The Ogilvies have sat and watched for two decades as the cactus in their Mahora backyard turned into a behemoth. Photo / Paul Taylor
The Ogilvies have sat and watched for two decades as the cactus in their Mahora backyard turned into a behemoth. Photo / Paul Taylor
If the Ogilvies ever want to cut down the “monster” cactus in front of their Hastings home, they’re going to need a very sharp sword.
The Mahora behemoth, which has limbs that now tower well above their weatherboard home’s roof, is the product of not much more than a bitof water, sun, good soil, and 25 years of not thinking too much about it.
“You plant it, then you ignore it. And that’s exactly what we did. 25 years later ... is this monster,” Robert Ogilvie said with a laugh.
Robert and wife Pam moved to Hastings for a new life from England in the mid-1990s.
In the midst of a whirlwind round of decorating, Robert - for some reason - really fancied having a cactus. But he wasn’t ever expecting it to grow to be one of Hawke’s Bay’s largest.
The cactus has soared above the roof of the house since it was planted about 25 years ago. Photo / Paul Taylor
The couple didn’t purchase the cactus at any old garden centre or plant barn. Robert said at the time New Zealand was a cacti desert, so to speak, and it was impossible to find plants over 15cm.
“I think someone told us, just opposite Mangateretere School, is a house just literally across the road with a very similar cactus.
“So we just drove up and knocked on the door and a very nice man who I can’t remember, talked about his cactus,” Robert says.
“And then he said, ‘would you like a bit?’ So he got a saw, chopped off one of the arms, and gave it to us’.”
The couple took the piece of cactus in tow, with the only recommendations being to do nothing for a few weeks so the base dried and doesn’t rot.
And then plant it and ignore it.
Robert says that he looked at some old photos from 2006, about eight years after they planted it, and the cactus was already as tall as the house.
“Now it’s just got bigger - periodically I lop bits off because in the wind it bashes the house, you can actually hear it going ‘clack, clack, clack’.”
Robert says it’s fortunate that the cactus has no psychedelic properties, lest it attracts extra attention.
“You can’t get high on this cactus juice,” Robert assures.
“The guy who we got it from told us a story that he was in a pub and two young guys were talking about stealing some cactus to try and make some sort of psychotropic compound out of.
“They were talking in the pub and the guy sort of turned around and said to them, ‘you b******s, that’s my cactus’.”
What the cactus looked like when it was first planted. Photo / Paul Taylor
The plant is known as a Queen of the Night cactus because, at night, these beautiful waterlily flowers bloom but by day, they wilt and blacken, falling down on the lawn looking like ‘big rats’.
Robert says that the inner structure of the cactus is super tough - the outer fleshy bits can be cut with a knife.
For the fibrous core, you’d need a sword.
While Robert enjoys having the cactus as an attraction on their front lawn, it’s a prickly subject for wife Pam who thinks “it’s an idiotic thing”.
“Because Pam’s the gardener, she gets annoyed. She gets stabbed by the spines which are about 60, 70 millimetres long and they hurt like heck, they’re really sharp”.
Don't walk into it - it's sharp. Photo / Paul Taylor
“So I take a saw and snip the spines off so I don’t get told off so often by Pam for being stabbed.”
