways. \u201cIf you start with zones, you can scatter the beauty around that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sun: When it comes to light, Emma says some plants are never going to grow in full sun and vice versa, and some plants are more adaptable. \u201cI think that\u2019s the biggest piece of advice for beginners is where something will grow.\u201d Navigating this is as simple as looking at the plant tag at the nursery for instructions on where it\u2019ll grow, says Emma. <\/p>\n
Soil: Every region in New Zealand has a different type of soil, be it clay or pumice, loam or sand, as well as levels of acidity and alkalinity. \u201cThat sounds really fancy but it\u2019s actually not. Just ask someone at the garden centre or someone who is good at gardening. No matter what type your soil is, most places around New Zealand don\u2019t have super fertile soil so we need to work on that first with a dollop of compost, for example.\u201d <\/p>\n
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