When our bowl of supermarket blueberries ran out this morning it was satisfying to be able to pick more from the garden. I don’t think I’m imagining that these home-grown berries are tastier than the others. I am not an over-gardener, if there is such an expression, more laissez-faire. There is no spray used or fertilisers apart from my own compost or, in the case of the berries, bark and pine needles for mulch. Perhaps the natural approach makes a difference to the taste – or is it the freshness?

On Sunday, I harvested almost 800g of blueberries and black currants which was more than enough for two shortcakes. There are still more berries to be picked, and the raspberries are beginning to appear. Mostly, we just graze on those, like bears in the woods!

There’s something quite feral about eating from your own gardening. Picking berries seems very hunter-gatherer. The garden itself is quite wild and I resist keeping it too tidy. Mowing the grass/clover/various weeds which masquerade as a lawn, tying back plants so you can walk up the path, and dead-heading is about as good as it gets. Having said that, there are weeds I target: convolvulus and oxalis among them. I watch out for acanthus spreading too much.

Violas have chosen that high spot, somehow. The runner beans have come up by themselves. I read somewhere that if you leave them they will die back and come up again each year. The runner beans in the foreground are growing up one bamboo stake and one gone-to-seed silver beet plant. The broad beans were a disappointment – just a few pods (but they were delicious). Perhaps the trees (self-sown pseudopanax, ake ake and cordylines) shade them too much. Speaking of trees, there’s a volunteer “forest” of kowhai at the front of the house, and pittosporum comes up regularly. Perhaps original forest is regenerating.

I love the way violas pop up everywhere, particularly between paving stones. A friend gave me a geum, and it has spread to a number of places, notably the path where it leans delightfully across the lawn (sorry, grass). Sweet William, Mediterranean daisies, aquilegia and fox gloves pop up in various places and, of course, there’s feverfew, which I tend to refer to as “feverseveral”. These free-range plants provide interest and happiness – so important when you don’t have a view otherwise.

Plants come in waves over spring and summer. The forget-me-nots have been replaced by feverfew. Here it is looking quite fetching with hydrangeas and a carpet rose which I won in a raffle at work and put into a rare spare space. I can’t claim to have had much of a hand in all this.

Obviously, I plant most vegetables, but what happens next is beyond my control it seems – but I am on to pinching off the laterals on the tomatoes.

The kale has sweet peas scrambling over it which came up by themselves from last year’s crop and are all pink. The stakes are for the sweet peas I did plant this season, but that area has been taken over by feverfew and borage, so the sweet peas are growing up those plants rather than the stakes.

Sometimes I almost feel like tearing my hair out about it all, but lately I’ve been more relaxed. I read about a book called Wilding by Isabella Tree in a magazine called The Simple Things. The author has let her whole farm grow as it likes, with amazing results: regenerating plants and rare wildlife. I enjoy watching the finches which come in little flocks to feed on the borage seeds. One good thing about not having a cat or dog anymore is the increased birdlife in the garden. They make a fruitful garden a lovely place to be.

When I go walking I like to look at people’s gardens. It’s sad to see fewer and fewer trees and those rather monotonous easy-care “gardens”. Due to my ‘Wilding’ reading, I look more kindly on neglected gardens. There will be a whole ecosystem in there. Occasionally, there’s a charming garden with a little cottage peeping through the flowers and trees. A high-point of my walk is a new house with beautiful landscaping on a stream boundary. It has the original trees from the previous house and huge square steps rising up through bright green mounds of native moss.

This grapevine in my garden has the most rapid growth of all. It’s advancing across the garden shed at one end and all amongst the trees at the other. I do cut this back, having learnt that the grapes need to be in the sun. There are always far more grapes than we can eat or give away.

This apple tree is showing signs of another great crop. We use most of the apples, but happily share them with the birds as well.

Flowers become tamed in the domestic setting.

The yellow roses fell apart after a few days, but there were more ready to pick this morning.

Finally, the last of the cherries. Most of the crop was eaten by happy birds.

So wild or tamed? A balance of both, I think, as I put on my red-band gumboots and disappear into the overgrowth with the grubber.