Backyard garden oasis earns high praise
Watson's plantings include Acer palmatum varieties and cultivars, kalmias and other unusual trees and plants.
It features covered walkways, gazebos, arched red bridges, lanterns and stone towers.
And now Alan has been named as a 2025 Fellow of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture.
The 73-year-old said it was a surprising and emotional accolade.
"I never expected it. You don't expect it," Alan said.
"I'm pretty honoured and humbled to be rewarded for your lifetime efforts, it's really special."
Alan has become one of just a handful of Ashburtonians to earn the title.
Those before him include Alan Trott, Ian Soper and Dave Askin.
"When I got it, I was pretty upset," Alan said.
"You just don't expect it, do you?"
During his career, Alan has volunteered at Trott's Garden, a New Zealand Garden of International Acclaim, and led trips to Mt Hutt to photograph and study alpine plants.
He helped renowned landscape gardener David Hobbs with the initial tree planting and totara hedging for the development of Broadfield Garden, near Christchurch, which is now a six-star Garden of International Significance.
In 2002, after moving to Allenton, Alan established his own garden in his spare time.
"I grassed the section down because I was working, and then I just started in the corner and did a bit as time allowed it.
"I might do a bit one year, do a bit the next year, nothing the next year, just expanded it out over time."
His garden featured last year in NZ Life & Leisure magazine.
Alan said his backyard plantings included a mixture of maples, choice trees and shrubs.
Choice trees were hard to come by or hard to source.
His favourite was a Sciadopitys verticillata or Japanese umbrella pine, which grew next to the walkway viewed from his living room.
"I wanted a theme of some sort … and chose the Asian theme because I could incorporate maples that I like and spend time doing structures, building."
Alan said a builder made the basic tea house and walkway structures at the rear of the 1040sq m section and, over the years, he had embellished them.
He said he has completed his backyard project, as there is no more room to expand on.
Plantings include a 4m tall maple tree, golden weeping willow, Chilean bell flowers or Lapageria rosea , dwarf conifers, Japanese splurge or Pachysandra terminalis ground cover and varieties of Calico bush or Kalmia latifolia in pinks, reds through to whites.
"They're hard to grow but pretty choice. Well-worth persevering with, if you can get them to grow here."
They gave a colourful display in full bloom.
Over the years, Alan has hosted a variety of groups at his garden in spring and summer. They were welcomed by arrangement, he said.
He said his nomination for a fellowship with the institute was made by his long-time friend Alan Jolliffe of Christchurch, the current institute president.
It is the latest highlight in a career that started after Alan was inspired as a youth during the Christmas holidays.
"I went to Nelson in the school holidays picking raspberries, and I wandered through the forests up there and just liked the trees - outdoors and the trees.
"I thought I would get a job in Ashburton doing something (along those lines) and got a job, an apprenticeship with Allenton Nurseries."
Alan began his apprenticeship and joined the RNZIH in December 1970.
He completed his trade certificate in 1973 and continued studying towards the RNZIH National Diploma in Horticulture.
He has worked at Allenton Nurseries, Duncan and Davies Nursery, and Millichamps Nursery to gain experience in a range of horticultural and production techniques.
Alan established his own nursery in 1978 on a property in Ashburton, specialising in garden shrubs and dwarf conifers.
He also undertook tree pruning, lawn laying, contract tree planting and other gardening work, such as travelling around Mid Canterbury giving pruning demonstrations.
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