Our story.

It all started with a trip to Auckland to help a friend shift house.

Andrew Bowman was driving through the eastern suburbs. He began noticing how houses were surrounded by a higgledy-piggledy mishmash of wooden and tin fences, walls, beautiful hedges and some hedge wannabes. The houses with beautiful hedges looked like homes, a relaxing and peaceful retreat from the outside hubbub of suburbia. The houses with wooden fences appeared cold, hard and to be honest, uninviting and unappealing.

Andrew’s epiphany: what if people could have ready-made mature hedges, without much fuss, and without waiting years for them to grow? Houses could become homes, gardens would become havens, and all would be right with the world! Thus, the Living Walls instant hedges seed was sown (so to speak).

Andrew gained a Bachelor of Horticulture from Massey University in the 1980s. His career has spanned the fields of engineering, garden retailing, landscape contracting, and for the last 25+ years, growing. With this extensive nursery, landscaping and engineering experience to call upon and his passion for hedges, Andrew developed his ideas. In his well-equipped (and often envied) shed, he came up with the overall system to create the award-winning instant hedging product: Living Walls™ – Hedges in a hurry. 

It takes a village. Andrew and his wife Lisa, who has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Auckland, own and operate Twining Valley Nurseries in the magnificent Mangatāwhiri Valley, just south of Auckland, New Zealand. Along the way, they have enjoyed the support of the extended Bowman family – Wayne, Jenny, James, Jamie and Sophie, and a team of passionate hedge growers at Twining Valley Nurseries.