Garden Guru: Cutting a dash

Sections of bamboo double as a focal point and a home for moss and epiphytes. Photo / Supplied

Slice anything in half and there's a childish pleasure to be had in appraising the innards. From its unpromising furry exterior, a kiwifruit offers up a zingy green starburst. And I can never decide how to chop tomatoes for the salad to get the prettiest pattern of seeds.

I'm also a sucker for those tacky souvenir coffee mats made of ponga fronds cut like toast bread to reveal their stippled symmetry.

Even shells can be enjoyed from a new angle by taking to them with a saw if you have a fine enough blade and a steady hand.

So it's a pleasure to see garden designers adopting the same simple technique to brighten up gardens by reinventing logs and branches in an effort to create a bit of inexpensive and sustainable art.

Long before it became trendy, we Kiwis have always been good at dragging found objects back to our "caves", be it driftwood, old totara fence posts, railway sleepers or intriguingly shaped tree roots.

More recently, log piles came into the eco-chic garden as politically correct hotels for over-wintering bugs and beasties.

And hot on their heels have come ever-more sophisticated ways of dressing up the humble log - slicing, stacking and multiplying it to create intricate patterns and textures which give the garden a sense of style while maintaining a nod toward naturalness.

Using cut logs for stepping stones across the garden isn't a new idea but proves to be impractical in winter when algae turns them into ice-rinks.

If you follow the Department of Conservation boardwalk strategy and cover them with chicken mesh then feet get a better grip but your garden begins to look like a reserve rather than something more refined.

Recently I spotted some arresting topographical sculptures made by British designer Jon Tilley out of bamboo.

Set in a gravel terrace, the simple, multiplied rhythm of poles created a mesmerising spectacle.

But it's hard to shake off the idea, when making anything out of bamboo, that you are not just having a stab at yet another pastiche oriental-style garden - bring on the pebbles and maples - yawn.

I also wonder how handsome or practical such installations will be in a few years' time when leaf litter and cobwebs have found their way in and marred the initial crispness.

Still, multiplication is a cheap and easy trick for giving your outside space an instant sense of confident swagger, and when things get tatty you can always sweep it away and bring in a new idea.

Logs can be easily stacked on top of each other as a rustic totem pole or cairn, and sticking a forest of long bamboo canes into the ground will give you an instant abstract "forest", which you can allow to march across the garden creating a veil that will divide up the space while not making either side feel too cramped.

Such arty "thickets" need to be firmly anchored, for any one member leaning out of place will let the whole side down.

Under-plant with textural grasses or mondo.

If you fancy having a fling with wood to create a focal point or textured boundary it's worth being aware that your efforts will rarely last long unless you try to treat them with a preserver or varnish, which can ruin the whole feeling of rustic simplicity.

With soft woods the very bugs you are happy to entertain will have munched their way through your art in a few years, reducing them to, admittedly great quality, compost.

The ephemeral nature of the beast, I guess, is all part of the appeal - treading lightly on the landscape rather than imposing ourselves permanently and all that.

Outside our new house we have inherited a horrendous pierced concrete block wall. The plan at present is to conceal it behind a facade of balanced log offcuts. If only they designed the things square the stacking and cutting would be so much easier.

We also want to put a wood-burning stove inside our place so the question is: Why are we going for a boutique log feature outside the ranch-sliders when we could just pile genuine firewood outside and have something useful and good to look at? I don't have an answer except to say that perfect rounds of wood look nicer than the triangular split pieces we burn. It's the sliced tomato dilemma all over again. I suspect one cold night our wall will prove to be just too handy and we will burn our log artwork before the spiders even get to check in their bags.

COULD DO THIS WEEK

With magnolias and daffodils emerging, August is the unofficial start to spring.

* Sprinkle snail bait if your daffodils are getting shredded; pick tall varieties before they lie in the mud.
* Continue lifting and moving shrubs and perennial plants before they start their growth.
* Get in quick to prune any roses you have forgotten and spray stems with an insecticidal winter-strength oil before they show signs of life.If your soil is warm and friable, sow broad beans as early as possible. On a cool windowsill sow modules of leeks, cabbage, lettuce and silverbeet.
* It's not too late to sprout seed potatoes by placing them in egg boxes on a cool windowsill. Make sure you put the more dimpled end of the tubers upwards. If you sprouted them indoors last month you can plant your first crop out.
* Root cuttings started in autumn should be showing strong signs of growth now and can be potted.