This biography has been re-published in full with permission. Licensed by Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence. This biography, written by Julian Matthews, was first published in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography in 2000.
Born: 9 July 1917, New Zealand
Died: 10 July 1997
Country most active: New Zealand
Also known as: Barbara Silver
In 1934 Barbara Winifred Silver joined the Dominion as a cadet reporter. Born on 9 July 1917 in Lower Hutt, she was the daughter of Winifred Louisa Brailsford and her husband, Lewis Mair Silver, an electrical engineer. Barbara grew up in the Wellington suburb of Seatoun and attended Wellington East Girls’ College. Writing was an absorbing interest from early years and she was a regular contributor to the Dominion ’s children’s page. As a teenager she was a friend of the novelist Ruth Park. On leaving school she began work on the Dominion , where she soon became editor of the children’s page and was later editor of the women’s section.
Jim Matthews was divorced in March 1938, and on 29 July he and Barbara were married in Wellington; there were two sons of the marriage. In 1942 the couple left the Dominion to take up free-lance writing on gardening and horticulture. Jim soon started a weekly column, ‘Garden with Matthews’, which appeared for a while in the Dominion , but then in the Evening Post. The column was also syndicated for two decades to major daily newspapers in most of the main centres. Barbara helped write ‘Garden with Matthews’, and when Jim’s eyesight failed in the late 1960s she wrote the column under his by-line until February 1987.
In 1944 Jim launched the monthly magazine New Zealand Gardener , which was published by A. H. & A. W. Reed. Because there was a war-time shortage of newsprint, a special act of Parliament was passed to authorise the supplies needed for printing the magazine. Parliament was persuaded that such a publication was essential to the war effort as it would encourage more people to grow vegetables. Barbara helped with the editing and writing and promoted the magazine by talking to horticultural groups throughout the country. The New Zealand Gardener was run as a family business for more than 20 years. When it was sold to Wilson and Horton in 1968, Barbara continued to write articles and their son Julian later became editor.
As well as meeting the weekly and monthly deadlines for their column and magazine, Barbara and Jim Matthews published numerous books. Jim’s titles included Soil fertility (1943), Garden treasures (1947) and Matthews on gardening (1960), and together they wrote The New Zealand garden dictionary , which appeared in seven editions between 1941 and 1968 and sold 50,000 copies. Barbara wrote Gardens of New Zealand with Conon Fraser (1975), Growing native plants (1979), and An illustrated garden dictionary with her son Lewis (1979).
The couple always worked from home, writing, editing, and gardening, at first in Stokes Valley, then in Paraparaumu, and finally in Waikanae from 1953. Breeding plants was a particular interest and they also supplied flowers to Wellington florists for many years. In 1964 they were made joint associates of honour of the Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture.
Barbara was a keen photographer of plants, landscapes and people; her work appeared in horticultural books and magazines, in the New Zealand’s Nature Heritage series and in local newspapers, where her subjects ranged from choir boys to garden scenes. In 1970 she led the first New Zealand garden tour to Britain.
Jim Matthews died at Kenepuru Hospital, Porirua, on 26 March 1982. After his death Barbara continued gardening and, for a time, writing. She died at Titahi Bay on 10 July 1997. As writers and passionate gardeners, Jim and Barbara Matthews had informed and inspired countless New Zealand gardeners.