Mr Rainbow hops from branch to branch overhead, shrieking and babbling, as Brady slices into a family of bromeliads with the long blade of a bread knife.
The raucous rainbow lorikeet is the 81-year-old's constant companion as he tends to his eclectic sub-tropical garden in the middle of Mt Eden. With his wings clipped to deter him from wandering, Mr Rainbow snacks on the silver-leafed tillandsias (air plants) before jumping on to Brady's bowed back.
But there's really no reason for Mr Rainbow to stray; this quarter-acre garden is a fertile oasis in a dry stone quarry - every square metre filled with flora, fauna, artworks and rocks.
"Not a spot goes empty - everything is decorated," says Brady, who gardens every day in his retirement from a life-long career as a florist. It's not a "grand vista garden", but there are little pockets of wonder at every turn.
There's not a postage stamp of lawn anywhere on the section, which wraps around an 80-year-old Spanish mission house. Instead, there are arrangements of plants hardy enough to prosper in the dry, volcanic rock ground that was once a basalt quarry.
Many of the plants thrive in pots so Brady can move them now and then to change the view. He collects sculptures that take his fancy, working them into spaces where they are quickly absorbed in the vegetation - as if they, too, had sprouted from seed.
There are around 200 species of plants in his Balinese-style garden. He's nurtured vireyas to flower virtually all year round in the free-draining soil, and bromeliads of all stripe and spot formations. Colourful succulents make useful borders that smother weeds. Gravel paths meander around a pond in the centre of the backyard, which is home to 30 large goldfish and tropical water lilies.
Apart from Mr Rainbow and an aviary of turquoisines, doves and finches, the place is alive with garden-variety birds - sparrows, mynahs and tui. Brady is certain he has heard shining cuckoos whistling this spring.
Orchids hang from baskets in the boughs of trees, and Brady uses old pantyhose to tether airplants and delicate-looking dendrobium speciosum - Australian rock lilies - to tree branches, so they eventually become one. Clivias are kept in pots undercover of the back deck to save them from slugs and snails, and begonias with metre-high flower spikes bloom in the shade.
From his years as a florist in Auckland and Waihi, Brady likes the "filler" foliage - maidenhair and florist ferns that he buys as $2 house plants to fill gaps on the garden floor. "I have to stop buying plants; I won't be tempted any more!" he laughs.
Brady's favourite tools in the garden are old serrated bread knives he buys from flea markets, perfect for carving a mother bromeliad away from her pups. He tries to spend a couple of hours working with the vegetation each morning, while it's cool and calm.
Each year throws up different conditions. "This winter we had the worst frosts I've seen in 30 years - there was ice on every plant. But we haven't had the westerly winds we usually get - the leaves of my heliconia would usually be torn to shreds." Summers, though, are habitually dry; the rocky nature of the garden demands a lot of watering.
Brady bought the property in 1983 when the land was barren, except for the stucco mission-style house. Designed by architect William Henry Jaine, it was built in an affordable housing project as New Zealand eased out of the Depression. Brady had its white walls painted a rich salmon pink, which blends with the subtropical plantings.
He has another garden - on a Coromandel clifftop - that he also tends every couple of weeks.
Although he's had a few bouts of pneumonia in recent years, Brady reckons the gardens keep him alive. "It's great exercise, getting out there every day. I'm an early riser, so I garden in the mornings, have lunch, and then go to the pools." And in the late afternoons, he sits in the conservatory at the back of the house and surveys the fruit of 30 years' happy labour.
Ian Ferguson and Kevin Hunt's "Greenock" (Karaka)
Deep in cow paddocks, 30 minutes south of the city's CBD, Ian Ferguson and Kevin Hunt are building a legacy out of kauri and clay.
Ferguson, a qualified motor mechanic and former funeral director, is painstakingly restoring an 1850s two-storeyed colonial house on his family's farm in Karaka. Hunt - a qualified nurse, now leading a mental health team - is creating an acre of stunning cottage gardens around it.
"When we pop our clogs, I want to give this house to the community, as a museum," Ferguson says. "But I don't want it to be a white elephant." So Ferguson spends much of his day saving the historic kauri house, which was destined for the demolition yard until he scrambled through one of its windows on the original site in Herne Bay in 1992.
Neglected for 50 years, the house was transported to its new countryside home in four parts, to be slowly returned to its former glory.
He named it Greenock, after the coastal village in Scotland his ancestors left behind for New Zealand, with the very apt translation: "Basking in a sunny meadow".
Greenock's gardens have evolved with the house.Ferguson planted trees 15 years ago that now rival the "grand old girl" in height. Hunt moved in almost a decade ago. "I have left the garden to him," Ferguson says. "Kevin is very good at detailing. I'm still the chainsaw man."
"This is my sanity," says Hunt. "I've always loved gardens. When I first left school I started working in nurseries. To have an acre of garden now is just incredible. I'm not a good botanist, but I think I'm a good gardener."
Ferguson started the plantings with cuttings from friends. When the house was used as a set for horror movie Boogeyman for six months in 2004, the garden took a hammering. Hunt has since remedied that.
The trees - english oaks, maples, liquidambars and magnolias - are now under-planted with a mass of pretty perennials including poppies, daffodils, day lilies, irises, daisies and dahlias. The "children" - Ralph the dalmatian and Holly, the schnauzer-beardie-labrador cross - are banned from chasing tennis balls across the lawn and inevitably into the flower beds.
An orchard bears stone fruit, figs, avocado and citrus, and its owners are eagerly awaiting the first fruit from an unusual Japanese raisin tree. Leafy vegetables grow year-round in a potager on the north-facing lawn.
On the west side of the house, a large pond was dug out to hold 45,000 litres of water, a blanket of water-lilies and a high school of goldfish.
The soil in this former dairy cow paddock is an acidic light clay, in which the rhododendrons, azaleas and vivid blue hydrangeas flourish. More than 100 rose bushes are planted around the house, many of them old-fashioned roses grown from cuttings given by neighbours.
"The garden is maturing now, which makes things a little easier to manage," Ferguson says. And this year, for the first time, they've officially opened the garden to the public, happy to host small events and weddings.
Hunt works in the garden most evenings in spring and summer, and weekends. "It's amazing how much you can get done in a couple of hours. I've been known to still be out here after the sun's gone down." His plan is to eventually open a small nursery, nurturing plants from his garden to sell.
He tends to buy "$2 plants" - the small, undesirable plants that garden centres mark down - and nurse them back to full health. His secret to weeding is a traditional Japanese hand trowel with an angled blade, and a small, three-pronged fork.
Hunt's advice to gardeners starting out? "People tend to rush into gardens, planting huge trees which they cut down five years later. You need to think it through, see where the sun is at different times of the day, and where the winds come from. We've made mistakes, we're certainly not perfect," he says. "And a garden is an ever-changing thing."
Sean and Annie Jacob's "Beautiful Little Cave" (Mt Eden)
Speleologists thrill in it. Teenagers play guitars in it. Even 90-year-olds have ventured into its cavernous black mouth.
The hole at the bottom of Sean and Annie Jacob's Mt Eden garden must be seen to be believed. Very few gardens in New Zealand boast a lava cave, especially one that's almost as long as Eden Park's pitch and could host a small concert. So the Jacobs have gone to great lengths to preserve their unique garden feature.
The cave was formed 28,500 years ago, when the Three Kings volcano, Te Tatua a Riukiuta, erupted. Lava flowed 3km down a valley stream to Western Springs, creating tunnels that still snake beneath Mt Eden and beyond. Many of the tunnels have since collapsed; some leaving caves.
Seven years ago, the couple bought the neighbouring Landscape Rd property with the hole in the ground. "Not many people want a cave in their backyard, but we did," says Sean.
They cleared the 80m-long cavern of decades of rubbish, built wooden stairs and a handrail, and illuminated it. Speleologists - or cave scientists - from the University of Auckland often drop in: "They call it 'the beautiful little cave'," says Sean.
Ferns naturally grow in the entrance, cascading like a waterfall. But no greenery survives inside where it's bone dry and cool - 12C year-round. The rocky entrance above ground can heat up to 40C in midsummer.
"We love the idea of the cave being part of Auckland's heritage, and we want people to be able to enjoy it. We had a 93-year-old lady walk down into it last year," Annie says.
The original part of the 1150sq m L-shaped section has been a 20-year gardening project for the couple. Dominated by volcanic rock, the garden is hospitable only to plants with dry feet: "Perennials and annuals just wouldn't work here," Annie says.
The plants also have to stand up to the rigours of daily family life and the antics of their daughters, Lola and sports-mad Kitty, and dogs Olive and Queenie. "A garden with two dogs marauding through it will get smashed."
Yet canna lilies, hibiscus, miniature agapanthus and a variety of succulents and cordylines seem to weather the storm, and the aridity. Citrus trees fruit successfully along the back fence, away from flying soccer balls.
As much as the inimitable feature of this garden is below ground, there is plenty happening high above it. Massive palms ring the two-storeyed house - washingtonia, bangalow, kentia and queen among them. They are reminders of the early days when the Jacobs grew and sold palms at their front gate.
There's a flock of towering "giant birds of paradise", strelitzia nicolai, with dark blue beaks and banana palm leaves. The extension to the house was built around age-old pohutukawa trees that have clawed on to the scoria.
Behind a cabana they call the "Lava Lounge" is the vegetable garden, which last summer produced capsicums as large as 10-year-old Kitty's head.
With no formal training in gardening, the Jacobs have learned through trial and error over two decades what works best in their sub-tropical environment.
"We know what we like - different textures in leaves, and vireyas and dahlias give us colour," says Annie. "Seeing other people's gardens inspires us too." An old school friend, Chris Paterson, grows bromeliads in his Hillsborough garden, and gives them to the Jacobs to test-run in different corners of their garden. "We are casual gardeners, when funds and time allow," says Sean. But it's obvious they've spent hours of back-breaking work not only for their own enjoyment, but to share the garden and its grotto with others - Jacob's company, Lahood Window Furnishings, sponsors the annual Heroic Garden Festival, a fundraiser for Mercy Hospice that opens the gates of private Auckland gardens for thousands to admire.
