Rudman's city: Devonport presses olive plantings into service

By BRIAN RUDMAN

I've always thought the Indian bead trees that line my street earn their keep, particularly around Guy Fawkes Day. That's when the lovely mauve blossoms burst open, wafting their sweet tropical perfume through the evening air. But I have to admit that over on the Shore, they've found a way to make their trees work even harder.

There, the city council has begun lining streets with fruit trees. Now I know olives aren't everyone's first choice of fruit, but in alternative-lifestyle Devonport, where this experiment was launched, it was a smart pick. No sooner were the first fruit appearing than some locals were surfing the internet looking for brine pickling recipes, while others began planning the communal pressing of the olives to make oil.

I stumbled across this adventure in urban horticulture over Christmas when a member of my extended family with links in Devonport gave me a jar of small, but deliciously moreish, green olives.

The bottlers were a little cagey about exactly where they had harvested their fruit. Like good fishers, I guess they didn't want to reveal their lucky spot. It could also have been that they couldn't exactly remember. After all, one olive tree looks like the next when it's dark and you're in somebody else's street, atop a wobbly stool, juggling a plastic bucket and hoping no one will see what you are doing.

They need not have worried about being caught. Willy Coenradi, the parks manager behind the urban olive grove, is keen for people to help themselves. Very pragmatically, he says that otherwise there'll be a mushy mess left for the council cleaners.

Planting began about five years ago, the first lot on Old Lake Rd. It's a variety called Verdale, about the only one you could get then, he says. Why olives? Well, he had seen some big olives outside the Northcote Shopping Centre and wondered why they weren't used as a street tree. After all, they had a nice shape and attractive foliage, were hardy, low-maintenance, disease-resistant, liked coastal conditions and lived to an old age.

The first planting went so well that the council kept going. At present there are about 120 trees in Devonport and more than that again elsewhere in the city, including a large planting in Torbay. They haven't fared as well in the Bays, mainly due to vandalism, but back in Devonport, they continue to prosper.

However, olive enthusiast Marvin Hendrickson warns that compared with last April's bumper harvest - the first of any significance - this year's could be a non-event. A Devonport resident with an olive plantation in Mangawhai, he says that despite a good flowering both in Auckland and up north, fruit formation this summer has been bad. Apparently olives do that sort of thing.

It was he and wife Jennifer who attracted more than 30 people along to olive-oil appreciation evenings last year after noticing that the fruit was going to waste on the trees.

He also took a selection of oils - including some Devonport Green - along to a meeting of the community board and encouraged members to experience the local product.

Mr Hendrickson has also suggested that people pool their harvests to make up the minimum 20kg needed for a full pressing at a Mangawhai neighbour's press. He did two pressings of last April's crop but because of this year's poor fruiting, it could be that the next cooperative effort will have to wait another year.

Given the popularity of the olive experiment, you wonder why our streets aren't lined with a wide variety of fruit trees. But Mr Coenradi mentions a few difficulties. The squish of rotten fruit underfoot is an obvious drawback. So is the damage a large, falling fruit can do to a passing human head or car. He says that twice a year, city gardeners have to climb a giant avocado in Browns Bay and remove the unripe fruit - just in case.

Then there's plain lack of interest. Mr Coenradi recalls planting citrus in the streets of Otahuhu when he worked for the former borough council, and seeing the lemons rot on the trees.