Irises and Archives

2012-01-27T19:48:00.000+13:00

In my newly replanted perennial garden a funny thing has happened. Some of you might remember me writing this last year when I was writing about removing a lot of plants from this garden: “Another clump to go was a big patch of Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, a plant that I have failed with - incredibly enough bearing in mind it is simply an improved Montbretia, one of the weediest of the South African bulbs. The catalogue assured me it had wonderful foliage and ‘amazing heads of flame-red blooms’ but it has never flourished with us, perhaps being too crowded, but the flowers seem to fall to botrytis and the foliage gets very diseased looking, so out it came.”

Turns out I did not get rid of it all, and also that the clean out must have allowed better air circulation around it as it has been stunning this season, the foliage being nice and clean and the flowers, which are opening now, showing no sign of any disease. It looks just superb, although slightly at odds with the rest of the garden, as I planted a lot of light pink and blue flowers around it.

Other funny things have been happening too – lots and lots of white Gladiolus flowers have been appearing. It is one of the prime tenets of garden writing that Gladiolus most emphatically do not revert to white, despite many gardeners thinking they do. Well, I have to say I have never planted any white Gladiolus in this (or any other) garden, so they are either reversions from other varieties, or they are very vigorous seedlings. The stems on the (non-reverted) Gladiolus are most impressive – they reach up to two metres and when the flowers at the tip open, there is a little branch of new flowers appearing at the base of the stem as a little bonus.

It may be that strictly speaking these have not reverted to white, but they could have been seedlings from a non-white plant. Either way, I have a patch of white Gladiolus where I once had coloured varieties.

Tigers for the summer

2012-01-27T19:45:00.001+13:00

Mid to late summer can be a tricky time in the flower garden, with many perennials having had their main burst of flowering and now concentrating on growing a little to store some more fat to ensure a good flowering next season. Thank God for those long term flowering plants like Dahlias and day lilies that seem to just keep on giving more months on end, and of course, for those annuals that have prolonged flowering periods.

Fortunately there are also some that flower at this time of the year, including a few very attractive bulbs with spectacular flowers. I have a great love of the exuberant Central and South American show offs, the Jockeys Caps, or Tigridias to give them their proper name. These are members of the vast Iris family (immediately noticeable by their arrangement for floral parts in threes) and are mainly forms of the one species, T. pavonia, although there are other species in cultivation, sometimes to be found on the lists of bulb specialists. I have grown a number of these rarer species, but they are quite tender and it is difficult to over winter the bulbs. They rot in the soil and are attacked by aphids if stored dry.

The hardier garden hybrids are a different kettle of fish. As long as they are grown in well drained soil and in a sunny aspect, they will thrive in Wairarapa conditions and multiply nicely, without ever getting to be a nuisance. The most commonly grown form is probably the bright red form, although a quick look around plant catalogues shows the pink form is the one most offered. I like the red form, as it is a bright cherry red unseen in any true irises, but I think my favourite colour is probably yellow.

You would think that with a name like Tigridia, these bulbs would have been named after tigers, and would accordingly have striped flowers. Not so – they are solid coloured across the main part of the petals, but the central area of each flower is spotted and splotched with a co0ntrasting colour, usually deep red. In the red flowered forms the central portion is yellow based, with red /maroon spots. The most spectacularly different form I have grown is the species T. duranguense, a Mexican species with mauve flowers that are prominently mottled all over the flower. There are many other species, mostly unavailable in New Zealand, to tempt the keen bulb collector.

These cheery flowers only last a day each, but they are carried in a long succession, with flowering lasting for over a month usually. I find it pays to grow the different colours in different parts of the garden as the plants set seed very easily, and the red strain seems to swamp the other colours. Tigridias are very easily raised from seed, and a range of colours would soon give rise to some interesting forms for the person interested in starting out plant breeding, as they flower from seed within two years.

There might be another reason for growing these plants – they are apparently delicious to eat! Luther Burbank, the great American plant fiddler and creator of the Burbank plum, the Plumcot and the Shasta Daisy, discovered that these lovely bulbs were edible. He said: “When cooked like potatoes, or made into a stew, they constitute a really delicious vegetable. To my taste the bulb of the tiger plant is at least the equal of any vegetable under cultivation. It is also highly nutritious. I am not sure that it has an equal among the vegetables of our gardens in its combination of nutritiousness and appetising flavour.

Penstemons

2012-01-08T20:49:00.000+13:00

The stars of the Christmas bouquet this year were the stems of luscious Penstemons, which I have scattered in various beds around the back yard, and with which I am totally enamoured. They are largely North American plants, and for our gardening purposes split into two different groups. There are a number of more or less dwarf species which are very valuable for edging a border, or for an old fashioned rock garden.

However, the more commonly found forms are the border perennials that are sometimes called the “queens of the summer border” much loved for the prolonged flowering season and their hardy reliability. They are very easy plants, at home in any soil as long as it is not too damp, and will thrive during the hotter summer months. Many species are to be found in arid areas of North America, and Americans tend to think of them as wild flowers, which perhaps explains why the hybrids are more popular in Europe than they are in their own country.

One of the reasons I like these guys is that you can easily bulk them up yourself – they are very easily grown from autumn cuttings, grown under cover over winter and planted out in spring. That allows you to be generous with the planting size you can go for, and believe me, a bed of ten or more of one variety looks absolutely stunning.

There are many, many varieties on the market, and I am not sure that they are all correctly named. I have some catalogues where the owners are proudly stating they have the “true” form of a named variety, alongside that of other nurseries, where the same claim is made, and the plants are quite different. It might be that the best thing is to see them in flower in your local garden centre and decide on that basis.

‘Blackbird’ is one variety there is some discussion about. As I understand it, this has relatively small deep maroon flowers, held delicately on dark stems, making it a great cut flower. It grows to just over a metre high, and will spread almost that wide after a few years. But there is another ‘Blackbird’ being sold in New Zealand, and the “true” form, with flowers that are nearly as deep but are much fatter and are borne on a plant that is much stumpier in growth.

Another with slightly wiry stems is the glorious ‘Drinkstone’ which has rich reddish-pink bells drooping gently with large stems filled with colour. When at its best, the large stems are covered with flower making this a great variety for picking.

One of the older varieties which have stood the test of time is the subtly coloured ‘Hidcote Pink’, named after the lovely English garden. It has medium sized flowers, pink with dark pink veins in the throat. It clothes its stems well with bloom and is a hardy reliable doer in the garden.

If you were picking a few Penstemon to grow with an eye for picking for the house you would make sure you had ‘Snow Storm’. It has pure white bells in heavy panicles on strong stems and is a fabulous addition to the border and is probably one of the best white flowering perennials for summer. It is medium seized at about 80 cm, and has a bushy growth habit.

If showy plants are more you style, and you are a fan of falsetto singing or disco music you will not be able to resist ‘Maurice Gibbs’, with his cerise pink to red flowers with a bright white throat. On the other hand, if you are feeling more sombre and sober you might want to go for the darkest Penstemon you can find. In that case you will be looking out for ‘Raven’. As well as being one the darkest of all the varieties, it is also one of the showiest, with dusky, purple flowers that flare just enough to let you see a white striping on the throat. It is not one of the huskiest growing of the Penstemon, but it is surely one of the prettiest.

Leeks

2012-01-02T20:43:00.001+13:00

The start of a new year is a good time to replenish the vegetable garden, although to most of us the thought of too much strenuous work in the days after Christmas is rather daunting. This season, weather broke a few days after Christmas though, and those who had made the effort to replant were repaid with a few days’ showers to help water the new plants in.

I was not so well organised. My gardening over the break consisted of harvesting various components of our festive fare, and helping my son and his partner exert a modicum of control over the wilderness that comprises their Wellington garden.

Still, the New Year’s weather might have dampened down enthusiasm for midnight frolics but it certainly left the garden spoil in great condition, and I was keen to get some leeks planted for the winter harvest. I had some free ground from the small area where we had grown a token crop of Christmas potatoes, and although it is not really ideal soil for growing leeks, I managed to turn it over and went out seeking some leek plants.

I am usually keen to buy some, nice punnet-grown plants for the garden, but I think members of the broad onion family do better if planted from open-ground grown seedlings, so instead of popping along to my garden centre I shuffled into the supermarket and got a bundle of field grown leeks –they were bigger and huskier than anything I have ever seen grown in a punnet.

The first step in growing leeks is to carefully choose where to plant them. They are not overly fussy about soil types but they do best on light soil that had been well manured for a previous crop, probably best a green leaved crop such as lettuce or cabbage. They are best not grown in a patch that has previously grown a crop of new potatoes, as the soil will be too loose and friable – leeks do far better on quite firm soil – so I made sure I trampled over the soil to firm it up before I planted out.

If you like long white stems on your leeks you are probably going to have to try a trick or two at planting time. Using a thick dibber or trowel, make some holes about 15 cm deep and about 20cm apart, making sure the holes are vertical. You then need to move the dibber or trowel from side to side so that the holes are slightly larger at the top and about 5 cm wide.

To prepare the plants, trim the roots until they are 2.5 cm long and also cut the tips off the leaves. The leeks should now be gently dropped into the holes, filling the holes with water. The water will wash enough soil over the base of the plant to allow it to become established. When you are cultivating the soil around the plants later you will slowly fill the holes up.

You will need to keep a close eye on the young plants once they are placed out as they need to be kept well watered for the first few weeks. Once they have settled in you could give a side dressing of general fertiliser, or perhaps a weak liquid fertiliser. You well need to keep the weeds down, of course, and keep the soil well aerated to allow any natural water to seep in, plus to make better use of the irrigation you apply.

Once the plants are growing well you can start to build up soils around the base of the plants, aiding the blanching that will return a larger proportion of the vegetable as the sweet and subtle flavoured part of the leek, rather than the coarser and stronger green portion.

When you harvest them is up to your taste. I am rather partial to baby leeks (I have a great recipe for fish fillet, herbs and baby leek casserole) so I pick some when they are still quite young. I will let some grow larger but I think they are probably best when about 3cm through, perhaps a little more. I am certainly no fan of those monsters you sometimes see at the vegetable shows, with stems about the thickness of a pick handle!

Poinsettias

2011-12-26T17:46:00.000+13:00

It was an interesting Christmas this year – the raspberries were a little bit behind and we did not have very many for Christmas dinner, although the young visitors still managed to find a basin each for themselves! The Christmas lilies managed to splutter open on Boxing Day – about a week later than normal, meaning we missed what is an important element of Christmas for the Head Gardener’s family.

Still, the other important components were there – freshly dug potatoes, oodles of chocolate and champagne, and most of the family members needed to make it a great day.

One of those was the Head Gardener’s brother and his wife – they work and live in Switzerland and had been looking forward to a warm Christmas so they flew in on Christmas Eve. He has a management job with an international seed and agricultural products company. When we had a chance to have a chat about business he casually let drop the information that his company is one of the world’s major suppliers of Poinsettias.

Poinsettias are a common Christmas gift, their bright red leaves (not really leaves but we will come to that soon) seemingly heralding the festive season. The traditional explanation is that shortly after the Spaniards colonised Mexico a small girl gathered flowers from the countryside to decorate the altar to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, and the tradition quickly spread.

These members of the Euphorbia family usually colour up in the middle of winter, thus they are a natural for celebrating the season in the northern hemisphere, but they have to be tricked into performing in this country. The coloured bracts (which surround the true flowers) are produced in reaction to diminished light levels, so clever pot plant growers manipulate the light levels in their glasshouses to produce them for this time of the year.

If you were lucky enough to have one for Christmas and you would like to prolong the flowering season there are a few simple things to remember. Firstly, they need to have a good amount of light but it is important to keep them out of direct sunlight. It is probably best to keep them in a warm and well-lit room, near a sunny window. Make sure you keep them away from cool breezes, as they can be sensitive to the cold.

It is important to get the watering down properly, as Poinsettias like to be kept damp but resent being kept over wet. To check (until you can tell just by looking) put your finger in the mix and if it comes back damp then the plant does not need watering. On the other hand, if your finger is dry you should water the soil until the water runs freely from the bottom of the pot. IT is important that the plant never sits in water though, so sit your heavily watered pot in the sink until the water stops coming out the bottom, then place it back on its saucer.

There is no fixed regime for watering, and you will need to check every couple of days to see whether your plant needs any extra liquids. One thing you will not have to worry about is feeding the plant – it will have had all the nutriment it needs supplied when it was planted in potting mix.

Christmas trees

2011-12-18T16:31:00.002+13:00

As well as being the season of goodwill to all men (and to all women, children and small furry pets) this is also the time for decorating Christmas trees, and for hunting out logical alternative “Christmas trees for our seasonally challenged Christmas.

The traditional tree is an evergreen, usually a conifer of some kind. In New Zealand that has generally been the ubiquitous Pinus radiata, usually harvested from a low hanging branch or flogged from the side of a desolate country road. In the northern hemisphere it is more likely to be a spruce or a fir tree, both of which grow more tightly than our pines.

Of course, the point of the evergreen tree for the northerners was to celebrate the potential return of the new growing season. In the depths of winter there were few trees that remained clothed with foliage, and plants that did were given extra value – the holly and the ivy being two obvious examples.

In southern climes we have adapted to decorate our own native trees. Most Kiwis will be very familiar with the idea of using a pohutukawa for their Christmas tree, but for most of us in Wairarapa that is impractical.

I say most of us, because in some favoured sites in our district it is possible to grow and flower a pohutukawa, and not just at the coast either. Obviously they do best near the sea, and many of our beach settlements feature pohutukawa that flower for the summer holidays. There are some nice trees in sheltered places in Lansdowne too – one of my favourites is near the top of Titoki Street – but for most of us in frost prone areas pohutukawas are probably on the wish list.

There are some strategies to have a living native Christmas tree that might work though. Firstly, pohutukawa love being kept dry and will grow well in straightened circumstances (see the cracks they grow in when in the wild) so they will do well in pots. That will not work with seed raised plants as they take a long time to mature, but cutting grown forms should be perfectly able to cope with being container grown, and some forms at least should flower.

The best known is probably ‘Tahiti’, the Pacific Island relative of our native tree, with silvery foliage and orangey red flowers that flourishes in a warm spot on the patio and will relish being grown in a pot. It is smaller growing than the New Zealand forms, but if you want to try an indigenous one you could try some of the cutting grown native types such as ‘Fire Mountain’ and ‘Parnell’, both red flowered, and ‘Pink Lady’. If you like softer colours go for ‘Moon Maiden’, which has soft yellow flowers.

‘Mistral’ should be slightly hardier as it is a hybrid between a pohutukawa and its close cousin the rata and is slightly hardier when established but still needs cosseting until it has grown up through the frost zone in our climate.

The Australians have their own native Christmas tree, the New South Wales native Ceratopetalum gummiferum, so called because of its wonderful display at this time of the year. Oddly enough, it is not a floral display in the strict sense of the word, as the flowers are borne earlier in the season, usually a couple of months before, and they are white. After the flowers have matured the bracts surrounding the flowers start to colour, deepening from soft pink through salmon until they end up bright red at this time and a little later.

This small tree is slightly tender in our climate but it makes a wonderful specimen tree, as is evidenced by the mature specimen in Essex Street. I try to make a point of getting around to seeing it each summer as it is so attractive.

I have read that there is a form for sale in Australia with white bracts, called ‘White Christmas’ of course, but I have not seen it in New Zealand.

Dry land plants

2011-11-27T19:52:00.000+13:00

Our summer seems to have arrived, heralded with a late outbreak of spring gales, with north westerly winds blasting down off the Tararuas, and the temperature steadily climbing. As the months turn over, and November gives way to December we are once again faced with the need to work out a method to cope with the upcoming dry months, when our available water supply is rationed.

This past week has been illustrative of the need for water – the combination of winds and a lack of heavy rain (although we actually had some rain) means the lawns have stopped growing with the desperate passion they have been hitherto showing.

It is hard to tell what the weather will do for this summer but I note that NIWA are saying we can expect normal or slightly more than normal rain in the period December 2011 – February 2012. However, they also go on to say that soil conditions are river levels are likely to be lower than normal because both are starting our at lower than usual for this time of the year.

In a way it makes little difference, as the Wairarapa district councils are all under pressure to keep their water usage low as they do not have the ability to take endless amounts of water from local rivers. Under these conditions all gardeners need to be a bit water smart over the coming few months. Fortunately there are a lot of things we can do to help reduce demand on our precious water supplies.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to choose plants that are appropriate to our conditions. The fact is we live in dry areas, and should not try to grow wet climate plants unless we can provide some natural supplies of water.

At this time of the year I love the way Mediterranean plants come into their own. Lavenders are perfect hot and dry climate plants, with their fresh grey/green leaves and wonderful range of coloured flowers. They work well in formal gardens, but are equally at home in naturalistic plants. Among the other great dry climate shrubs are rock roses, Cistus and their cousins, the Helianthemums. These plants, with their silvery leaves and tough textures, will thrive in the heat of summer, and will always look tidy. For native lovers, most Hebes will do well in similar conditions, including many silver leaved forms. Some of the coastal Coprosmas, and most grasses will also thrive as will the Wairarapa native shrubs, Brachyglottis greyii and B. compacta, with silver leaves and golden flowers.

In the garden we can extend the range a little more with some other heat-loving shrubs especially the Australian and South African shrubs that thrive in our climate. Proteas, Leucodrendrons, Regal pelargoniums, Grevillias, and many others, will all do well and will easily cope with the summer dry.

Extra colour can be added by other dry loving bulbs, perennials and annuals, as well as a good dose of the very fashionable succulents, such as Aloes and Agaves. You could also try the new variegated Beschoneria yuccoides that I saw recently in a local garden centre.

Manuka trees

2011-11-06T21:02:00.002+13:00

My newly established perennial garden in the back area of our section is all abuzz, and it is not from the range of new and special perennial plants, although it is exciting to see the first of the flowering for the first time. No, the garden is buzzing with the hundreds of bees making a beeline for the bright red flowers on the tall specimen of the bright red manuka, Leptsospermum ‘Electric Red’ that is at its peak right now.

I do not know whether this is one of the forms of manuka with the special health giving attributes that are passed on through the honey, but if it is there out to be some very healthy and happy honey eaters in the vicinity, as there bees fly in and out of there like it is Los Angeles airport on a busy day.

Manuka is so ubiquitous on the dry and hungry lands of New Zealand, and thrives so well on recently disturbed soil, that it will come as a surprise to most New Zealanders to learn that this species actually arose in Australia where it has many relatives living, and is a relatively recent arrival in our country, having made its way across the Tasman as seed. When New Zealand was well forested it was an uncommon plant, but following Polynesian discovery of Aotearoa, and the subsequent fires and open ground, it managed to make a strong foothold.

It appears in many forms in the wild. On exposed coasts it assumes an almost prostrate growth form, while dwarf growing forms are also recorded from very exposed and nutriment poor locations. Wairarapa gardeners (and farmers) will be well acquainted with the usual form of the species in our district, a compact medium sized shrub with masses of white flowers. In the north there are populations with pink-flushed flowers – I recall a fabulous morning exploring the vegetation at the head of the Hokianga Harbour, where low growing pink flowered forms abound – while forms with pure red flowers have been found in the wild, and a range of hybrids has been bred for the home garden.

I think the bright red ones are the most popular, including the ‘Electric Red’ form I have in the garden, which is apparently a hybrid with an Australian species, but looks very much like the old favourite ‘Red Ensign’, with pure red single flowers. I was always a fan of the double flowered ‘Red Damask’, which had masses of frilly double flowers from late winter right through into summer. ‘Red Falls’, which has single red flowers, does not fall quite as much as the name might lead you to think – it does have some branches that scoot along the ground, but others will gently arch upwards as high as a metre. It works very well if planted on top of a bank and also makes a very effective weeping standard.

There is a pink coloured form called ‘Pink Cascade’ , offered somewhat mischievously by some nurseries as a native (including at least two well-known “native” nurseries) when it is in fact a hybrid between two different Australian species. If you are interested in growing a pink flowering shrub with a prostrate habit, and are not concerned about it not being a native, then this would be a good choice. It is tolerant of a range of soils but performs best in moist, well drained soils in full sun or light shade.

In the garden this weekend

2011-10-30T20:15:00.000+13:00

This weekend felt like it might have been the first of the summer-like days – mild temperatures, light breezes and no rain for the first time in ages. I spent most of it in the garden, doing a wide variety of chores. Primary among those was working among my Pacific Coast Iris seedlings, recording the blooms as they opened, selecting those that will live to see another day and removing those destined for the compost heap, and making new crosses. Each year I plant about 300 seedlings and about ten will make it through to flower the second time, so it is a slightly upsetting process, but one that most be carried out – we already have far too many irises around here and if I did not cull out rigorously we would have tens of thousands.

I did manage to get a bit of time in the vegetable garden too, getting my tomatoes in the ground. I know many of you will have put yours in last weekend, but I like to let the ground warm up a little more before I plant mine out. I bought some advanced grade F1 hybrids a week or two back and grew them on in the glasshouse to make them even bigger – it is the early crop that makes the difference when growing tomatoes at home.

I had prepared the soil well by digging in some extra compost and also boosting the soil with fertiliser. I placed the stakes in the ground before planting, and then dug some holes a little bigger than the bags the plants were growing in. This allowed me to plant each tomato slightly deeper than it had been in the bag – the theory is that tomatoes planted slightly too deep will form roots from the exposed stem. If you chose to do this, remember not to plant deeper that the first leaves.

I also bought some basil plants when I got the tomatoes, but these will stay in the glasshouse for a few weeks yet, as basil needs the soil to be even warmer than tomatoes before it will establish well. I usually grow a few plants of the normal sweet basil, but I prefer the more interesting flavour of the spicy globe variety. This has smaller leaves – it makes a neat little bush and could be used as an edging if you were looking for one for the vegetable plot over summer. If you prefer more pungent types you should probably go for Thai basil, which is commonly used in Asian cuisine and has a star anise overtone. There is also a nice lemon scented variety which has a strong citrus fragrance.

All basils prefer moist conditions in as warm a spot as you can provide. If you want to see basil growing very fast and with succulent leaves try popping a few in a tunnel house or in the glasshouse. It grows like a weed, but retains that wonderful pungent flavour. In the garden, a warm spot with lots of water and lots of food will suit them well – I grown them among the tomatoes, where they get a bit of shade at the height of the day. Later in the season they can look a bit tatty, so I just cut them back (use the leaves for a pesto that you can keep) and give some extra fertiliser, and the plants soon bounce away again.

If you are new to gardening and have constructed a box-like structure for growing your vegetables, you can probably plant your basil straight away. These elevated gardens will warm up a lot quicker than garden soil, and will be ready for planting a week or two earlier than most open gardens. You should already have good crops of lettuces and other summer salad greens underway. Don’t forget to try one or two other leaves for your salad greens – young beet leaves are tender and luscious, and mizuna and rocket leaves provide a lovely sharper taste.

I nearly got the blues!

2011-10-24T21:05:00.000+13:00

Last week I wrote about an All Black garden – and for a while this weekend I thought I was going to have to describe a garden full of the blues – “Les Blues” certainly had this gardener’s heart in his mouth for far too many minutes on Sunday evening!

Actually, a blue garden would not be a bad thing, but there are blues and blues, so you would need to be careful about which ones you mixed in, keeping the pink blues away from the true blues. When the Head Gardener and I first established our combined garden last century we fairly quickly came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea if we had our own separate parts of the garden. I had lived on my own for a while, and had discovered a passion for gardening and wanted a different sort of garden to her. One of her first gardens was a blue and yellow creation.

I was thinking about that the other day, when my neighbour popped her head through the hedge that divides our gardens, grasping a flower in her hand, asking what it was. She thought it might be a member of the bluebell family, but it looked unlike most bluebells she had seen.

She was right – it is a bluebell, one with one of the funniest botanical mix ups you can imagine. When Carl Linnaeus, the man who invented the binomial system of botanical naming, was first shown this bluebell, he asked where it had come from. He was told it had come from Spanish ship called the Peru, so he called it Scilla peruviana, and for the next 350 years people have assumed it comes from South America. It is actually a wild plant of Spain and Portugal, glorying under the “official” common name of Portuguese Squill, although it is also called the Hyacinth of Peru, Peruvian Scilla, or Cuban Lily.

It is a clump forming bulb which tries to retain some leaves over winter, and in the spring slowly pushed up strong racemes of purple blue flowers in late spring. It is very hardy and is a great plant for the front of the border. It can also be naturalised but it is not easily come by in the trade so you might need to look around for it.

I saw masses of it last week, as I wandered around Napier’s hillside cemetery one warm evening. As well as the more common blue form there were also some clumps of the white form, which probably stood out as bit better in the evening light.

2011-10-16T20:47:00.000+13:00

It must be because it is spring, and because of the heroic exploits of a certain rugby football team, but I have been thinking about an all black garden again. You might recall that I planted one a few years ago, but became disenchanted with it and removed it. I would not want to plant a garden with only black foliaged plants again, because it looks very flat and is not very appealing.

But I do think very dark coloured flowers have a place in the summer garden, as they provide a good contrast to the happier and brighter colours we associate with the hot season, and they often proved a textural contrast as well, as many of them have velvety flowers.

A couple of weeks ago I saw for the first time, the black petunia that everyone has been talking about, and I was impressed with its “blackness”. Often colour break are nowhere near as good as they are trumpeted to be – think “blue” roses and “red’ irises for example, but in this case, ‘Black Velvet’ lives up to its name. It is black, and it is velvety.

It was bred by flower breeder Jianping Ren for the Ball Colegrave Company, using old fashioned hand pollination and selection – no genetic modification here. She has come up with a stunning addition to the range of plants available for summer colour, and I am already thinking about how I might use it in my garden.

I have a new perennial border with lots of space in it – the plants were only planted a couple of months ago and I had always intended to plant a lot of annuals in the bed this year. I am wondering whether light green flowers might go well with deep velvety colour – perhaps the cool lime green Nicotiana variety called –wait for it – ‘Lime Green’. This is a cousin of the petunia, from the same part of the world, and likes similar conditions so it should do well alongside ‘Black Velvet’. They have similar shaped flowers though, so it might be better to introduce a bit of contrast, and maybe go for the chartreuse green of Zinnia ‘Envy’. This has semi-double dahlia-shaped flowers and will look spectacular alongside the petunia, or even better, behind it, as it grows a little taller.

Of course, I could go for the opposite effect, and try and plant some white flowers alongside the petunia. It is not a very subtle idea, but then who said I was subtle? I was thinking I might put some of a new Arenaria montana ‘Avalanche’ in the front of the bed. This is a new and improved form of a cousin to the garden pinks. It grows flat along the ground and in spring and early summer has an – dare I say it? – avalanche of starry white flowers spilling over the ground. It has attractive green-grey foliage (not unlike a Dianthus actually) and even when not in flower would make a good foil for the petunia.

Or how about a soft pink like the delicious looking Diascia ‘Strawberry Splash’? This is one of the newer hybrid Diascias (cousins to the perennial Nemesias) and has delicate soft pink flowers which keep coming and coming all over the summer, especially if the plants are trimmed back occasionally. I have a soft spot for these slightly tender South African perennials, as growing some of them set me off on my nursery-owning career, and they are perfect plants for the home garden, as they are hardy, can cope with a bit of dry if you forget to water them for a day or two, and they just keep on flowering. There are brighter colours around – some very bright in fact – so you might prefer one of them, but the contrast with the black makes me plump for ‘Strawberry Splash’.

Little Aussie orchids

2011-10-02T21:30:00.000+13:00

Whenever I am asked what my favourite flower is, I have a choice of two answers. The first and strictly speaking the more correct answer is to reply “Irises”. They were plants I was brought up with and they remain my most favoured flower, at least partly because of the long flowering season and their relative ease of cultivation.

The other answer I give is also nearly true – “Whatever is in flower at the moment.” Right now I am just getting over loving daffodils, and I still have a passion for tulips. In the weeks ahead I will fall in love with flowering cherries all over again, and when the irises finish I will reconnect with roses.

But this weekend my favourite flowers will be orchids, in all their glorious variety, because the Wairarapa Orchid Circle are holding their annual show in the Town Hall, and I will once again be enamoured of this most sophisticated of all flowers.

One of the things I love about orchids is the huge range of flower and plant types, and the way there seems to be something that will suit most gardeners, from those who love big, bold, brassy flowers, through to those whose interest is in the tiny gems of the plant world. There are wonderfully scented varieties, some with the most garish colours imaginable, and others with white flowers pure en ought to make the most avid “white garden” fan swoon.

In my glasshouse I have a little collection of Australian Dendrobium hybrids and I am watching their buds expand at the moment. There are a lot of different species which basically fall into two groups, those that grow best in the cool and those that prefer warmer temperatures. Because my glasshouse is unheated and also houses a lot of different kinds of plants I have restricted myself to cool growing forms, which tend to be smaller flowering but more robust. They are often forms of D. kingianum, an eastern Australia native, usually found growing on rocks and known to locals as the Pink Rock Orchid. It is generally a small plant which produces stems of light pink to dark purple flowers held on long inflorescences above the plant. There are white varieties and a few spotted and variegated varieties, and some bicoloured forms too. My plants are growing in orchid mix in quite small pots, and they are flourishing, but I absolutely drool when I see the large clumps that I see in the annual show – huge plants with hundreds of flower stems holding shimmering butterflies of flowers.

These attractive little flowers do not take a lot of care – they cannot if I can look after them. They are watered every couple of days and given the occasional feed of dilute fertiliser in spring and summer, but apart from that get no special treatment. They do not need to be grown in a glasshouse either – they will flourish in any cool frost-protected area, such as a porch or a patio as long as they get enough dappled light.

Scents and sensibility

2011-09-25T20:12:00.002+13:00

The Head Gardener and I took advantage of the warm weather at the top end of the weekend to go for a stroll down to the Kuripuni village for lunch. It was very pleasant walking along in the sun, looking at the gardens and noticing how much spring has moved along in the past few weeks. At one garden we stopped to look at a shrub growing over the fence line with wonderful racemes of chartreuse-yellow flowers. The Head Gardener looked at me and said “That’s it, that’s it!”

I must have looked a little puzzled, as she gently reminded me that I had failed to identify a plant she had come home and asked about. A work colleague had been given a bouquet which featured what she had described to me as “Lily of the Valley flowers, but from a shrub”. I knew she would not have meant the shrub usually called the Lily of the Valley, the Pieris as we have a couple of them in the garden.

At the time I just could not picture what she was walking about, but I really ought to have thought of this lovely shrub. It is Stachyurus praecox, a deciduous plant so it has gone out offavour a little but it has a lot going for it, with a charming display of flowers in the spring before the glossy coppery-brown leaves unfurl. At this time of the year it is very valuable for picking, the colour seeming to go with most colours, especially the golden colour we associate with daffodils and Forsythias.

There was another attraction in a garden a few houses down the road and I could not quite work out what it was at first. A beautiful scent was drifting over the footpath – heady and sweet and fruity all at the same time. I thought it was perhaps Daphne, but then I thought it was a bit sharper than that. When I had a closer look through the shrubbery I was astonished to see that it was a mix of at least three different scents, all within the same small garden.

Against the wall was a trimmed specimen of that charming semi-deciduous charmer, the hybrid Viburnum x burkwoodi. It is undoubtedly the most popular of the scented Viburnums in New Zealand, with tight clusters of pure white flowers at this time of the year, carrying a soft fragrance that I have seen described as being like that of baby powder – certainly less heady than Daphne. It has nice green foliage in the spring but grows a little sparsely and can look a little straggly until it is mature. Clipping will help that but you need to be careful as if you clip it too hard you will knock the flowering back as well.

The semi-deciduous behaviour it shows is understandable as it is a hybrid between the evergreen V. utile and V. carlesii. The former is a rare species in New Zealand, and I have never seen it offered, probably because it is not very attractive, but V. carlesii is usually findable and is a very fine deciduous shrub. It grows to about two metres and at this time of the year is covered with the most delightful pink-budded flowers, opening to white, and scented even better than V. x burkwoodii in my opinion. You will find this in garden centres at this time of the year and it is well worth seeking out. It always reminds me of my old gardening friend Henry Carle, who used to write this column when I was first interested in gardening, and who encouraged me over the years.

A lot of rot

2011-09-18T20:53:00.000+12:00

I was working out in the garden on Sunday morning, getting the first of the spring flush of weeds out of the way of the daffodils, hyacinths and irises, and as I often do on Sunday morning, catching up with the National Radio programmes. There was an interesting discussion about the costs of recycling, and the presenters briefly covered the amount of green waste that goes to the recycling centre. In some councils’ case it amounts to about 50% of the waste stream, by volume.

New gardeners and perhaps quite a few of us “oldie” gardeners as well, have not realised the economic advantages of composting, quite aside from their advantages to the soil profile.

The activity of growing things uses up the humus in the soil, and depletes some of the soil’s fertility. In the wild there is a never ending stream of humus and nutriment being returned to the soil in the form of leaf litter, but in our gardens that does not happen. We harvest our crops – whether that be grass on the lawn, flowers in the house garden or vegetables in the kitchen garden – and often forget to return that goodness to the ground we are working with.

The chemical value of the nutriment, the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium can be replenished by applying commercial fertilisers, but these products, useful though they are, do not restore the humus levels – to do that we need to return organic matter to the soil. We can pay the recycling centre to do that, by paying to take it to the centre, and then later on, purchasing the processed compost (and I do that sometimes) but it is easier and more efficient to manufacture your own compost at home. As well as improving the soil fertility and structure, compost aids the micro-biology of the soil, nourishing a wide variety of life from earthworms down to microscopic bacteria, and as it improves the structure of the soil it also aids in improving the soil’s ability to retain moisture, reducing the need to water so often.

I run a system with four plastic compost bins (a bit of an anachronism but there you go) as well as a large open-formed bin. My large bin is built against a strong fence, with a buffer of chicken wire to stop leakage, and chicken wire fencing on the two sides. The front is composed of slats which can be lifted, enabling me access to get in and dig out the compost when it is made.

When I start to fill one of the bins I like to put a layer of twiggy material at the bottom, to help provide the sharp drainage that is so necessary for the bins to work properly. I always keep some of these when I am pruning in the garden, and have a little heap alongside the bins for when I start a new batch.

When you make your new brew it is important to keep a mixture of ‘greens’ and ‘browns’, the greens being types that are full of nitrogen while the browns tend are high in carbon and also tend to have more fibrous material. The obvious ‘green’ is the weekly catcherful of lawn clippings but also includes kitchen food scraps, fruit peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, and chopped weeds. Make sure not to include any of the bad weeds in your mix – you do not want to go spreading convolvulus or oxalis through the garden

‘Brown’ material includes straw, dried leaves and twigs, sawdust, wood shavings and wood ash (all from untreated sources) and egg shells. I like to have a few bales of pea straw around all the times, as they are the perfect ‘brown’ material, although by the time I get to use them they have started to rot down and almost become ‘green’!

Well-made compost is made from a mix of organic materials containing both 'green' and 'brown' materials, usually applied in layers of about 100 cm thickness. I find I always have a steady stream of ‘green’, with clippings, garden waste and kitchen scraps, but the ‘brown’ stream is harder to reliably source, hence the straw bales.

Mount Inspiring

2011-09-11T20:11:00.000+12:00

This week is Conservation Week and the local Department of Conservation office has arranged some fun activities out at Mount Holdsworth, including frisbee golf and geo caching. If you are unfamiliar with the latter sport/activity it is sort of like hi-tech hide-and-seek, with treasures secreted away at GPS locations.

You might be wondering what such activities have to do with gardening - apart from all the above being great fun of course. The answer is - an awful lot actually. The DOC officers are also offering a couple of walks - one along the banks of the Atiwhakatu River and the other up the Gentle Annie track up to Rocky Lookout, and if you are looking for gardening inspiration you could do worse than take the time to partake in one of these strolls.

I try to battle my way up to the top of Mount Holdsworth a couple of times each year, partly for exercise but also because the varying gardens you pass through are a constant source of inspiration.

Let’s assume you have a small garden and cannot think of establishing a piece of suburban beech forest, and you are going to think more about some of the smaller growing plants you will find on your trip in the forest. One of the first plants you are likely to see is the stunning white flowering native iris, Libertia. These are great plants for the home garden, coping with varying amounts of shade and flowering with abandon usually. I am fond of the graceful L. grandiflora which has more arching leaves and large flowers. The more common L. ixioides has stiffer leaves and smaller flowers, but it seems to cope better with full sun. There are a number of yellow coloured forms of this species that are worth growing for their foliage alone.

Just once I found a nice clump of the diminutive L. pulchella growing on a damp bank just this side of Rocky Lookout. It only grows about 100mm high, but spreads widely when it is happy in a moist site. This is available from specialist nurseries - the other types are much more commonly found in garden centres.

Among the other herbaceous plants to be found at lower levels on the mountain are lovely blue berried turutu, Dianella nigra. At this time of the year this plant will be looking a little like a small flax, with arching green leaves. It will soon have tiny white flowers are followed by bright blue berries in summer. These are usually deep blue but I have seen some light blue forms in the forest at Mount Holdsworth.

One of the most common ferns growing in association with Dianella is the stunning Crown Fern, Blechnum discolour. I think this makes one of the most amazing garden-like scenes on the mountain, as it appears in large clumps at various along the tracks, looking like a garden carefully constructed by a high priced landscape consultant. The fronds are dark green but at this time of the year the new young fronds are starting to unravel, their lighter and brighter stems looking like a cluster of flowers in the centre of the fern. The fronds can grow up to a metre long, and when well suited the plant will eventually form a small trunk.

I think this looks at its best when it is massed planted under trees, just the way it grows in the wild. It is often available in smaller grades making it economically feasible to be used in this manner. I even have a cluster of them growing among my iris seedlings in the shade of a Magnolia tree.

Parsnips beet carrots

2011-09-04T21:33:00.000+12:00

My expressed intention of not planting any potatoes this year turned out to have been hollow – a week after I told everyone I was not planting any I found myself looking at the remains of last year’s crop and thinking – “The ‘Rockets’ have sprouted really well “and I succumbed to the temptation and planted short row of both ‘Rocket’ and ‘Desiree’. They will be ready to harvest in time for Christmas, which will make the Dunedin-based son happy, as he had made comment when he rang for Father’s Day.

I spent the afternoon of ‘Father’s Day’ in the garden, well togged up because it was quite cold. I was mainly working in the flower beds, as there were a lot of weeds germinating and I like to get them out early, but I also made the time to do some work in the vegetable garden. It is important to get the garden ready for spring at this time of the year, and as soon as the soil is dry enough to be worked, it is a good idea to get any fertilising and composting needed under way.

The first thing I did was to shift the carrot bed. We find carrot rust fly to be a problem, and nothing chemical has worked for us. We were almost at the stage of giving up growing carrots when we decided to try a bit of physical exclusion, firstly by using a large white shade cloth covered cloche, then by using small wooden walls around the edge of the carrot patch. It does not need to be very high – 100mm would probably be enough – and it does certainly help. The theory is that the fly comes in at ground level, so an obstruction stops the fly getting in to lay the eggs that later hatch and cause the unsightly damage to the carrots.

Soil preparation is very important with carrots. They need fertile soil, but do not like fresh manures at all, so it is best to plant them in soil that was prepared for a leaf crop the previous year – brassicas or lettuces perhaps. If you want to add a fertiliser, any good general one will do the trick, but you could also consider one of the slow release types as well.

If the rust fly has been a problem, try and sow as thinly as you can, as the flies will hone in on the scent of the thinnings, so the less you need to thin the better. I did not sow any seed this weekend – I want the bed to settle down a little – but it is the right time to put the first sowing in. I like to mix the seed up with some sand as it helps sow more thinly.

There are many different varieties around but I think it pays to try and find some F1 seed if you can – it is quite a bit dearer but the crop is more reliable and the crop is hearty. We grew a purple variety the year before last, which was great fun, but to be honest they were not the best croppers, and I do not think we will be doing that again.

Time to think about potatoes again

2011-08-28T20:37:00.000+12:00

Our neighbour popped her head through the hedge that separates our two properties at the weekend, to pass on some women’s magazines to the Head Gardener, and to ask whether we wanted a few ‘Cliff’s Kidney’ potatoes, as she had bought too many for her garden.

I was forced to say that I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I will not be planting any potatoes this season, as there are only two of us in the house now, and the Head Gardener is no great fan of potatoes – I still have a lot of tubers left from last year’s crop and I would not be able to get through them all.

There was a time when all vegetable gardens featured a mass planting of potatoes – in fact, many gardens were literally established out of a potato patch. The custom has long gone, but it was traditional to plant a crop of potatoes on a new section, before you had even built the house, the theory being that the deep cultivation required for the potatoes would help set the land up for the later gardens and lawns. Once the house was built and beds laid out, most garden would feature extensive plantings of a range of varieties, with ‘Cliff’s Kidney’ and ‘Jersey Benne’ being the favourites for earlier in the season, while’ Red King Edward’ and ‘Rua’ were two favourite main crop types.

If you have enough people in the family eating potatoes still, they are an easy and worthwhile crop for the home gardener, and I think all newbie gardeners should try their hand at growing a crop or two of these. In fact, I suspect that I will be unable to resist putting just a few tubers down myself, because I do not think Christmas would be quite right without an early morning trip down to the vege patch to bandicoot a few shining new potatoes for the dinner table.

Last year I planted two different varieties – the white fleshed ‘Rocket’ for an early variety, and the pink skinned ‘Desiree’ as a main cropper. The idea of ‘early’ and ‘late’ sometimes confuses new gardeners, as it does not refer to the time of the season the tubers need planting, instead being a reflection of the amount of time needed from planting to cropping – that is, early varieties mature more quickly than main crop or late varieties. That means that, once the season has moved on and it is getting late for planting potatoes, you are better off to plant ‘early’ types as they will crop quickly, before the frosts arrive.

Silver trees of red and yellow

2011-08-21T20:43:00.000+12:00

Today the Head Gardener and I went down to the nursery to look at some Leucodendrons. I have to say it felt a little odd looking at South African plants after such a cold week, but most Leucodendrons will cope alright with the sort of weather we have just had, as long as they are in a well drained site.

There are about 80 species of Leucodendrons, with a staggering number of sub-species, forms and varieties, many of them bred in New Zealand and Australia. They are all native to the Cape area and have their flowers non separate male and female plants. The flowers themselves are relatively insignificant, but they are surrounded by often very decorative bracts.

In the wild they grow in the same sort of conditions they require in the garden – they need well-drained, acidic soil (not too rich in humus either) and they need full sun for the bracts to colour up properly.

I suspect the Latin name for the genus, with means “Silver Tree” must have been given after a botanist saw the remarkable Cape silver tree, L. argenteum, with its large green leaves totally covered in silky silver hairs, giving the impression of a silvery sheen. In the wild it can grow quite scruffily but in the garden it is a delightful sight, staying well clothed and performing well, especially if kept clipped when young. It seems to need better drainage than most varieties, and it is definitely less frost hardy than most common species, but if you have a warm spot this is a spectacular plant.

The most popular of all Leucodendrons is undoubtedly ‘Safari Sunset’, a hybrid raised in the 1960s and very quickly developed as a cut flower. At one time it seemed to be in every garden, and in vases in every American television programme as the epitome of chic. It is less planted nowadays but it is still a very valuable plant for the winter garden, providing a great dash of colour at a time of the year when there is little else around.

It is an enthusiastic growing plant and is inclined to get away a little if not kept clipped when young., reaching up to about three metres if allowed. Trimming is fun of course, because you can pick the stems for the house. They look especially good at this time of the year when the dark burgundy colouring of earlier in the year has faded a little and the centre is starting to go yellow.

‘Rising Sun’ (photograph above) is another good red coloured variety, probably intermediate in size between the two foregoing types. It has bright bred bracts over winter fading to cream for the spring. This is another good variety for picking.

Currant news

2011-08-14T20:47:00.000+12:00

When there is snow quickly accumulating on the back lawn and it is freezing cold outside what else would a garden writer be doing but thinking about summer fruits, and how we should be making sure we have any new plants well and truly tucked into their garden beds soon.

My parents were not great small fruit growers , although my mother was keen on black currants and had a row of bushes that straggled across the back garden, and there were a few ferocious gooseberry plants too, but they were only looked after in a desultory fashion. Although I quite liked Mum’s black currant jam, I certainly could not raise too much enthusiasm about going out to help her pick the thousands of berries needed for her jamming exploits.

I was a bit remiss really, as they are excellent plants for the novice gardener to start their fruit growing career with, being relatively easy to grow and very hardy. In fact, coming as they do from the hard northern climes, the will probably be relishing a bit of snow at this time of the year – they need winter chilling to fruit well.

The variety you are most likely to come across is ‘Magnus’, which has very tart fruit until the very last minute before they ripen – the kids will certainly not be thieving them to eat them half-ripened! The plants do best in humus-rich slightly moist soils, and prefer it to be slightly acidic – Rhododendron country suits them well – so make sure they are not planted in thin dry soil.

When you plant a new bush it pays to prune it back to two buds above the ground then leave it to grow and do not prune for two seasons. After that you will need to prune to shape by removing the old stems to a new low bud, removing at least a third of the old canes. Plants do best with about ten shoots per bush, none of which should be older than three years. To foster young wood you should cut down old wood to new buds in winter.

Red and white currants are also great for the home garden, and although they are related to black currants, they need a different planting and pruning strategy. When you first plant you should prune to establish a short main trunk. The following season, chose four main branches making a vase shape with an open centre. Each winter, prune these branches back and allow a few more to develop until you have established a framework with about eight main branches. Each year prune these back by about half, and then at the fourth year remove one or two of the main arms back to its lowest new shoot each year as these currants bear from permanent spurs and will bear for a few years. You should aim to have an open growth habit with main wood in the two to three year bracket.

All these currants have attractive shape and they would make a pleasant boundary hedge around the edge of your vegetable garden if they were carefully managed. If you had a variety of different types you would also have an attractive fruiting feature in summer.

A lot of flannel

2011-08-07T20:54:00.000+12:00

I wonder how many garden writers are going to be spending time over the next few weeks pondering whether we are having an early spring or not. It seems to me we are – there are Magnolias in full bloom and I have buds on some of my irises that should not be in flower for months yet – but I would not be so sure that spring is nearly here. It does not take too much to make the God of Spring withdraw again until a more appropriate time.

I have been enjoying the slightly milder weather though, walking to work most days, taking circuitous routes so I can check up on some different gardens and see what is doing well this year and I have noticed a couple of Phylica pubescens bushes putting on great displays.

These flannel flowers, or featherheads as they are also called, are South African shrubs, from the buckthorn family although they have more than a passing resemblance to some of the many African proteaceous plants, in that their true flowers are hidden in the middle of (in this case, slightly) showier bracts. The whole shrub has attractive almost-grey foliage, and is a welcome addition to the shrubbery for that fact alone, but over the winter flowers (and the bracts) are formed and by now the the hairy leaves are topped with golden flowers. It is a fabulous plant for the winter garden, and anyone who likes picking flowers for the house will love this, as the flowers last for weeks in the vase. In the garden it prefers conditions pretty much like those you would expect a South African to prefers– dry, well-drained and not overly rich soils, in an open situation. They look tender but seem to be able to cope with most frosts our conditions throw at them, growing to about 1.5 metres high and the same around. Like many South African shrubs, they are not long lived, but should last more than ten years.

I think they go really well with some of the other South African plants that are in flower now – the Leucodendrons and Proteas look similar enough, but also different enough, to blend well with these shrubs. Thespecimen I photographed this week is growing in dampish soil in an open position in the middle of a lawn – not the sort of location I would have recommended but it is doing fine.

Glorious Hellebores

2011-08-01T16:44:00.000+12:00

Despite it being "clean the tools weekend" I did not spend the whole time in the tool shed – when Sunday turned out fine I took the chance to do some pricking out in the glasshouse, with the last of the iris seedlings to line out, and the Delphinium seedlings I grew from the seed from Dowdeswells to put into pots. I got a lot done but ran out of potting mix and needed to go to the local garden centre, always dangerous because there are going to be things there I am going to covet.

This time it was a great display of Hellebores, with singles, doubles and all sorts of in between forms on display. Commonly known as ‘Winter Roses’ (although they are not remotely related to roses) these are fabulous plants for the late winter/early spring garden, available in a range of subtle colours, very apt for this time of the year.

Hellebores are not too fussy about where they grow as long as the soil is not too dry, and as long as it does not become bogged over winter. They are perfectly happy in semi-shade, or even complete
shade, but they will equally well cope with full sun, as long as the soil they are planted in has plenty
of organic matter.

Once you have got them established trim off the dying leaves of deciduous varieties and remove the
seed heads as well, encouraging good strong growth and more flowers.

One of the first species to flower is Helleborus niger, mainly seen in the stunning form called ‘White
Magic’. This has brilliant white porcelain–like flowers, relatively large and carried close to the
foliage, which remains tidy over the summer. I think this is one that looks best planted in clumps if
you can afford to be extravagant. It is also long-lived – our plant was one of the first we bought and
it is still thriving after nearly fifteen years.

I was intrigued to see a new variety – to me anyway – H. ‘Ivory Prince’. 'Ivory Prince' is a complex
hybrid with beautiful, dark blue-green foliage thick and ivory-white flowers that age to pink and
eventually green. It seems to be very vigorous and I am sure will quickly become a form favourite.

The showiest species is undoubtedly H. orientalis. I remember these well from my grandparents’
garden, where they grew in wilderness-like semi-shade, in a profusion of shades from greenish-
white, through to a sort of carmine pink, some of the flowers stained with deeper colours.

I wonder what my grandparents would say if they saw modern forms with their improved range of
colours and forms – I think they would hardly recognise them. There are now some very deep red,
almost block forms, and some that verge on gun metal grey, with the appearance of a bloom on the
blooms, so to speak.

I am very taken with bi-coloured flowers, and there are some fantastic seed raised varieties available
in this range. They generally have a ground colour that is white, light pink, or the chartreuse-like
colour Hellebore growers call yellow. The ground colour is enhanced by dark highlights, usually deep
carmine.

Another form that I am taken with is the anemone centred form, with a little ruff of quill shaped
petals surrounding the stamen at the centre of the flower. When this is combined with a bicoloured
flower the effect is remarkable.

There are also many double forms available now, the doubling varying greatly from quite neat
rounded petals, to Raggedy Ann mish mashes of petals – very informal and not quite to my taste
although I can see how they would appeal to others.

All the above forms were on display at my local garden centre – as they are seed raised you really
need to see them in flower to ensure you are getting what you want. And they are not just valuable
for the garden – they perform very well when picked for the house, so useful at this time of the year
when the spring flush is still a month or two away. You’d go a long way to find more attractive long-
term perennials for the garden and house.

2011-07-17T20:50:00.002+12:00

This weekend I ran into a plant-loving friend in a local bookstore. I am sure we must have frustrated the owner and her staff as we stood alongside the plant books and talked for over an hour, largely about native plants.

He works for DOC, his specialty being plants although he is also active among wild birds. He had been very busy during the week, helping look after bids blown ashore by the severe westerly wind s we were subjected to last week.

He had found time to read last week’s column and had some interesting things to say about the use of native plants in the garden, basically agreeing with me that we should use natives when appropriate, but we are creating gardens not botanical reserves and should feel free to plant whatever we want to in our gardens.

He had some interesting things to say about planting grasses, saying that they are much misused in the garden, often being planted without too much thought about the way they are going to end up looking.

I totally agree – well spaced and planted grasses can be an absolute highlight in the garden, but less than clever plantings can end up looking absolutely dreadful. There is a large commercial planting I go past each day where some light brown Carex comans (not strictly speaking grasses I know) were used to provide frontage to some Pittosporum ‘Irene Patterson’. They were planted too close to each other, and have not been cared for in the years since they were planted and now present the garden with a messy brown smudge in front of the shrubs.

The interesting thing about grasses (and similar plants like sedges) is that they can basically be used one of two ways. They can make wonderful accent plants if allowed to grow in a very natural manner amongst other plants. This applies especially to those with a naturally weeping habit – they simply must have space around them to develop their proper shape.

Their other use is as a bulk groundcover, and here they need to be planted a little closer, but should still be spaced well enough for the individual shapes of the plants to be clear.

Most grasses have a light feel to the garden, and they usually also give the feeling of movement, twisting in the slightest breeze, adding an extra element to the environment.

Starting with the native grasses, I guess my favourite would be the colourful Carex testacea, a sea-loving plant usually seen growing in sand dunes and open scrub land. It has a mix of dark green and orange leaves, with a characteristic weeping form. At this time of the year it colours up to a brilliant orange-red shade. I walk past a planting of this growing in a mat of grey-green leaves of rock roses Helianthemum and it looks great. I have never noticed the rock roses flowering but there are terra cotta forms and it would look stunning with them. A further contrast is given by a planting of one of the blue-leaved Yuccas, the spiky growth complementing the flowing growth of the Carex. The bed narrows at the far end, where an upright conifer of some kind is planted – perhaps Juniperus ‘Spartan’. The only jarring note is a plant of Zantedeschia aethiopica ‘Green Goddess’, no doubt planted for its large leaves, but I am sure I could think of better options.

My friend’s favourite native grass is the red tussock Chionochloa rubra. Whoever named this tussock red must have been suffering from snow blindness as you would need very rosy spectacles to call this plant red but the bronze-ish leaves do take a reddish tinge if planted in full sun. A mountain plant, this one is taller growing, getting to over a metre high, with a similar spread. It is easily grown, and will flourish in either dry or wet conditions.

I am not sure this is even my favourite Chionochloa as I am great fan of the dwarf toe toe, C. flavicans. This has green leaves, looking a little like a finer leaved flax rather than a grass, but it also has beautiful flower heads, nearly lime green when opening, but eventually but fading to cream coloured. This is another that looks great when planted in groups, but can also be an effective specimen plant in a smaller garden.

There are plenty of wonderful grasses, and grass-like plants among the exotics for the garden.

If you are looking for a bright blue I think the best bet is the blue oat grass, Helictotrichon sempervirens which has erect true blue leaves and delicate flower heads. If you have a modern house this is the one for your massed planting as it looks gloriously funky, especially if combined with contracting colours and foliage types.

Those mid-winter smellies

2011-06-13T09:15:00.000+12:00

Although we have been having a very mild winter thus far and temperatures have been very benign, we are rapidly approaching the shortest day. It is horrible leaving for work in the gloom and arriving home again in the dark, but the light will start flooding in with more power again and we will be back on the road to spring.

Those of you who are new to vegetable gardening are probably thinking there will not be too much to do at this time of the year – perhaps a bit of tidying up and some turning of the compost pile – but there are a couple of worthwhile crops that need to be planted at this time of the year , both members of the large onion tribe.

The first of these is garlic, the bulbs of which are now in your local garden centre. Their culinary use has increased tremendously over my lifetime – I can well remember a time when someone who used garlic in cooking was looked at askance, as being more than a little eccentric. That has all changed of course, and we use it more or less liberally in lots of cuisine.

Apparently it is an ancient vegetable, and is mentioned as being provided to the men building the pyramids. It has been used as a medicine for a long time too, and there are all sorts of alternative medicines that contain it.

I have not grown garlic for a few years, but this weekend I was working at weeding last year’s new garden, and it came to me that the soil is so friable at the moment, and just perfect for planting, so I raced down to my local nursery and got some garlic and shallots.

Garlic must be one of the easiest crops to raise. All you have to do is prise the bulb apart and plant the individual cloves, discarding the smallest ones to one side as the bigger cloves will grow bigger bulbs. Each clove needs to be planted about 5cm deep, and they should be about 15 cm apart. Ideally they should be in good fertile soil, well drained and in a very sunny location. My soil is a very compost-rich mix so I did not need to add any humus, but if your soil is thin it would pay to do so. A light sprinkling of general fertiliser would not go amiss either.

As long as you keep the weeds down there should not be too much trouble growing these plants – they seem to be almost disease free, and most insects seem to leave them alone as well. During the drier months you might want to keep an eye on them to make sure they are kept well enough watered, but apart from that, there is nothing much else to worry about.

Shallots are similarly easy to grow, and require somewhat similar growing conditions. Even though they are closely related to onions – having a similar but more complex, milder and sweeter flavour – they grow much more like garlic, forming a head with multiple cloves. At midwinter – the traditional time for planting both shallots and garlic – the heads are pulled apart and the bulbs planted in a similar manner to garlic, but don’t expect the same number of cloves as you will get from the garlic as there are not so many. This also explains why shallots are quite expensive to buy – all the more reason to grow your own.

There are a number of different types of shallot available for cooking with, but not all of them are grown in New Zealand – the reddish-browned skin type seems to be the most common.

Shallots ( I suspect this applies to garlic too) are sometimes imported into New Zealand after being treated with anti-sprout chemicals, which is fabulous for the cooks, but bad news for the gardener. Make sure you buy your bulbs from a reputable garden supplier.

Breeding and seeding

2011-06-08T10:04:00.001+12:00

I took advantage of this weekend’s fine weather to spend a bit of time in the glasshouse, pricking out some of this season’s iris seedlings. Each year I troll through my Pacific Coast Iris plants and try to work out which ones present opportunities to further the way I want my irises to look, and then cross pollinate these flowers.

With irises this is not too difficult a task as the flower’s sexual reproduction organs are easily found and crossing them is not too tricky. All the breeder has to do is gather the pollen from the ‘father’ flower while it is nice and fresh and the bees and bumble bees have not found it, then transfer it to the stigmatic lip of the selected mother flower. Again, it is important to do this before the bees find the intended mother and pollinate her with rogue pollen, so we usually take the falls off the flower, removing the bee’s landing pad. If all goes to plan we should have the selected pollen reaching the selected stigma, resulting in a new hybrid.

Trouble is, my mouth is bigger than my stomach when it comes to breeding Pacific Coast Irises, and I have far many more seedlings than I could ever hope to plant out. I have germinated seedlings in nearly fifty pots, each one a different cross, and up to a hundred plants in some pots. Absolute madness!

It is this sort of passion on the part of breeders that has lead to the many changes obvious in many garden flowers. Even highly bred plants, like roses and bearded irises, are still being improved, by very controlled breeding and a thorough understanding of the genes that influence their eventual display. In order to be a successful breeder with these plants it is almost a necessity to be raising and selling plants fulltime, very difficult in a country like New Zealand. The best rose breeders, for example, raise tens of thousands of seedlings each year, expecting to introduce perhaps five of them to the market.

Under these conditions most seedlings do not survive their first flowering – they are ruthlessly culled and only the very best make it through for a second flowering season.

Most florists’ flowers are now produced by professional breeders, usually based in the United States, Japan or Europe. Carnations are a good example, as the only people working with these plants are now cut flower breeders, and they are not producing varieties that are well suited for the garden. As a result, gardeners find it harder and harder to find varieties that suit them, and the plants gradually go out of favour.

Some plants are still largely produced by keen amateurs but they tend to be those that do not have a large cut flower demand. Across the paddocks from the back of my house (all built on now unfortunately) live a couple of the world’s most successful dahlia breeders, their varieties being voted as among the most popular in the United States. I was once treated to a look around their garden at the height of the flowering season, and was intrigued to see they did not practise the sort of hand pollinating techniques I am more familiar with. Instead, they grew the two varieties they were keen to cross alongside each other and left the bees to do the job.

Partly that is because the technical issues around desexing compound flowers like dahlias – it is a very tricky and time consuming method, and in reality, results are generally disappointing with successful pollination rates being low.

I have found similar troubles when trying to breed hebes – it is just too finicky to try and desex all the various flowers on the raceme – and they do not all open at the same time of course – so it is once again best left to the bees.

Irises on my mind

2011-03-01T21:00:00.000+13:00

The dreadful effects of the Christchurch earthquake are still on my mind – it is hard not to be
affected by the scenes we have seen played out on our television screens each night, and read
about in our newspapers each day. We have seen news of people we know, and heard their singular
stories about how they escaped from the shakes, and how they are trying to adjust their minds to
the new city they live in.

Like most New Zealanders, I have friends and family in Christchurch – an uncle and auntie, and their
three daughters. The older generation has passed on, and the girls live in rural town in Canterbury –
Oxford, Ashburton and Geraldine – and they are all safe.

Not so the street they were brought up on, and where I stayed as a teenager on my first visit to the
South Island. Woodville Street did not fare very well in the quake – there was terrible liquefaction in
some of the sections, and I caught a glimpse of it in a news item about neighbours pulling together
to help each other.

My uncle and auntie were great gardeners, and both long term members of the New Zealand Iris
Society, Uncle Ron serving a term as its president. He was induced to join when he started courting
my auntie – my grandparents, who were great iris fans, gave the newlyweds a dollop of iris plants for
their wedding present!

I lived across the road from my grandparents for a number of years and their enthusiasm for irises
was passed on to me, and I have in turn managed to pass it on to at least one of my sons, who loves
some of the oddly coloured Dutch irises.

These bulbous irises are interesting plants, being complicated hybrids that were bred in the
Netherland although the species involved actually come from North Africa and southern Europe,
the Spanish Iris, I. xiphium being the foundation species. It has lovely blue and yellow flowers, but
crossed with other species, has given rise to a wide range of attractive and hardy bulbs.

There are blue, purple, white and yellow varieties around, but the ones that are most likely to draw
attention, and the ones that my son loves, are the unusually shaded varieties, with a mix of brown,
mauve, purple and tan. ‘Tigers Eye’ has brown lower petals with striking veins and dark blue upright
ones, while ‘Mystic Beauty’ is mauve and bronze.

These need to be planted in light soils, preferably in full sun. They do not have any special needs but
they do need to be kept watered during the growing season, as they are prone to attacks from thrips
later in the spring if they are kept too dry.

Dutch Irises start flowering in late winter, with the delightful old variety ‘Wedgwood’ betraying its
ancestry from the notoriously shy flowering species I. tingitana. Other varieties will flower through
until mid November.

Hard as it is to remember at this time, life does go on – Christchurch will recover, much as Napier did
in 1931, and Wairarapa did in 1942. My uncle and auntie understood that - each autumn they would
scratch their dry soil aside and planted a new set of bulbs, for a new flush of flowers in the upcoming
spring.

Waingawa River

2011-02-06T21:58:00.000+13:00

I tried to celebrate a warm weekend by taking a trip down the Ruamahanga River yesterday. I soon found the river had too much water in it, which was a slight problem. I had taken my car out to the Gladstone Hotel, and Jill dropped me off at Wardell's Bridge at Te Whiti, intending to walk down to the pub. A coiupl,e of crossings, especially once I had got past the confluence with the Waingawa, determined that it was too dangerous for a sole walker - the flow was too strong to safely cross the river. I was hacked off!
I thought I'd be best to walk back to Wardell's, then walk along the road to the car, but as I walked back upstream past the Waingawa, I decided I could also walk up the Waingawa to the aerodrome, then walk home and get Jill to take me back to the Gladstone, figuring I could bribe her with an offer of lunch at the Gladdy.
It ended up being great fun - about a three hour tramp in all, and wonderful fun. I even managed to have my blackberry with me!

Oh, and yes, lunch at the Gladstone was lovely. Jill and I arrived in one car and left in two - must have had some tongues wagging!

Spurges

2011-02-06T21:01:00.000+13:00

It is one of the interesting things about gardening that many species we love and treasure in the garden have close relatives that are thuggish and not to be tolerated. This week I have been engaged in a deadly battle with a plant that was given to me by a friend some years ago, and unidentified member of the Polygonum family, related to the lovely ‘Painters Palette’. For nearly ten years it has been in my perennial garden, slowly increasing but this year it has had a rush of blood to the head and has decided to make a takeover bid for the whole garden, sending out envoys all over the place in an attempt to colonise any available land. I have dug most of it out, but I am not fooled – I know there will be some roots waiting a bit of rain to burst into life.

There are plenty of weeds in the family, but also a few choice garden plants, including some lovely tall perennials and some great groundcovers. I feel pretty ambivalent about them though, as I do about the feature plant this week – the spurges, the remarkable Euphorbias. When you consider that there are over 2,000 species of this cosmopolitan genus it is hardly surprising that there are some lovely charmers – and some of the most despicable thugs as well. They range from tiny ground cover plants right through to trees, and almost all have a milky, acrid sap, earning some the moniker of milk weed.

To start with the charmers – and bearing in mind that I am writing this on Waitangi Day, we have to start with the native sea spurge, Waiuatua, E. glauca. This occurs in all the major islands of New Zealand, in coastal areas, but is now very rare in the wild and regarded as an endangered species. As the Latin name suggests, this robust herbaceous plant has bluish-grey leaves in the best forms, contrasting nicely with its reddish stems. Like many coastal herbs, it spreads with underground runners, and in well tilled soil will wander about a little, but is unlikely to become a problem in most gardens. It has become a favourite with municipal gardeners who value its value as a contrast to either grassy foliage, or deeper coloured forms of flax. It will grow to about 90 cm high and is surprisingly hardy for a costal plant.

There are a couple of Euphorbias released in New Zealand over the past couple of years that you could be fooled into thinking are natives – they are called ‘Kea’ and ‘Tui’, but do not be fooled – these are alien intruders, bred in England from overseas species. They are both interesting plants for the garden, is misleadingly named. ‘Tui’ has deep purple, almost black foliage which in early spring produces flower spikes of plum to dark purple flowers. ‘Kea’ is a different bird altogether – it has a tight, compact habit with late winter flower spikes which flush pink red before opening to a mass of continuous lime gold blooms throughout spring and summer. These two varieties grow to about 60 cm high and are both reliable garden plants.

‘Kea’ is a form of Euphorbia characias as is one of the oddest of these spurges – the brightly variegated ‘Silver Swan.’ Again originating in England, this variety makes a tight mound of green and white variegated foliage. In late winter to early spring, the terminal flower spikes open to green and white variegated blooms. Like most Euphorbias, this is best grown in full sun in well drained soil to give of its best. There is similar variety hailing from Australia called ‘Tasmanian Tiger’.

The chameleon spurge, Euphorbia dulcis 'Chameleon', has leaves that open purple and deepen throughout the growing season to a rich red by the time autumn comes. Like most purple-leaved plants, it serves as an accent amidst the dominant green foliage of most gardens so place it where it will make a good contrast. Its bracts are yellow and it grows about 40 cm.

Little bottlers of shrubs

2011-01-25T19:38:00.000+13:00

When I was first learning gardening there were about five shrubs you would be able to guarantee most New Zealand gardens would contain – a lemon tree, a Photinia ‘Red Robin’, the ubiquitous Daphne odora, a purple Ake ake, Dodonaea viscosa 'Purpurea' and the glorious bright red Australian bottlebrush, Callistemon citrinus ‘Splendens’.

The others all had their good points, but it was the bottlebrush, hanging over our fence line from the neighbours, that intrigued me, with its flaming red flowers, usually covered with bees, and then it’s strange small nut-like seed capsules hanging grimly to the gently decumbent branches, their maturation seemingly taking years. What fun it was for my brothers and I to roughly strip these seedpods off and throw them at each other, and other neighbourhood kids!

The common name for this popular and hardy shrub derives from its floral pattern – a bunch of bright stamen that spring outwards from the entire circumference of the branches holding them, giving a cylindrical flower that puts on an amazing floral display each spring.

The most commonly grown bottlebrushes are generally members of the Callistemon genus, although that can be misleading, as some botanists like to put all these into the wider Melaleuca genus, which also has many botttlebrushed flowers. There are about 35 species of Callistemon in Australia, members of the wider Myrtle family that includes obvious relatives like Australia gums and New Zealand pohutukawas. They are usually found in the eastern states, and generally grow in quite moist areas, so are best grown in similar conditions in New Zealand gardens.

The old ‘Splendens’ variety that I knew so well is still available, and is good if you have a big shrubbery, and if you like tending your plants a little. If left to its own devises the shrub will grow into a small tree, with a rather ungainly habit – the bottom will open up and the branches will all hang awkwardly. On the other hand, if you prune it regularly, you will have a compact growing shrub that will take many years to reach two metres, and will reward you with a spectacular show in the spring.

Perhaps the best known variety in New Zealand today is the much smaller growing ‘Little John’. This is a hybrid of C. viminalis, the other parent being unknown, and features lovely blue-green foliage and deep red flowers. The flowers can be relied on to bloom for Christmas each year.

Red is not the only colour available in these reliable Australian shrubs – colours range from white through yellowish-green, mauve and pink. ‘Reeve’s Pink’ is quite a popular variety, perhaps not quite as hardy as the two above, but still perfectly fine in a warm spot in our climate. Even better, in my opinion, is a seedling raised from ‘Reeve’s Pink’ – ‘Mauve Mist’, which was selected from about 300 that were raised. It forms a dense shrub to a height of about two meters with an equal or slightly wider spread. The new tip growth is pink and densely covered with silky hairs and the flowers, which are produced in usual botttlebrush fashion, are pinkish mauve and about 70mm long by about 50mm wide and will be carried as late as Christmas.

Among other forms available in New Zealand are the pink ‘John Mashlan’, which can be planted as a low hedge if kept trimmed; ‘Kings Park Special’ which is another bright red form and very hardy; ‘Captain Cook’; which has orange/red flowers, and ‘Rocky Rambler’ which is a new semi-prostrate form with smaller light green leaves and reduced flowers.

Perhaps the most unusual variety is one released a couple of years ago and heavily promoted as a hedge plant – ‘Great Balls of Fire’. Despite its name, it does not have red flowers, the bottlebrushes being white in this case, but it is primarily marketed as a great hedging plant, mainly grown for the extremely pretty flush of pink when the foliage is new.

Favourite foaming flowers

2011-01-09T15:59:00.000+13:00

When we come to planning our flower gardens we often pay a lot of attention to the various colours we want to use, but do not give so much thought to the role texture can play, and how important the form of foliage and flower is.

The solid blocks of colour offered by most bedding plants stand at one extreme of the range of floral effects - the bright gold, yellow and orange shades of marigolds might be very appropriate in some places but hideously out of place in others – while the lighter effect of foamier flowers are at the opposite end of the scale.

At the moment the Head Gardener has a couple of plants of one of my favourite of these flowers out in her shaded garden at the moment – some two meter high examples of the glorious meadow rue, Thalictrum delavayi. This is one of over 100 species of Thalictrum found in the wild – no-one seems to be quite sure exactly sure how many species there are, and the boundaries between species are poorly understood. They are not related to the true rues, but are members of the buttercup family, and mainly found in damp and areas. The forms most commonly grown in the garden hail from meadowland and prefer garden soils that are on the heavy side.

They are a bit of a conundrum really, as they tend to have very dainty foliage – maidenhair fern-like in many species – which might lead the gardener to think they are frail, but they are remarkably hardy plants. They flower late in the season and thus add colour to the woodland garden at a time when it is slightly bereft of interest.

The Head Gardener’s plants give a run of drama through the spring and early summer as they prepare to flower. Over the winter they die down to become totally dormant. Early spring sees them kick into life again; forming a clump of fine ‘maidenhair’ foliage from which the flower stalks will eventually emerge. These shoot up and branch as they go until they form a graceful framework. The flower buds are to be found at the end of each of these branches. At first green and in little clusters, they eventually turn lilac and strike out on their own, each unfolding to become a perfect lilac parasol, with creamy white anthers dangling from pendulous stamens.

The double form of the species, ‘Hewitt’s Double’, has some of the showiest flowers any of the meadow rues, carrying its tight, pompom-like clusters of lilac-mauve flowers atop wiry, purple tinted stems. There is also a pretty single white flowered form of this species, but I think the mauves are the best ones to go for.

Thalictrum aquiegiifolium is earlier flowering, with thousands of heads of tiny blooms that make a fluffy head of soft mauve in nearly summer, while T. flavum has pale yellow flowers..

These plants are all easily grown. Any good soil will do, preferably in a sunny position or in dappled shade. They need adequate drainage, as a site that is waterlogged, even for part of the year, may prove fatal.

The natural tiered shape of the Thalictrum is spoilt by heavy staking. It is important to allow them to be themselves. Give them the protection of a more substantial neighbour on their windward side and plant them among other herbaceous plants that can lend a shoulder to lean on. If you do need to stake them try to use as thin and unobtrusive a stake as you can.

Santa's approaching!

2010-12-19T17:19:00.000+13:00

It is that time of the year again – Santa is New Zealand-bound as I write, relatives galore are streaming back to their hometowns, and in all the fuss about the festive season, the poor old garden is likely to be overlooked.

Flowers play a large part in the way we celebrate the season though, with some plants intrinsically intertwined into the season, including the heavily scented Christmas lily, Lilum regale. This Chinese species always has a place in our garden, although my family did not have a tradition of using them. The Head Gardener’s family, on the other hand, coveted them dearly and some of our original stock came from her grandmother’s garden. We were given some other bulbs when we shifted here and these plants turned out to be giants - at over two metres tall they were twice the size of the other forms we grow. I decided it might be environmental and grew some from seed of the tall ones - and they are just as tall, so I have two strains here, each distinct.

They do, of course, have some things in common, including trumpet shaped flowers, wine-coloured on the outside as the trumpet expands, then pearly-white inside, with a marked golden throat. The anthers carry bright orange pollen, which stains the inside of the flower on wet days, and the clothes of those careless when picking them. And of course they share that magnificent heady perfume. I find it a little oppressive when the flowers are picked for the house, but love it in the garden when the white flowers shine in the evening air.

Another plant we associate with Christmas is a cultivated relative of the milkweed that is currently a curse in our new vegetable garden. The wede species I am referring to is the little yellow-green flowered annual, Euphorbia peplus. This is a common weed of cultivated ground, easily removed, but the milky sap is a skin irritant and many a gardener has cursed after accidentally getting some of the sap on their lips. Smoking gardeners beware!

The poinsettia is a widely grown pot plant, a Mexican relative of milkweed, and has the same milky sap, but the flowers are altogether more exciting. The varieties that we are most familiar with have bright red bracts – the flowers are small and insignificant in the middle of these modified leaves – but there are also pink, white and cream varieties around, as well as combinations of these.

If looked after, poinsettias will be long-lived house plants. They need a good amount of light but should be kept out of direct sunlight as sun can scorch the leaves. They prefer a warm and well-lit room so should be kept near a sunny window, or on a table in the middle of a sunny room. They should definitely be kept out of cool breezes, as they can be sensitive to the cold.

If you want to keep your plant happy and healthy it is very important to get the watering right – poinsettias like to be kept damp, but resent being over wet. Use the finger test – if the soil is moist the slightly spongy then the plant will be fine, but if it feels dry you should water until water flows freely out the bottom of the pot. Do not sit the pot in a puddle of water though - you are better the sit the pot in a sink until the water has stopped flowing out of the bottom before putting it back. There is no hard and fast rule about when to water – just use your common sense and check it every few days.

Mountain laurel

2010-11-28T20:56:00.000+13:00

I was wandering around my local garden centre the other day and saw the most amazing display of that exquisite American shrub, Kalmia latifolia, with a wide range of varieties on display in full flower. This is one of those shrubs that has never attained the degree of popularity it deserves, and if you are looking for a small to medium sized evergreen shrub which flowers in early summer you could not do better than this wonderful species.

Commonly called Mountain Laurel in its native country, it is a member of the vast Ericaceous tribe. It is found from Maine down to northern Florida and extends westwards as far as Indiana and Louisiana.

Unsurprisingly for a member of the same family as heaths and rhododendrons, it is usually found on soils with a very low pH – about 4.5 to 5.5. is the norm – and like rhododendrons, is toxic to most stock. Some related species are known as “sheep kill” so it gives you a good idea of the danger of planting this beauty along a fence line on a farm! You might also want to avoid major plantings if you are a hay fever sufferer, as the pollen is said to be a bad irritant, although it flowers as the same time as so many grasses that I do not think you would notice it unless you popped your nose into the flowers.

In the wild Kalmias have rounded clusters of beautiful light pink to white flowers, each dotted with a little “stitch” where the stamen have been pushing against the inside of the petals – it is sometimes called the Calico Bush. Even the buds are very attractive, crimped and pointed like little buttons of icing on top of a sweet cake.

To be grown very well the Kalmia needs to be placed in well-drained but moisture retentive soil, preferably with low pH. It can cope with light shade but it is equally happy at home in full sun. As it flowers late in the season the flowers are not usually prone to frost damage and it can be relied on for a glorious flowering season.

About ten years ago I was determined to grow one here although our soil conditions are not really ideal. I found a fairly sheltered spot and dug bag after bag of compost into the soil before purchasing a well-grown specimen from a Rotorua nursery. It has flourished and each year at this time I marvel at how well it has done, and how much it flourishes.

But when I see the great range of colours available now, I feel cheated, and I have to say I am scanning around the garden to see where I could make some room for a new shrub or two of these beauties.

Among the varieties that took my eye the other day, ‘Carousel’ was probably the pick. This is an American bred cultivar, from the extensive planned crosses by the doyen of Kalmia breeders Richard Jaynes. It has light pink buds, and flowers that are light pink but dominated by the bands of cinnamon red. The effect is off a brightly banded bouquet of flowers. It is relatively slow growing and should not be more than 1.5 metres high and across by the end of ten years.

I was also taken with the brightly flowered ‘Minuet’, a smaller growing variety with large flowers. The light pink buds open to dark pink flowers with a light pink centre and bands of bright cinnamon red. This variety, which is smaller growing as the name indicates, also bears unique, dark green narrow leaves. This is another of Richard Jaynes’ varieties.

‘Yankee Doddle’ is another stunning type. The buds of this cultivar are bright red-pink and they open to show a pink corolla with a narrow maroon band, giving the effect of a strawberry parfait. Despite its very American sounding name, this cultivar was actually bred in Germany, where Kalmias are very popular garden plants.

Hostas

2010-11-21T19:58:00.000+13:00

Let’s face it – we live on the eastern side of the country’s main mountain ranges and the weather comes from the west. That means we live in a rain shadow and that little fact should act as a guide as to what we plant in our gardens – but of course, it doesn’t!

If we live in a dry zone where we should be planting Mediterranean and Australian shrubs, we naturally want to construct gardens out of rhododendrons and hostas, while those gardeners who inhabit wetter regions like Taranaki yearn to grow bearded irises, lavenders and sun-loving plants. It is just human nature to be contrarian I guess.

I do not grow huge numbers of hostas but I do have a row of healthy specimens filling up a long thin south-facing bed along the front of house. The bed was so narrow I could not think of anything else that would cope with the peculiar conditions that a cool but dry situation offered. They have flourished and steadily increased to such as extent that I can divide the plants up every few years and take small colonies to plant in other parts of the garden.

The best of these plants is a delightful blue foliaged form I grew from seed about twenty years ago. A friend had an extensive country garden and wanted to bulk up some areas in shade with mass plantings of hostas. The garden was on a large sheep station tot he eats of Masterton, and the gardener’s wife was a very tolerant man – he had to be as the home paddocks kept disappearing into the garden! – but his acceptance of the expanding garden did not stretch to buying hundreds of hostas as about $10 each.
As we were discussing the problem she said she had lots of need on her plants, so I asked her to bring some in and we sowed them into big seed boxes, and eventually pricked out many hundreds of plants, none of the named varieties of course, but many of them perfectly fine for the garden, and some quite pretty forms.

I gave my friend hundreds of plants, but still had plenty to grow of for myself, best of which were the blue ones, which resembled the popular H. sieboldiana ‘Glauca’ perhaps the best known of the older blue forms. Blue varieties are very much in fashion at the moment being the best selling forms, sometimes with a golden variegation. If you like large leaved forms then ‘Big Daddy’ is probably as good as any, but if you would prefer a smaller form for the edge of the border, ‘Hadspen Blue’ is lovely little plant with the most gorgeous blue-green foliage with summer spikes of pale lavender flowers above the foliage.

I am not absolutely sure but I think one of my other forms is the old favourite ‘Thomas Hogg’, also known as Hosta undulata ‘Albo marginata’. This variety with green leaves edged with a bright white margin and was supposedly introduced to western horticulture by the New York nurseryman Thomas Hogg in 1875. Hogg, who was a great fan of hostas, or Funkias as they were then known, had spent a lot of time in Japan, seeking out new varieties for his nursery. This old variety does not have the strong foliage of more modern hybrids, and as such is a little prone to slug attacks, but it is reliably hardy and will even cope with more or less full sun as long as the soil is not too thin and does not dry out too much.

Getting under cover

2010-11-16T16:58:00.001+13:00

The spring appears to have almost missed our inland valley and we have rushed headlong from winter into summer. We seem to have traversed from cool, sunless days into gloriously shining days bereft of rain. The lawns, always a good indicator of how the season is going, have been sluggish this year, not having their usual mid-spring burst, and they are now looking suspiciously as though they are starting to dry off.

What it all means is anyone’s guess – are we in for a sustained drought this year, or are the anticyclones going to head south, leaving us with a muggy, La Nina summer, with plenty of rain? I guess only time will tell.

Plenty of first time vegetable gardeners will be looking with interest at their new plots, wondering what else they can plant, and asking themselves what they should be doing. Well, watering is a good place to start. It is not going to be long before most towns and cities start their annual water restrictions, so it is a good time to get things prepared by ensuring all plots are well watered, and all soil is well covered. If you have bare soil (as I have in the old vegetable garden) make sure you get something into it, or onto it. If you are planting, get it done before the real dry weather arrives and then apply a generous mulch of some kind. In the vegetable garden a compost or straw mulch is very beneficial, helping keep the weeds down as well as keeping soil moisture contained, and it works just as well in the flower garden.

If you have planted small fruits or tomatoes for the first time, don’t forget to cover them from the depredations of birds. I do not mind the occasional fruit being sacrificed to help keep the local avifauna alive, but I do object to the feathered fiends figuring they are entitled to strip all my crops. They have already found the new strawberry bed and took the first few fruits before I realised what they were up to. Of course, I had to shift the old strawberry bed away from the swimming pool at the same time as I relocated the vegetable garden, and the old cover does not fit the new bed, so I had a rushed job after work one night, hastily putting a new cover with plastic bird netting over it.

The raspberry canes will have to be covered too as they have set a nice crop. I cover them each year and manage to keep the birds at bay – now I just have to figure how to stop the light-fingered little girls from taking the bulk of the crop.

Tomatoes are more of a problem, one I have really only had for the past few years. I think it started with a bumper crop of Sweet 100 a few years ago, but once the birds had learnt to take the little brightening fruit they just swapped over to pecking away at all the crop. I have had to resort to covering all the plants once the fruit start to lighten, but I resent it! I use the white netting that you see on grapevines later in the season, and peg them to the stakes. It works alright.

Others gardeners have an even worse problem, and find that their leaf crops are being attacked. We have had this problem in the past, especially with young plants grown from seed, and I found the best answer was to make little cloches out of chicken wire, easily movable, and I just covered the young plants with them until they were established. You could also try the time honoured technique of stringing defunct CDs on pieces of wire. The reflections from the discs as they spin in the breeze is said to freak the birds out and they desist.

Lilacs

2010-10-25T20:21:00.000+13:00

The little girls next door are world experts in “pink”- it is their favourite colour and it is not unusual to see them dressed in pink from head to toe, riding pink bikes. I tease them, telling them I hate pink things. I have not told them that pinks, Dianthus species and hybrids, are in fact among my favourite plants. I cannot tell them now, or all my complaints about their colour will be ruined!

It has made me think about some other plants that have given their names to colours, in particular the lilacs and lavenders that are now in flower.

Of the two, lavenders are by far the more popular, but at one time lilacs were among the most planted of shrubs. I guess their deciduous nature is now counting against them, as most modern gardeners are intent on creating gardens composed entirely of evergreens, but they are fabulous spring flowering plants.

Botanically the 20 or so species of lilac glory in the name Syringa – brings unfortunate word associations with visits to the doctor does it not? – although in old books you might see that name attributed to mock oranges, Philadelphus. If you hunt around you can probably find a few of the less common species, but in the garden centres you are most likely to come across forms of the common lilac, S. vulgaris.

I was staggered to see that there are about 1500 different hybrids and varieties available worldwide. There is certainly nothing like that number around New Zealand – you would probably be lucky to find twenty or so varieties in most nurseries. These are mainly older hybrids, and funnily enough, not very many of them are actually lilac coloured. Perhaps the best of those that are actually ‘lilac’, is’ Madam F Morel’, a single flowered, fragrant pinkish-lilac. ‘Alice Eastwood’ is a double flowered form with similar colouring, although it has a more spreading habit of growth.

I am not sure which “non-lilac” variety is my favourite. I like ‘Charles Joly’, another older form but in this case with very deep reddish purple flowers, but I also like ‘Mme Lemoine’, a lovely white flowered form which seems to have lighter green foliage than most hybrids.

One of the most interesting forms is ‘Sensation’, which has rich purple single flowers with each petal edged with white and carried in large semi-open panicles produced freely on a medium to tall shrub. This one is well worth seeking out.

If you are looking for something with a finer, lighter feel than the old lilac varieties you should keep an eye out for Syringa 'Bellicent’, an upright deciduous shrub which bears fragrant pink in panicles in late spring and early summer. These are carried over dark green foliage often with light variegations. It is hardy and well suited to a shrub border or as a specimen.

Lilacs are not too fussy as to their growing conditions. They certainly prefer a well-drained soil and a position in the sun or light shade. It is best if the soil is neutral to a slightly limey as lilacs grow very poorly in acid soils and heavy clay. For good flower production a moist soil, full of well-rotted compost or farmyard manure is recommended. In recent years New Zealand has discovered an export market for these flowers, and numbers of growers are slowly increasing.

2010-10-17T20:18:00.000+13:00

It is Labour Weekend and that means we are all going to be exhorted to get into the garden centre and spend, spend, spend on our summer vegetable gardens. In our cooler climes I think it pays to wait for a week or two before planting the most summery of crops, but I do not know about this year. Even though it has not been very sunny, we have had a mild spring, with next to no frosts. Even when we have had a southerly outbreak, we have dodged the icy bullet by having easterlies with their attendant clouds.

So, let’s just go ahead this year and get planting tomatoes, peppers and the like this weekend – or maybe next.

This is all predicated on the soil being ready to receive the plants. If you are a traditional dirt patch sort of gardener (as opposed to the newer “raised bed filled with potting mix” sort) you should have already worked your soil up, by adding some compost and fertiliser.

I have a slight problem this year. As you will be aware we have had to dig a new garden, and I have made about half of it out of soil from the recycling centre. This will have been made largely out of a mix of clippings from the local recycling centre and some treated soil, but the clippings present a threat. They will almost certainly include some week-killed grass clippings and some plants, including tomatoes, absolutely hate even a trace of these chemicals. I will have to take care to make sure I put the plants into the old soil.

I have already worked some fertiliser into the soil, but I will also add some dolomite to help keep the nutriment balance right and will add some slow release general fertiliser to the soil when I plant, as I know I am unlikely to remember to give the plants the amount of side dressings they ideally need. The next step is to put the stakes in place. You do not want to wait until the tomatoes are already planted as you will damages the young roots as you hammer the stakes into place.

I am assuming you have not saved your own seed, and are going to have to buy some plants in from the nursery. If you have been growing F1 hybrid plants (and I think you should be) then you cannot save your own seed as they will not come true to type. If you have been growing an open pollinated variety you could have saved the seed last autumn, and have sown about a month ago, but it is probably a bit late now.

You will probably find a slightly bewildering array of plants on offer, with old favourites like ‘Moneymaker’ and ‘Grosse Lisse’ available, as well as a wide range of both heritage types and more modern hybrids. Personally I think you should go for modern F1 hybrids for the bulk of your plants. I know many people believe they are not as flavoursome as the old types, but I think that is a misapprehension based on supermarket fruit, which are picked before they are properly ripe. Grow a modern type like ‘Taupo’ and you will never go back to the older ones.

Among the good modern ‘Moneymaker’ types you could look out for are ‘Taupo’, ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Better Boy’, while larger fruited types include ‘Better Boy’, ‘Big Boy’ and ‘Big Beef’. If you are a fan of Italian types you will probably prefer the old fashioned ‘Italiano’, which I think is as good as any, but you might struggle to find that. ‘Roma’ and ‘San Mazarno’ are two good modern types.

Wisterias

2010-10-03T22:27:00.000+13:00

I had a phone call from a friend the other day telling me that his wisteria was about to flower and asking if I would like to call and see it in a few days. I was glad of the call as he and his wife have one of the most interesting plantings in front of a very appealing 1920s bungalow. A wisteria is wound across the top of a verandah, underplanted with a pair of majestic weeping standard roses which grow above a mix of green and purple weeping maples, the whole bed edged with a clean row of box. The overall effect is very sophisticated and looks attractive all year round, but it looks at its best right now.

The wisterias are Northern Hemisphere climbers, mainly from Asia but also with one or two species from America. The ones we grow in the garden are almost without fail the Asian ones, especially the Japanese W. floribunda and the Chinese W. sinensis, both of which are firm favourite s with gardeners the world over.

The various forms of the Chinese wisteria are the most commonly grown forms. It a very vigorous deciduous climber which can get to an enormous size if left unchecked and in spring has long racemes of lilac or mauve flowers, always heavy with a heady scent. It flowers in the middle of spring with a big burst of fragrance before the leaves appear and always gives a dramatic show.

These climbers are usually grown in the way my friend has grown his plant – as climbers that twine their way across wires, pergolas and trellises, or sneak along fences, but they can be kept as handsome shrubs – even as weeping standards. I have a friend who even has a small example in a large bonsai pot and the effect is amazing.

The most commonly available variety now is W. sinensis ‘Caroline’ which has fragrant lilac flowers. This is a real weather tamer, seeming to flower through the worst of the nor-westers without being shredded, and also coping with the rain without marking too badly. She will usually throw a second crop of flowers in summer – a lot smaller crop of slightly pinker flowers.

The other named varieties you are likely to come across are more likely to be from the Japanese species W. floribunda, and are almost certain to have longer racemes. The longest of all are from the variety called ‘Macrobotys’, which has blue/purple racemes of pea-shaped flowers that can be as long as a metre, although in their home country plants have produced racemes as long as 1.8 metres! The long racemes give a longer flowering season too as the flowers open from the base, slowly working their way along to the tip. Obviously, this plant needs to be trained high enough to take account for its long clusters of flowers.

There are the usual lilac coloured forms of this species too, ‘Cascade’ and ‘Lavender Lace’ perhaps being the best known, but it has also given rise to a wonderful range of coloured varieties as well. W. floribunda ‘Alba’ and ‘Snow Showers’ are delightful white varieties, as their names suggest. They both flower at about the same time as the new leaves open, but as the leaves are bright lime green the effect is appealing enough.
At the opposite end of the colour range is the intriguing but somewhat misnamed ‘Black Dragon’ – do not expect to get jet black flowers. In this case the flowers are actually very dark purple in the bud, but they open to deep violet. The flowers are unusually doubled (the only variety I have ever seen that are) and very fragrant, so they are well worth having.

If you are like the little girls that live next door to our garden, you will be delighted to know there are some pink forms too! With both the varieties ‘Lipstick’ and ‘Pink Ice’ the buds are pinker than the flowers, but the light coloured flowers definitely have a pink cast.

2010-09-19T14:36:00.002+12:00

It has been another wet week, but it has been an interesting one for me. An old gardening friend called in to see me with a potted daffodil bulb, wondering what variety it was. It was a small cupped variety and the petals seemed a very unusual colour – sulphurous green/yellow, with deeper green infusions. It has me quite flummoxed so I took it up to see another gardening mentor who has a passion for dwarf daffodils.

She thought it was probably the variety known as ‘Yellow Cheerfulness’, saying it was variable in colour depending on where it is grown, and that it would probably go more yellow as it opened up.

I have never grown ‘Yellow Cheerfulness’ despite growing most of the common members of that tribe of narcissus, and knew it mainly from selling it for many years, always in packets that show it as bright gold. Turns out the packets were very misleading – it is actually light yellow, fading to almost primrose, and does sometimes take on a decided greenish cast, depending on exactly where it is grown as soil conditions can alter the flower colour. It does, however, have a delightful scent – less heady than ‘Cheerfulness’- and I will hunt it out next autumn for my garden.

That little matter disposed of, we took a walk around my friend’s extensive garden, and she clipped little flowers from her many treasures for me to bring home in a couple of delightful tussie mussies, featuring all sorts of precious little bulbs and perennials. But funnily enough, it is the rhododendrons that I am enjoying most now, including a couple of un-rhododendron-like looking species.

My friend has a small glasshouse in which she grows all sorts of interesting plants, including one of the most oddly named rhododendrons – R.. goodenoughii. This is a lovely species of from the Vireya section, hailing from Goodenough Island in Papua New Guinea, a dramatic species with large fragrant white flowers held above large deep green leaves. The Waitara nurseryman Mark Jury likes this plant, saying it was not “nearenoughii” when he was first given this splendid but rare species. He clearly liked “wellenoughii” though, as he grew it commercially for a number of years!

Vireya Rhododendrons come from the subtropical and tropical areas of the world, and are best known for their dramatically colourful flowers. In the wild they tend to grow in the tops of trees, in a big pile of leaf litter, although there are also some terrestrial species as well.

As you can imagine, they are easier to grow in the milder areas of New Zealand, but even in cooler areas such as ours, they can easily be accommodated by being grown in unheated glasshouse, or even in patio areas. They prefer cooler conditions over summer, so need to be kept shaded and well watered.

Magnolias

2010-09-12T21:04:00.000+12:00

This has been a remarkable season for deciduous magnolias – the best I can remember in years. We have gone through a sustained period without any strong frosts and that has meant that the buds, so often cleaned out by the cold weather, have been able to mature into full blooms, and have been spectacular.

Among those to look their best this year have been the various forms of Magnolia campbellii, with their stunning pink flowers, and the amazing white M. denudata ‘Alba’. There are not too many of these trees in our inland location, partly I guess because the flowers are so frost tender that it can be a heartbreaking occupation growing these beauties. They are also very reluctant to flower early in their lives – we always used to tell people it could take up to 15 years before they would settle into flowering.

If you want to play it safe there are always the very hardy old forms of M. x soulangeana, which are reliably hardy although they are perhaps not as entrancing as modern hybrids, tending to be thinner, tulip-shaped, and often rosy purple flowered. These are the giant magnolias that grace most suburbs in established New Zealand towns. We don’t have any in our garden, but in our neighbourhood there are trees nearly 20 metres high, and they are covered with flowers at this time of the year.

As they grow they take a very pronounced rounded form, which looks slightly eerie over winter (some kids call them witches trees!) but come the spring, when covered with their multitude of two-toned flowers, they are just amazing.

The newer hybrids are a great advance, and over the past fifty years or so, New Zealand has led the world in producing M. campbellii derived hybrids in an amazing range of colours, with increased hardiness and more precocious flowering, as well as reduced size.

The initiator of this progress was Felix Jury, one of the well-known plant breeding family from Taranaki. He had ordered a plant of the M. campbellii form called ‘Lanarth’ from England, but when it first flowered it was immediately obvious that it had been sent in error and was not true to type, but was nonetheless very attractive so he released it, calling it ‘Mark Jury’ after his son.

But things did not stop there. He used this as a parent, crossing it to more compact forms, and developed a wonderful collection of hybrids, including the enormously flowered pink form, ‘Atlas’, the lovely two-toned ‘Athene’, the delectable pink ‘Serene’, two stunning white forms, ‘Lotus’ and ‘Milky Away’, and the remarkable creamy pink ‘Iolanthe’, with its long lasting flowers.

‘Iolanthe’ flowers young, with giant saucer shaped creamy pink flowers that are borne along the branch, not just at the tip as is the common way, meaning the flowering season lasts longer than most other varieties.

2010-08-22T21:28:00.000+12:00

I had a bad case of déjà vu the other day. I was wondering through my local garden centre having a look through their new arrivals, when I noticed a lovely red Leucadendron, with bright shining bracts. It looked a little like the old variety we used to sell as L. salignum ‘Red’, so I looked closer to see what variety it was.

I was pleasantly surprised to see it was named ’Jack Harre’, after the well known and regarded protea grower. It brought back pleasant memories of trips up to the Harre nursery at Rewa, near Kimbolton, where we would load up truckloads of Leucadendrons, Leucospermums and Proteas, and then retire for a cup of tea with Jack. He was an ex-dairy farmer and his nursery was not the tidiest one you will ever see, but he certainly knew his plants and had a great way with words. He wrote a very good book on the Protea family, and was even interviewed by National Radio about his childhood.

The Leucadendron named for him is a compact growing form with flaming-red star-like bracts at the end of arm-length branches from early in winter. The cooler the weather becomes, the deeper the flowers become. This is a rapid growing form suitable for most gardens, and becomes a nicely rounded shrub.

Pebble gardens

2010-08-15T19:31:00.000+12:00

During this past week I have been corresponding with a Christchurch-based researcher who is writing a history of New Zealand gardening. He was interested in the changing way we have gardened over the past forty years, the time I have been active as a gardener, nurseryman and garden writer.

It made me think of the huge changes made in the garden world, with the demise and diminution of many of the specialist flower societies that were once so popular – who has a cactus club in their region any more? – and to the many fads that have come and gone during that time.

The writer was especially interested in the cult of the pebble garden in the 1970s, wondering whether it really was as popular as some of the literature of the time would indicate.

I can certainly recall the intense interest in this form of gardening, which seemed to involve me unloading truckload after truckload of bags filled with dirty and heavy scoria, the pebble of choice, even this far away from the source, and the thousands of dwarf conifers and small Ericas that were very much in fashion for these gardens.

I suspect the fad came from a combination of the popularity of the Western American Sunset series of garden publications, which stressed the idea of planting gardens that required little maintenance, combined with the English notion of heather gardens, largely comprised of Ericas, Callunas and dwarf conifers.
In New Zealand we added some native elements – the variegated Hebe ‘Waireka’ seemed to be in every pebble garden, along with the yellow flax, Phormium ‘Yellow Wave’, and the dwarf dark leaved kohuhu, Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’.

The craze did not last very long, but in a way it has a continuing influence, with many modern gardens having stone mulches and, especially in northern areas, a Californian planting style.

In our rush to get away from such plantings we have also abandoned many of the plants that were such a feature of ‘pebble gardens’, and maybe it is time to rethink our attitudes to these once-popular garden features.

I recently stopped and looked at a heather bed in the Wellington Botanical Gardens, and I was underwhelmed. It contained a number of cultivars from both the Northern Hemisphere, generally with smaller flowers in clusters that flower in winter and spring, and those from the African continent, which have larger flowers, a greater colour range, and also flower for a longer period. I think most of the plants would work be of more value when planted in a mixed planting, and should not be isolated in a ghetto of Erica-only beds.

For winter flowering it is hard to go past Erica melanthera, especially the form sold as ‘Improved’, which has a vibrant mass of pink haze from early June, and the exciting Erica ‘Surprise’, a supposedly pure white form of Erica melanthera which sometimes produces both pink and white flowers hence the name.

2010-08-08T21:06:00.002+12:00

The weekend did not start very well for my whangai granddaughter. A soccer game in the cold and wet went gone badly awry, the scoreline being so onesided I will not embarrass her by repeating it here, but let me assure you, it was ugly, and made worse by her having friends playing in the opposing side.

To try and rescue the day, we decided we would take her younger sister and investigate the pig pens and chicken coops at the nearby school to revive flagging spirits. Fortunately the rain had abated and the wind had died down, so we traipsed across the paddocks to see our farm animal friends.

The children were enchanted by the ham and egg production units, but I was far more taken with the wildlife – mud-encrusted pigs’ snouts just do not do it for me, but the sound of the tuis chortling and singing away in the adjacent gum tress was a delight.

The school has a major planting of gums for firewood but the tuis were inhabiting a beautiful specimen of the winter flowering red gum, Eucalyptus leucoxylon ‘Rosea’. This is a selected form of a widespread Australian species, with deeper coloured red flowers than are normally found in the wild and is an invaluable tree for the gardener wanting to attract extra bird life into the garden in winter, as it flowers for many months during the coldest time of the year.

It is a small to medium sized tree (among a family that has some giant members) with attractive light-coloured bark and typically olive green gum leaves and, although it probably grows too big for small gardens, it is one that should be considered for slightly bigger sections.

I know those who advocate all native gardens for everyone are not going to like the idea of planting Australian gums tui feed, and they are not going to like the idea of using Banskia integrifolia for the same reason. It is perhaps not the most exciting of this Australian genus of trees and shrubs, but the light yellow bottlebrush flowers, usually with a funny greenish cast as well, are very freely produced through most of winter.

There are many different varieties of this species in

Australia

, including both coastal and mountain forms with different growing requirements. The most commonly planted forms in New Zealand are all seed raised and seem to be able to cope with most anything our climate throws at them, although they do struggle with cold and frosty sites.

It is hardy and quick growing, and is often used for shelter belts in warmer areas of the country. It copes with both sandy and clay-based soils, so is a good choice to help establish new gardens.

A new beginning

2010-07-11T17:40:00.000+12:00

The weekend was freezing cold again – but this time I was happy enough with the cooler temperatures, as I had to dig out a new garden, or rather extend an older one.

It was all a bit annoying actually. A visit from the swimming pool inspection team resulted in the information the pool had failed because we had a vegetable garden in the same enclosed area. The kindly inspector patiently explained to me why it was a bad idea, and I have to say I grudgingly agreed with him, although I am still perplexed as to why the pool had passed previous inspections.

I accepted the inevitable, and tried to think of ways around the problem, in the end coming to the conclusion that I had to transfer my vegetable garden out of the enclosed area and into an adjacent area at the end of the driveway. The cleared vegetable grounds would be converted for flowers and shrubs.

That entailed one slight problem. The garden bed at the end of the drive was not big enough, and I knew would be in for a few hours of strenuous digging to convert old driveway into garden. I had created the original bed in the January of the first year we were here, and I knew how hard the compacted base mix was going to be, but I also knew there was going to be some well drained soil underneath it, and I would be able to create a well-drained and fertile garden.

It was certainly easier digging in the cool of winter – the first time I dug this compacted tangle of sandy spoil and small boulders in the summer heat I was taking a break every fifteen minutes and diving into the pool! This time I started in the frosty cold, and as the day warmed (slightly) and I heated, I discarded layer after layer of unwanted clothing until I ended up in a tee shirt and shorts.

As I worked I recalled the interesting plants we had grown in the border over the years.

The bed started out as a mixed border, with lots of perennials and annuals to keep it colourful. The first year of planting featured some annual and perennial Lavateras. The perennial ‘Barnsley’ was undoubtedly the star of the garden. This is the delightful light pink tree mallow that seemed to be in everyone’s garden in the early 1990s, and is a sport from the deeper pink form called ‘Rosea’. It is a quick growing, floriferous plant, flowering for months over spring and summer, but it tends to be short lived. It is easily kept growing from cuttings and certainly makes a wonderful display if grown in the sun with good drainage. Keep an eye out for reversions to the deeper form – it is not quite as attractive.

2010-06-27T11:16:00.000+12:00

I was looking through some of my gardening books on Saturday, as I recuperated from a period outside in that awful windy and wet weather. As often happens, I did not find what I was looking for, and, as usual, it was my own fault – I got sidetracked by a remarkable coincidence. Two different books on perennials described themselves as being the definitive one, “from Acanthus to Zauschneria.”

What is interesting is that both these name are probably unfamiliar to anything other than keen gardeners, although one of them is, or rather was, quite a common plant.

The most famous of the many species of Acanthus is the plant known to generations of gardeners as ‘Bears Breeches’, A. mollis. This is a handsome perennial with shining, green leaves whose distinctive cut shape is replicated in architectural decoration, most famously atop Corinthian columns. As well as a good show of luxuriant looking foliage, the plant carries a wonderful flower show – spikes of purple bracts that enclose white flowers, up to 1.8 metres high.

This plant is at its best in light shade, with good shelter and a deep moist soil but it can be a bit invasive, spreading by deeply buried rhizomes, and, once established, is tricky to remove entirely. It is a valuable plant for the edge of woodland or in semi-wild areas, but perhaps not one to introduce into the most valuable spaces in the garden.

There is an interesting golden foliaged form around, originating in the Hollard garden at Kaponga in Taranaki, called ‘Hollards Gold’. It is very attractive but is just about as persistent.

The only other species sometimes seen in

New Zealand

is a prickly customer, as it the name A. spinosus suggests. In contrast to the above, it has lanceolate leaves, heavily dissected almost to the midrid, and also carries a smattering of soft spines. Unlike the above, this prefers full sun and a well-drained soil, and is often seen with other spiky sunlovers, such as agaves and aloes.

The other end of the alphabet, the Zauschneria is not as popular as it should be in

New Zealand

, as it is a bright and cheerful perennial with a lot going for it. As its common name of ‘Californian Fuchsia’ suggests, it is a native of western North America, and it forms a dense bush from a woody rootstock. The grey/green foliage is topped through the summer and into the autumn with brilliant scarlet flowers, tubular in shape, reminiscent of fuchsias.

This is an easily grown plant in full sun and well-drained soils, where it will easily grow about 40 cm across and about 50 cm high. There is a white form around, which is pretty enough in its own way, but the red is the thing with this plant, so get that one if you can find it. It can be increased by division over the winter, but it strikes readily from semi-softwood cuttings in the spring and I think that is the easier way to go.

Another California perennial that is seldom seen is the amazing Californian Tree Poppy, Romney coulteri, which has the most glorious semi-transparent delicately crinkled white flowers, about 150 mm across. I guess it is best described as a sub-shrub, as it does form a sort of woody base, growing to about 1.5 metres high and around that wide too, but it best treated as though it is an herbaceous perennial, and cut back each year.

The foliage is grey-green again, very deeply cut, and the flowers are borne in clusters of up to 20 on the end of long stems which branch at the top. These flowers, which can be cut for the house although they have an unusual fruity scent, are carried through the spring and into the summer.

This plant is very particular about where it will grow. It needs good drainage and full sun – it simply will not do well in the shade or damp – but then it presents another problem. If it likes where it is growing it can grow too well, and be a bit of a pest. It spreads with runners from its fleshy roots (root cuttings are the best way to increase it) and in well-drained sandy soils it can be a bit of a pest.

2010-06-20T17:50:00.002+12:00

From my office window at home I get a nice view of my neighbour’s golden totara, which is one of those trees that are interesting year round. In the spring the new foliage makes the whole tree go bright green, but as summer arrives it turns rich yellow before arriving at the deep golden colour it keeps for the winter. If left untrimmed at makes an attractive irregular growth habit, but of you have a passion for clipping it can also be kept well under control and trimmed to whatever height you want – within reason. I have seen it used for hedging and the effect is spectacular.

The golden totara, officially Podocarpus totara ‘Aurea’, is a male form and as such will grow slower than most seed grown trees, and will grow in most soils, but like many totaras, does not like to have wet feet.

I think this lovely golden totara may be one of our most underrated trees as it provides some colour, without being a glaring as most of the golden forms of other conifers, such as Macracarpas.

There are not that many golden trees than can comfortably be planted into a modern-sized garden. When I first started in the gardening trade we used to sell hundreds of golden elms, Ulmus procera ‘Lutescens’ also known as Louis van Houtte, but as this quickly tunrs into a giant,it is too big for small gardens, despite its attractions. In spring, the new leaves are bright golden- lime but as summer moves on they age to soft golden yellow, deepening to rich yellow in autumn.

It is one of the hardiest golden leafed trees, well able to cope with windy exposed sites. A friend grew some along the top of a rise on his farm, exposed to winds from all quarters, and, although the trees were certainly not as luxuriant as they would have been in a more sheltered spot, they also grew perfectly well for him.

Probably the most popular golden tree for home gardens now is the wonderfully bright Robinia pseudoacacia ‘Robinia’. This is not really a naturally small tree and needs the occasional pruning to keep it under control, but there is no doubt it is a wonderful tree. The Robinias are native to the United States and

Mexico

, R. pseudoacacia being the only species commonly grown. The type species is a very fast growing tree which has a suckering habit, making it used for erosion control at one time – the stock would not eat it and the timber is very durable, even when untreated. Having said that, it is hardly a tree for the home garden, as it easily reaches 15 metres in ten years, and does not stop then!

‘Frisia’ was, as the name suggests, discovered in a Dutch nursery, and during the 1980s became one of the most widely planted trees in

New Zealand

. It forms a tidy head of bright golden foliage atop a sturdy trunk, and is manageable with a little care.

Pruning is made slightly more difficult because of two traits of most Robinias – prickly stems and hard but brittle wood. Because the wood is also so hard, a saw is usually better than pruning shears, other than with small branches, and even then, because the stems are also brittle, they sometimes snap before the saw is halfway through, so be careful.

‘Frisia’ can be pruned almost any time of the year, even during the periods of high growth, but be warned that if you cut it back too heavily it will respond with very rapidly growing new shoots which will need careful pruning within a month or two.

Red Hot Pokers

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The problem of the winter garden is tackled different ways in different parts of the world. For much of the world that suffers a continental climate, the garden is wrapped up and put away for the winter. There are so few things that can cope with snowdrifts and biting cold that people who live in such climates do not expect to have anything in flower. They pull their garden inside, to ledges in their kitchens, or shelves in their conservatories, and they hibernate until the weather is a little more kind to their gardening aspirations.

In warmer parts of the world the exact opposite happens. Winter is the cooler season when plants can be grown, so gardeners approach the winter season with enthusiasm. In some parts, the summer weather is so hot and dry that plants have evolved reversed deciduous pattern – they go leafless over the summer. In other places, the summer is so wet and disease-ridden that many cool climate crops rot, and have to be sown over the cooler, drier winter period.

Then there are those of us who garden in temperate zones, who like to think we do not have bad winters, and expect our gardens to be at their best all winter long. We plant seedlings that are grown for spring display in other parts of the world – polyanthus and Primula malacoides for example – to give us colour through the winter, and we even look to some perennials to give us colour through the cooler months.

Among those we can rely on are some winter-flowering members of genera we normally think of as spring flowering, and probably the best known of those is the long familiar “Winter Cheer” Red Hot Poker. This is the stoutly performing orange-red flowering plant that is seen in many city gardens (and seemingly every country garden) from the top of the North Island to near the bottom of the South. It can be relied upon to flower from as early as June through to spring.

This is such a tough and free-growing plant that we tend to take the other members of the vast Kniphofia genus for granted, but there are some wonderfully valuable garden plants among them that deserve to be better known.

“Winter Gold” is a case in point. This is probably the best of the golden flowered forms, growing to about 1.2 meters, the same as ‘Winter Cheer’, but this time with golden flowers that start out limey green in the bud.

These two fulfil another function as well. Each flower head is actually a cluster of small tubular flowers which (usually) hang down from the long stems. These small hanging flowers are filled with nectar and over the winter they will be visited by birds, feeding on the nectar.

Overseas these plants are usually called ‘Torch Lilies’ rather than ‘Red Hot Pokers’ and that avoids the clumsy construction that we Kiwis get ourselves into when we want to talk about the other coloured varieties of Kniphofia. For example, it is faintly ridiculous to talk of a yellow ‘Red Hot Poker’, but that is what we are forced to do!

Although New Zealanders are most familiar with the tall growing forms of these South African beauties, it is in fact among the smaller flowered forms that we find the most attractive range of subtle colours. I grow a number of these dwarf varieties and they provide lots of interest in the summer and autumn garden.

Roses

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For beginning gardeners, the idea of planting roses in the depths of winter sounds a bit crazy, and for many of us older gardeners, the thought of mainly planting them in the flowering season seems like an equally insane idea!

I can recall when container grown roses first appeared on the market, and the lack of enthusiasm that garden centre staff had for the idea, thinking it a silly fad that would not catch on. We were wrong of course, and the rose planting season has long ago extended to cover most of the year.

I must be old fashioned but really believe it is better for most deciduous plants to be shifted during their dormant season, while they are at rest and can better cope with the surprise to the system that transplanting imposes on them. Rose planting is easy at this time of the year, provided a few easy preparatory steps have been taken.

The first step is to decide where the roses are to be planted. As a rule, they do best in new soil, so if you are planting into an area that has already had roses in it, it pays to remove the soil and replace it. This is due to an insidious disease called “rose sickness” which, although it does not normally kill roses, makes them grow in such an unhealthy manner as to make them ungardenworthy. If you are replacing soil in an existing bed you will need about a wheel barrowful of soil for each plant.

If you have the luxury of creating a new bed, make sure it is in full sun. There are a few (very few) roses that will cope with semi-shade, but most will need the maximum amount of sunshine, to help keep them disease free if for no other reason. Those that will do better in the slight shade are those whose flowers tend to get burnt in the full sun.

Soil type is important too. The best soil for roses is undoubtedly a slightly stiff loam. By that I mean a good garden soil that is not too light, as thin, sandy soils will dry out too much over summer, and the roses will fail to thrive.

If you have anything other than very rich loam, it pays to work in some compost or well-rotted farmyard manure. Ideally, this should have been done about a month ago, but if you have not had a chance to do it, it is still fine to do it now as long as the manure is not green. It is a good idea to try and keep the bed at the same level as the surrounding ground as elevating the bed will just make it drain more quickly, giving problems late in the dry summer period.

Autumn foliage

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This is surely one of the interesting times of the year, with a plethora of wonderfully coloured trees and shrubs to look for in the streetscape. I wonder how long this will last however, as the heyday of planting deciduous trees seems to have long gone, and as more and more gardeners plant almost only evergreens, we are going to miss out on such a grand autumn display.

One of the reasons for the diminished use of deciduous trees and shrubs is surely the more diminutive gardens we now have. We simple do not have the space for the same number of large specimens and are more reliant on smaller plants for the garden.

Some plants that will fit easily into most gardens, and can be reliably called upon for a spectacular display are the various members of the Cotinus family. These are the Smoke Bushes and feature some of the most amazingly lurid colours in the autumn palette.

There are three species of these in the wild, but there are only two that are commonly available. The first of these is the European smoke bush, C. coggygria which actually grows from Europe into central China, and is perhaps best known for the large panicles of fuzzy looking plumes in early summer that give the plant its common name, especially as they grey into the autumn.

The leaves are bright green during the bulk of the growing season, but as they autumn approaches they take on the most startling array of colours, from yellow to orange to fiery red. They appear to differ from plant to plant, suggesting the New Zealand forms have been seed raised, as overseas, varieties can be selected for a particular colour.

The exception to this rule is the strongly coloured ‘Royal Purple’ which has deep wine-purple leaves which have a conspicuous waxy surface that appears translucent in sunlight. The flowers are a slightly deeper colour through the growing season, and then turn bright orange and burning red in autumn. This is a great plant for associating with lighter coloured foliage. At slightly more than two metres high it is about two thirds the height of its plainer cousin.

The American species C. obovatus is a taller beast altogether, growing to perhaps five metres. It does not have the same floral display of its European kin, but makes up for that with a stunning foliage display in the autumn, when the leaves turn yellow, orange, red, purple – often all at the same time – to give an very impressive show.

In the very small garden, there is another little treasure that can be relied upon to give a great display in autumn – and it is not even deciduous. The dwarf heavenly bamboo (do not worry it is not actually a bamboo, so it will not go mad in the garden) Nandina domestica ‘Pygmaea’ was planted extensively during the 1970s craze for pebble gardens, and has perhaps not regained its proper place in the garden, but its fresh lime leaves during the summer always look attractive, and in autumn and winter it turns on a very impressive display of purple, orange and (more usually) bright red foliage. The colder the winter, and the poorer your soil, the better this will colour up. In fact, you could even do the old nurseryman’s trick of feeding it a bit of sulphate of potash at this time of the year – it will certainly colour up better then!

Shining examples

2010-05-15T19:00:00.000+12:00

When we select new plants for our garden we go through a sort of checklist. We will include all sorts of different attributes for consideration as we think about our garden – flower colour, foliage colour, foliage shape, maybe even foliage texture – but we seldom think of how well the foliage reflects light.
It might sound like a slightly daft thing to be weighing up when choosing plants, but it does have quite a bearing on how we perceive the plant in the garden, especially in winter when light levels are lower. A plant that has a soft surface, covered with fine hairs for example, will absorb much of the light it receives, giving a soft reflection. On the other hand, plants with highly glossy leaves will reflect back much of the light, giving them a brighter appearance.

Perhaps the greatest examples of the power of reflection –“shining examples” I call them – among native plants are the many Coprosma species and varieties.

There are over 100 species in the genus, distributed through the Pacific Rim but centred on New Zealand, where about half the species are found. Many are dwarf shrubs with tiny leaves, but there are also some small trees to be found among the species.

Until recently the best known plant was undoubtedly, C. repens. This is a soft-wooded shrub that will grow as a prostrate shrub in exposed conditions, but in sheltered and humus-rich sites can grow up to nearly ten metres. It has dark green, very glossy leaves, earning it the common name of Looking Glass Bush, Mirror Plant, New Zealand Laurel or Shiny Leaf. I am sure you get the idea!

What has made it very popular as a garden plant is the wide range of coloured sports it has given rise to, which has meant it has become a very popular garden plant in coastal areas in particular. Unfortunately, its reliable performance in windy and exposed sites is matched by its tenacity at setting seed, and it has escaped from the garden in parts of Australia where it is now classed a weed. Perhaps that just our revenge for the magpie!

Over the past few years a lot of coloured hybrid coprosmas have been released onto the market, with so many options for the gardener that it is a little confusing. A trip to the garden centre and a stroll down the “dwarf natives” section will certainly be a colourful experience, especially at this time of the year when so many of the cultivars colour up.

‘Lemon and Lime’ is a small leaved form with very interesting variegation of green and yellow. As the cooler weather appears, the yellow deepens and hints of orange appear. This is a tidy growing form, and like almost all of these hybrids, it is very disease resistant. It is the child of an even better variety – one that has become one of the best selling shrubs in New Zealand, the unremittingly cheerful ‘Evening Glow.’ This has golden foliage over the summer but as autumn arrives it takes on rich orange and deep red hues. That is not a bad achievement for an evergreen shrub, and it has made it into one of the most popular natives.

Autumn glories

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The balmy autumn has continued, much to the consternation of many farmers and gardeners. Warm and sunny days, and near frost-free conditions might be nice of you are on holiday or looking to relax, but it is starting to be a nightmare again for those who need some rain. The summer was moist enough to keep most east coast farmers happy, but there will be a few out there scratching their heads, wondering what happened to the autumn rainfalls. The same applies to gardeners – a weekend in the garden has shown me it is much drier than I had thought, and as I finished each section of the garden, I dragged a hose behind me to try and get some moisture into the soil.

As always, we will be looking at the bright side, thinking that a relatively calm autumn might be good for autumn colour, but the warm conditions will militate against that too, as warmer temperature actually lead to less colour. Has anyone ever travelled to Auckland to see the autumn display?

I caught the start of the autumn colour season while in Dunedin recently. High on hills at the northern end of town, the Dunedin Botanic Garden is a treasure for garden lovers, filled with all sorts of exotic treasures, set in well-tended gardens that I wandered through on a number of occasions. Near the end of our stay, I took my camera with me for a concerted walk through as many of the different gardens as I could.

I was not expecting the Rhododendron garden to be as interesting as it was, bearing in mind it was so late in the season. There was very little in flower, although there were some R. yakushimanum varieties flowering out of season, but the effects of the coloured foliage, a mix of maples and azaleas mainly, was outstanding.

These plants are both relatively easy to grow, and can usually be called on to give a good year-round display.

The deciduous azaleas are probably best known for their wonderful display of flowers in late spring – October and November – when their delicious red, yellow and orange displays are so eye-catching. They flower on bare wood (usually see later) so the flowers are displayed very prominently, and being late flowering they are also safe from frost.

These very hardy plants are probably not as popular as they once were, but they give an unrivalled display, and they are very garden friendly. They are hardy, pest free, easy to look after, and very long lived – what more could you look for in a shrub?

Botanically, these plants are Rhododendrons, and as such need a relatively acid soil, preferably also moist. They are shallow rooting, and they do need to be kept moist over the summer, so thin limey soil is not for them.

There are many varieties on the market and it is pointless for me to suggest any particular ones, but the New Zealand raised Ilam hybrids seem as good as any to me. If you are in the Manawatu area in spring, a visit to the Rhododendron gardens at Kimbolton will be enough to make a convert of you.

Edges and hedges

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One of the difficult areas of the garden is the border lands – those awkward areas where the garden finishes and other elements of the environment start. It can be the line between the garden and the lawn that is the problem, or perhaps the delineation between physical boundaries, such as neighbouring properties or a driveway or roadway.

In some situations an informal edging between the two environments works well. In a woodland garden, for example, it looks great of the understory of planting gradually give way to a soft bark pathway, or even on the edge of quite hard planting, the effect can be softened by having sprawling plants that help blur the edge. We have a wooden wall retaining an elevated lawn area, and have planted some trailing plants to help soften the boundaries. Sometimes, though, you actually want a clear delineation between two different areas, and that is when formal hedging some into it own.

I was recently in the extensive gardens of Larnach Castle, high on the Otago Peninsular, overlooking Otago Harbour and Port Chalmers – I was supposed to be visiting the castle itself, but the gardens held my attention for much longer than the building. Even though it was late autumn and the garden was long past its summer splendour, there was still plenty of interest.

The formal gardens in front of the house have been cleverly designed to reflect and augment the severe Scottish Baronial architectural style employed in the castle, with very formal edgings in somewhat informally shaped beds. The beds are extensively edged in box, with corner highlights of totara topiary.

There are a number of varieties if box hedging, all forms of Buxus. The most commonly grown is English box, a relatively slow growing form. This sounds like a less desirable trait, but you have basic conflict between the desire to have your edging looking as mature as possible, as quickly as possible, and the need to keep the growth under control once the plant has reached its desired height and width.

I would plump for English box, perhaps buying the more expensive advanced grade plants, which can be found easily enough in the trade. They will be four years old and perhaps 40 cm high. Pop some fertiliser in the soil once the plants are well established, and continue to fertilise about twice a year. It is essential to water the fertiliser in well as it will burn the foliage is just left sprinkled on the surface.

Little berried treasures

2010-04-25T21:18:00.003+12:00

A recent trip to the South Island had many highlights, but one of the was an early Sunday morning stroll through the Christchurch Botanic Garden, looking and photographing the many horticultural treasures the garden contains.
I spent some time conversing with another early morning riser in the Curator’s House vegetable patch. He was, he delighted in telling me, a European, although he seemed to me to have a perfectly New Zealand accent.

His origin was a talking point as we discussed the flavour of the little

New Zealand

cranberries, Myrtus ugni, that were heavily in fruit. He pinched a few of the bright red berries and chomped on them enthusiastically. He said he was puzzled that I did not share his predilection for this Chilean native.

For those of you not familiar with this little shrub, it is a small growing evergreen shrub from South America, with small glossy dark green leaves that are spicy if crushed. In spring they bear small drooping white flowers which are followed by small pink to red fruit, which can be born from March to May. They have a very peculiar fragrance and taste – something sweet surely, but underlain by a turpentine flavour.

My fellow visitor insisted that I was displaying my British origins, and if I was European I would love the flavour, as the more sophisticated European palate prefers the slightly turpentine flavour of the berry. I cannot say I was convinced, but being a basically affable sort of guy I agreed with him, and we happily went our separate ways.

The clever gardeners had used the cranberries as a hedge at the edge of the vegetable plot because it forms an easily trimmed barrier that can be kept relatively short, and will also not rob the garden of too much nutriment. This smart little plant will also look good as a part of a shrubbery, and I have even seen it used an espalier and as a subject for topiary.

Christchurch plants

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I was standing at the counter in my local supermarket when a lady came up to me, asking me to identify a plant she had seen on a garden tour. She did not have it with her and could only give a vague description – it was a perennial with blue flowers and did not grow very tall. I was very confused at first, but then she gave me the crucial piece of information – the flowers were sort of everlasting.

I knew then what it was – but it took a bit of head scratching before I finally managed to dig the name out of the dark recesses of my mind – Limonium perezii. It is not a plant I had seen for a few years, but at one time it was very popular.

In the late eighties there was a bit of a passion for growing everlasting flowers for the market, and lots of small paddocks were planted with row upon row of everlasting daisies and annual statice plants. The fad did not last very long and the paddocks were returned to ponies, or perhaps upgraded to alpacas.

But the craze did engender a bit of interest in some of the more unusual members of the statice, including this intriguing plant, so I was intrigued to see clumps of this Canary Island native in a perennial border in a recent visit to the Christchurch Botanic Garden on a recent visit.

The border stretched along a long stretch from the museum entrance down towards the hot house, and featured a great range of cool climate perennials, as well as a few warmer ones. It was long past its best, with lots of dead flower heads on view, but it still had lots of interest.

Limonium perezii is sometimes called Prez’s sea lavender, and is one of many valuable garden plants from the Canary Islands. It has a woody rhizome, from which tough bright green leaves about 30 cm long, emerge, followed by a stiff panicle of flowers. The flowers are small, with purple sepals and white petals, but they are carried exuberantly. They look fine on their own, but even better when grown in clumps. They associate well with other Mediterranean plants like lavender, rosemary and bearded irises.

As a matter of interest, these have slightly naturalised themselves in warm parts of California. I do not think they would be a problem here, but I also know they are relatively easy to grow from seed, as I have done it!

There are many species in this genus but not that many worth growing in the garden. The very best is almost impossible to buy in New Zealand – the wonderful pink flowered shrubby South African species I knew as L. roseum, but now called L. peregrinum. This grows to about two metres and with bright green leaves. It is covered with panicles of pink flowers, which fade as they age. It is very difficult to grow and not even easy to propagate, but it is a thing of rare beauty. I grew some from seed gathered from a friend’s plant and was able to sell them all very quickly.

All the way from Amsterdam

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When I say I have a mania for tulips I do not want you to get the idea that I have caught the obscure Dutch disease of the 17^th century and mortgaged the house, sold the car, traded in the Head Gardener and bought sacks filled to the brim with tulip bulbs. Because things really did get that extreme in Holland at one time. The rarest of the varieties sold for 10 times the annual salary of a tradesman. Assuming you plumber makes about $60,000 a year, that is $600,000 for one bulb!

Now I am mad about bulbs, and I love tulips, but that amount of money almost beggars belief. And of course, it was not about the bulbs at all – the whole sensation was perhaps the first economic bubble. As long as more and more money kept chasing less and less bulbs, the price was forced up, and up, until it all fell down in a heap. Remind you of anything that has happened recently, with finance companies and house prices?
Still, we can count ourselves lucky because we can buy bulbs at a severely discounted price to 1637, and can afford to splash out and buy enough of these bulbs to make a solid effect.

Normally, I would be against the idea of bulk planting bulbs. The flowering season is too short and if you get bad weather in the middle of that season, you miss out on a whole year’s worth of blooms. But I am prepared to make an exception for tulips. The effect of the massed plantings in the Wellington Botanical Gardens is genuinely amazing – even our non-gardening son was impressed with the display and wandered around taking photographs.

Tulips are relatively easy to grow and flower, for the first year at least. They will have been grown in ideal conditions over the previous growing season, and the flower will have been formed and lock in deep within the bulbs. All you need to do is provide it the right conditions and it will sprout forth for you next spring.

There are a few little tricks to bear in mind. In our conditions it pays to plant tulip bulbs a little later in the season that most other bulbs. They need a proper period of chilling before they will bloom properly, so it pays to buy pre-chilled bulbs, or to hold off planting until the season is a little cooler. For warmer areas you can even plant into June, but I would think you would be best to get your bulbs in by the end of this month, or perhaps into early May.

Clothed in nakedness

2010-03-28T20:16:00.000+13:00

Regular readers of this column will now I am a great fan of autumn. I love the cooling temperature, I relish on the sweet scents and savour the mellow fruitfulness of the decay of the growing season. And, of course, I love the bulb season.

When we think of bulbs in March and April we naturally think of the plethora of spring flowering bulbs, corms and tubers that are now gracing the walls of our favourite garden centres. But there are other bulbs (and corms and tubers too) that prefer to flower at this time of the year. The remarkable thing about so many that flower at this time of the year is that they are naked – naked boys and naked ladies are both abundant, clothed in nakedness.

The naked ladies are certainly the best known of the naked flowers, and at one time all gardens would have had a stand of these reliable autumn-flowering members of the daffodil family.

Known for years as belladonnas, (literally 'lovely lady') the botanical name for this hardy favourite is Amaryllis belladonna, and it hails originally from that land of fabulous bulbs, South Africa, from the rocky and dry soils of Western Province. As such they are ideally suited for growing in well-drained sites in New Zealand. They flourish in poor conditions, and when well-suited will rapidly naturalise. I think the best naked ladies I have ever seen were in the convent garden at Hiruharama (Jerusalem) on the Whanganui River – surely an unlikely place to find naked ladies!

Most gardeners are familiar with the light pink forms of this robustly growing bulb, but there is actually a lot of variation among them. I love the white forms, and have seen two quite distinct forms. I grow a pure white, which glistens with icy whiteness, but there is also a warmer looking form with a golden throat. Neither of these seems to be available in the trade under any specific name.

There are also a number of brighter pink forms, the best of which is possibly 'Beacon' which is almost cerise coloured. Dr Keith Hammett, best known for his work with breeding dahlias, has also had a lick at these plants, trying to breed salmon toned forms. He has had some success and some new varieties are in the pipeline. A friend gave me some seed from his programme (thousands of them) and I have some seedlings in the glasshouse, but I expect it will be a few years before I see any results.

The autumn blues

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I had the mortification of rolling over another year last week. It really does seem that they steamroll through so quickly that I cannot keep up with them.

Still, looking on the bright side, I do have my birthday at the right time of the year for a bulb-loving gardener, as most people know it is a very easy gift for me, and each year I get my share of daffodils and tulips. Fortunately, I manage to get a few of the more unusual types each year as well.

This year, for example, I was given a little packet of striped squills – Puschkinia scilloides. These are dwarf-growing members of the hyacinth family, and are most closely related to the blue bells and Chionodoxa. They are very hardy, originating in the eastern Mediterranean, and will cope with almost anything the New Zealand climate throws at them. They are small bulbs – about the size of a Lachenalia – and should be planted in full sun to light shade, in generous clumps. In the spring they pop up with little heads of cool blue flowers, each petal striped with a deeper band.

In England, this charming little plant is used for naturalising, but I have not seen it used that way in New Zealand. Perhaps it is too fragile to compete with our stronger-growing pasture. It is best planted near the front of a flower border or in the rock garden.

The nearly-related Chionodoxa species are perhaps even more attractive, the blue tones often being clearer. These are called ‘Glory of the Snow’ because they flower very early in the season. They make great rock garden plants and also do very well in pots. Like the striped squills, they will look their best when they are massed.

The best of these is C. forbesii ‘Blue Giant’. It has sky-blue tipped white flowers, and shines in the garden.

Like the striped squill, this is an easily grown plant that will grow happily in a sunny position with humus enriched soil. It will cheefully set seed as well, which can be sown in seed trays and will germinate over winter. It is easy to quickly raise large numbers of bulbs this way.

These little plants are closely related to Scillas, a genus that seems to be always undergoing revision, with species joining and leaving at a remarkable rate.

Perhaps the best of these is the striking C. peruviana, the so-called Peruvian blue bell, although it comes from the Mediterranean, not Peru! It is a large bulb with thick waxy leaves. The flower heads first appear as rounded heads of stars but as they elongate the flowers open to violet-blue. The flower heads will eventually become 40 cm long.

There are a number of different coloured forms, ranging from the usual violet-blue through lighter blues to almost white. They are very hardy plants, flourishing in quite neglected areas while still flowering year after year.

Daffy for daffodils

2010-03-06T20:25:00.000+13:00

It is too ironic for words. All season long we have been complaining about the wet, wet, wet summer we have been having, and now, the beginning of March when we expect some rains, it has turned mild and fine on us.

Everyone I know is grumbling about their tomatoes – it just been an absolutely awful year for them – and mine, although fruiting well, look like nothing on earth. The bottom leaves have fallen to blight, and the top leaves are thin and ugly looking.

As always, though, we gardeners are an optimistic lot, so we are all looking forward to having a normal summer (whatever that means) next year.

The sunny days of March have been matched with some cool evenings, no doubt pleasing the orchardists who need a big diurnal temperature difference to colour theirapples. It is also a pleasant reminder to the rest of us that autumn has arrived and it is time to start thinking about planting some spring-flowering bulbs.

One of the delights of gardening in our temperate climate is the wide range of plants we can grow and bulb season shows that up, with cold climate species and bulbs from warmer climes elbowing for space on the garden centre shelves.

For most of us though, spring bulbs begin with daffodils, and I guess there are many for whom they end at daffodils as well. For most the image of a daffodil is a large trumpeted variety, probably golden all over, but there is a wide range of varieties, with a surprisingly wide range of colours and a large range of sizes as well.

One of the beauties of the daffodil is that it will grow almost anywhere in our country. Perhaps if you are gardening in the more humid and warm areas in the north of the North Island it might be a little more difficult, but for most of us it is quite straight forward as long as one or two little things are borne in mind.

The first is to simply remember that these bulbs almost all grow in meadows in the wild – they are used to quite moist soil in the spring. That means they do not want to be waterlogged over winter, but they also do not like growing in hot, dry conditions either.

Secondly, they like a bit of feeding too.

So, let’s assume we have been down to the garden centre, or perhaps spent some time perusing the colourful fliers garden centres seem to specialise in, and you have been seduced by some colourful looking varieties. What do you do next?

Well, actually what you do is wait. Daffodils are best planted once the soil has cooled down a little, so perhaps it might pay to wait another month before planting out. It is a good idea to keep the bulbs in the refrigerator during that time as a little chilling before planting will help to promote better flowering in the spring.

Where to plant is the next question. The best place is a well-drained sunny site with deep soil. If possible the bulbs should be planted about 20 cm deep as daffodils require deep soil to feed properly. You can plant even deeper in light soils, as that will help keep the bulbs cooler.

It is a good idea to work some bulb fertiliser into the soil while planting. Make sure it is bulb fertiliser though, as it is higher in potash and contains less nitrogen. The lower nitrogen levels are important as this element promotes leaf growth at the expense of flowers, and also makes the bulbs more prone to disease. Do not be tempted to use a general fertiliser for your bulbs.

Feeling like a dill?

2010-02-28T20:50:00.000+13:00

The first week in March is Herb Awareness Week, promoted by the Herb Federation of New Zealand. Each year the Federation promote the herb of the year as chosen by the International Herb Association, and adds another three herbs of their own choice.

This year the international choice has been dill, a member of the vast Umbilliferae family, along with carrots, Queen Anne’s Lace and parsley. It is an easily grown annual, looking superficially like fennel, but with blue-green leaves rather than fennel’s yellow-green ones, and lacking the distinctive aniseed scent of the latter.

It is best to sow the seeds in situ as the plants resent being moved, like most of their cousins. They are spindly growers and might even need some twiggy framework to cling to us they grow, but once established they are self-supporting. They are usually grown in a succession of sowings, as they mature in about six weeks and a number of crops are needed to ensure a constant supply of leaves.

They are good plants to have growing in amongst others as they attract lots of insectivorous insects – the ones that will eat your aphids - and the little umbels of yellow flowers are very attractive in a subdued way.

Dill is one of those classic herbs, more commonly used in Northern Europe than in the Mediterranean areas where it is supposed to originate. The leaves are best snipped and chopped very finely, before being added to fish dishes in particular. The leaves are best harvested shortly before flowering as they will be at their strongest then.

Once flowering has occurred, the plants should be left alone to ripen the seeds. These are used us a flavouring for pickles, in particular for small pickled cucumbers. I have a friend who makes some pots most summers, and lets me have a jar if I am especially nice to her – and they are delicious

It is also said to have some medicinal properties. If taken at bedtime it can help sleep, as both leaves and seeds have a mild sedative effect. It is also meant to be great at getting rid of the hiccoughs!

Dichroas at 'Woodleigh'

2010-02-21T17:07:00.000+13:00

Last week I wrote about a recent visit to the Taranaki garden of author Glyn Church. ‘Woodleigh’ is situated just north of Oakura, near another nationally significant garden, ‘Ngamamaku’. ‘Woodleigh’ is home to Glyn’s extensive hydrangea collection, and during my visit we spent some time looking at some of his favourites among the many species and varieties that make us this large group of plants.

The first plant we saw was a very large specimen of Dichroa versicolor. This shrub from China has become quite well-known in the past few years, and is sold under a variety of names – usually with “blue” at the beginning.

I have always known it to be a relative of the hydrangea, but Glyn was able to shed a little more light on its history. He told me he introduced it to New Zealand, and had it growing in his garden for some years before it was released to the market. From there, different nurseries picked it up, giving it varietal names. It is an evergreen shrub with bright blue flowers from early summer into the autumn. The bright blue flowers are fertile, and carry berries in the autumn.

One year he noticed some seedlings in his garden, which he grew on until they flowered. Once they flowered he formed the opinion that they were actually crosses with a Hydrangea, and kept careful notes of the various hybrids he had. He spoke at a Hydrangea conference in Belgium (yes – there are such things!) about his discovery, and was intrigued to find an American nurseryman who has raised many hybrids between Dichroa and Hydrangea, and never succeeded in breeding anything as colourful as Glyn’s seedlings. It turns out, too, that the plant we have been growing as D. versicolor is in fact a hybrid itself, first found by the plant hunter Robert Fortune in a Chinese nursery.

As we walked around the garden, Glyn showed me the plant he considers the best of his hybrids – one called ‘Cambridge Blue’, and it is a lovely big flowered hybrid.

Work will continue in these crosses, as they offer the chance of evergreen hydrangeas that are able to grow in full sun, as the Dichroa does.

'Woodleigh Garden'

2010-02-14T09:59:00.000+13:00

The gardens of Taranaki hold a great allure to those of us who garden in the east. The extra rainfall and increased humidity, and the generally more temperate climate, make Taranaki home to many famous gardens, gardeners and nurseries.

My forays to explore this wonderful horticultural region have almost always been undertaken in the spring, usually in conjunction with the fabled Rhododendron festival.

There are 32 gardens of national significance in New Zealand – 10 of them in Taranaki. Until last week I had visited 9 of them, so I thought it was about time I saw the tenth, Glyn and Gail Church’s ‘Woodleigh Gardens’, just north of Oakura, on the Surf Highway. This is a fabled garden among hydrangea growers, as Glyn Church is a work acclaimed authority on these shrubs, and their allied species, and unlike most Taranaki gardens, has a summer emphasis.

It was very hot when I called in, and I was glad to sit inside with Glyn, at the dining table, overlooking the extensive garden, to chat for a while before venturing outside

In front of the house, overlooking a large pond, was a hedge that looked at first glance like box, but closer inspection revealed it to be mature forms of the native scarlet rata Meterosideros fulgens. In the wild, this clambers up through the canopy until it reaches the light, and then flowers in the upper storey of the forest, usually red but sometimes yellow. The form at ‘Woodleigh’ was a lovely burnt orange.

Two other rare plants in the top garden took my eye. The first was a Canary Islands Foxglove, Isoplexis canariensis. This is a woody perennial that makes a stand of deep green, serrated leaves, topped for months on end with brownish-orange trumpet shaped flowers in tall racemes. I grew this plant from seed many years ago, but it clearly thrives much better in the nearly frost-free ‘Woodleigh’ than it did for me. Glyn told me it has another great attraction for him – the bell birds love feeding from it.

Near by was a large perennial growing Cassia species I had never seen before. Glyn told me it was C. didymobotrya, an African species he grew from seed, and had been unable to propagate again. It does not grow from cuttings and does not set seed in his garden. It has upright stems of bright golden flowers, as you would expect from a Cassia. It grows exuberantly, covering a few square meters. No lean and hungry look to this Cassia!

‘Woodleigh’ is a garden well worth visiting. Glyn is a generous and affable host, and the hours I spent walking around the garden with him were marvelous. Next week we will take a closer look at his collection of hydrangeas.

A 'Naki road trip

2010-02-12T14:29:00.001+13:00

Tuesday started out with a leisurely run along the spectacular coastal walkway in New Plymouth. This is a stunning track that snakes around the edge of the coastline from the Waiwhakaiho River down to the port, about 6 kms in all. I ran from one end to the other, then turned around and went back!

It was a calm, still, warm morning, with lots of people out walking, running, biking and even a few swimming.

I raced back to my motel in Inglewood, and set off on my overland adventure, along to Stratford then onto the wonderful Forgotten World Highway, which snakes through the Taranaki hinterland, through dense rain forest, past Whangamomona and out into 'tiger country.'

A detour along a narrow country road led to the Mt Damper Falls - all 85 metres of them. The drop is huge but the summer flow was not so dramatic.

Still, I am very glad I called in to see it, as I saw one of my all time favourite plants, Parataniwha, Elatostema rugosum, growing in the wild. I love this native herb.

I then headed further into the wilds, along a rollercoaster road, eventually joining SH3 just to the north of Mount Messenger. I followed the Tongapuroto River north until I reached its mouth. I parked up and walked looking at the remarkable effects of the sea on the landscape, including the popular 'Three Sisters" - although there are now only two and a bit!

I found a dead crab, stranded in a sea cave. It took some imaginative use of the camera's time exposure to get these slightly odd pics.

Hunger forced me to hit the road again, and I ended up eating lunch in Waitara at about 4.00 p.m. While I was eating I looked through the local newspaper and saw that Central Districts was playing a cricket game at Pukekura Park, so I scooted along and watched that for a while, before detouring up to the North Egmont Visitors Centre on the flanks of Mount Egmont/Taranaki on my way back to the motel.

I found this littrle chap sitting on some grass. This was taken with a 70mm lens, so you can see how close I was able to get to him!

In the 'Naki

2010-02-12T13:52:00.000+13:00

Monday saw me headed north for a few days. I called in at Marton on my way, to catch up with a couple of cousins. Wally, New Zealand’s biggest second hand bookseller (him, not the store) was complaining about the lack of business, while his sister PJ looked frazzled beyond belief as she served me a coffee at her shop.

I pushed on to the outskirts of Oakura, where I spent four delightful hours in the garden with Glyn Church, a world-renowned hydrangea expert - more to come on that visit.

In the evening I backtracked a little and went to have a quick look at Parihaka – a very sad sight (and site). I parked on the side of the Hangatahua River (known to pakeha as Stoney River) near Okato.

I then pushed on for New Plymouth, where I wandered around Pukekura Park, taking photographs until then light had nearly gone.

Such a great day.

Waitangi Day and a bit of time off

2010-02-12T13:38:00.001+13:00

My annual leave has built up so much that the people over at corporate services are starting to give me the evil eye, so I am taking a week off. In order to take this time off I am working all weekend.

Well, not quite as mad as it sounds. I had a speech to give on Waitangi Day, to a group of descendants of one of our founding families. The twenty minute speech went down well – it took me over 90 minutes to get away. Various family members wanted copies of the presentation, so that was uber cool.

In the afternoon I worked at the archive until 4.00, and then went over to the park for the town’s Origins Festival, a celebration of our cultural diversity. A couple of organisations I am on the board of (New Pacific Studio and Arrow FM) were there, but my little adopted grandchildren Emily (nearest camera) and Summer were there too, and I spent most of the time with them. The local newspaper caught me helping them decorate some sheep for an upcoming celebration of the 50th Golden Shears competition.

Outsmarted - and still smarting

2010-02-07T20:49:00.000+13:00

My best laid plans for tricking the little girls that frequently visit our garden have gone astray. You might remember that I reported in the spring that I had sowed some purple carrot seed to try and catch the girls out when they went bandicooting in my vegetable patch.

They were in the garden today, relaxing after having a swim. I nonchalantly mentioned that they could have some carrots if they liked, and the younger one enquired if they were purple or orange!

They are obviously far too smart for me, but I did manage to extract a kind of revenge. They had ridden their bikes around to our house so I offered to accompany them home – and took them on a large detour to photograph some climbing plants. It involved ascending a long but not excessively steep hill, but it was too much for the younger girl, who resorted to pushing her bike part of the way. She turned the tables on me as we neared home, streaking past and screaming with delight as she beat me to the front gate.

So what were we looking for on our ride?

My first mission was to photograph the hardy “Chilean Jasmine”, Mandevilla sauveolens. This is one of the very few hardy climbers with large white flowers, and can be relied on to flower for months over the hotter part of the year. It is deciduous (that is how it copes with cold weather) but clothes up early in the spring and looks great for the warm months.

It is not actually a jasmine – in fact, it is a member of the Oleander family, and like many members of that group, it has a degree of toxicity. Garden books vary enormously on this issue, most saying it is only so to a minor degree, and a lot of leaves would need to be eaten before it caused any problem. It does have sticky white latex which can be a skin irritant for some people, but do not let these things put you off having this plant. It grew for many years along a trellis in my grandparent’s courtyard, and I never heard of it having any ill effects on anyone.

When we got home , the girls proudly took me around their garden, showing me the strawberry patches (two!) asking whether berries just turning pink were ready to eat. We looked at passion fruit, broccoli, pumpkins, tomatoes, sweet corn and capsicums.

Then the younger girl took me down to the darkest corner of the section to show me a bright white flower growing on a tree. Only it was not on the tree. It was on a climber that was twining through the tree. It was, of course, a Chilean jasmine.

By the time I biked home I felt quite depressed -completely outsmarted (and outbiked) by a nine and an eleven year old - and secretly pleased they were so interested in the garden!.

Lavender scents

2010-01-31T20:36:00.000+13:00

I have had a bit of a surprise this summer – if “summer” is what you can call it. I had always imaged the aromatic woody herbs – lavender, rosemary, sage, thyme – would release their essential oils best on very hot days.

I had visions of strolling through dry Mediterranean landscapes, crushing these small shrubs as I wandered by, surrounded by olfactory delights.

But it seems I might have been wrong.

Most days I cycle to work past a large bed of English lavenders, lining a pedestrian crossing, and this wet, soggy and thoroughly annoying summer, the plants have more scented than I have ever noticed before.

It just seems so incongruous.

All the garden books advise planting these shrubs in a very sunny, well-drained site, but there these plants are, thriving in a soggy summer, and flowering and “scenting” very well. It is so confusing!

There are, of course, a great many different types of lavender to choose from, and perhaps it is just this one variety that is heavily scented in the rain.

Most lavenders fall into one of three distinct groups: the French lavenders, derived from Lavendula dentata; the Spanish or Italian lavenders, L. stoechas, and the “English” lavenders, (that do not actually come from England) L. angustifolia.

In general terms, the French are the largest growing varieties, with long stems and toothed leaves (hence the “dentate” part of their name). The Italian and Spanish varieties are smaller growing, and have lovely soft grey foliage. The English hybrids are usually the smallest growing varieties, with finer foliage and daintier flowers.

The French types are not planted as often as they would be if they were smaller growing, as they end up too big for most gardens. You can still buy them for hedges, but they will grow up to two metres tall.

The “stoechas” varieties are now the most numerous, and it seems there are new varieties on the market each year. You only need to grow a few of these, and have them start seeding, to quickly realise how variable they are from seed, and how easy it would be to start selecting for different flower types and growth habits.

Perhaps the best one for New Zealand conditions is the Invercargill-bred ‘Marshwood’. This has lovely deep purple flowers with extended dusky pink ‘ears’. This is a very reliable variety, and is now grown in many parts of the world. There is an even deeper form, a seedling from ‘Marshwood’, called ‘Hazel’ that is worth looking out for.

There are many different colours and shades among these plants, with green, pink and nearly-white forms popular over the past year years, and they seem to come and go at a bewildering rate. One I am sure will be around for a while is the intriguing little ‘Bee Happy’, which has violet blue flowers with pure white wings, or ears. There are others in the ‘Bee’ range – ‘Bee Bold’ has dark purple flowers topped with purple wings, while ‘Bee Sweet’ has purple flowers with light pink wings. They are cheerful additions to the ranks of easily grown shrubs.

At last - the true Geraniums

2010-01-25T20:30:00.000+13:00

For the past couple of weeks we have been taking a look at the plants most gardeners call “geraniums”, although they are in fact members of the closely related Pelargonium genus. These are the showy succulent perennials, largely from South Africa, that grace most New Zealand gardens, usually placed in dry, sheltered areas where other most plants struggle.

There are however, many very useful plants among the true Geraniums, and they are met with much more infrequently, despite being colourful, long-lasting perennial plants.

One of the best of these is the delightful Geranium maderense. This is a slightly frost tender perennial from Madeira. It has large pinnate leaves which have a tropical feel. Each plant forms a large dense clump up to metre in height and diameter. The flowers only appear after two or three years, but the floral effect is well worth the wait.

A huge stem appears in the middle of the clump, rapidly expanding until its many branches hold hundreds of bright magenta pink flowers, each with a contrasting deep maroon eye.

Unfortunately this wonderful perennial is a short lived one – it tends to be monocarpic and after its one and only flowering, it dies. Fortunately it is a prolific seeder, and a crop of seedlings will soon appear underneath the old plant. These can easily be transplanted.

As it is a touch tender, this plant will do best in a protected but cool area – under light shade suits it well. It flourishes among the Rhododendrons, bog primulas, hostas and maples of Taranaki, where it is almost a weed at times.

Not all the species are as tall as G. maderense, and among the smaller growing forms there are many that are ideally suited for the front of a mixed border, and as ground cover in sunny areas.

One variety we have grown for many years is Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir White’. This

plant will grow in full sun or partial shade with stems can be as tall as 50 cm. The pale flowers, which are 4-6 cm across, appear pink rather than white, because of the pink veining in the petals. There is also a purple form of this species. You will not be surprised to read it is called ‘Kashmir Purple’.

When I first stared gardening the most common of the small true geraniums was probably the “Bloody Cranesbill”, G. sanguineum, its Latin name reflecting is common name, or vice versa. Its names, apparently, have nothing to do with the colour of its flowers, which in my experience are a lurid magenta pink, but rather the red colours the leaves take in the autumn.

It is an attractive plant all year round, in or out of bloom. The foliage is usually more distinctly cut than other geraniums, giving it a delicate appearance. The typically cup-shaped flowers can come in shades of pink, magenta and white, and give one of the best bloom displays of all the geraniums, the flowers can completely hiding the foliage.

If you are sick of the once fashionable white flowers and are looking for a garden to suit the more Goth-like members of your family, G. phaeum is just the thing for you. A medium sized plant with leafy foliage, this species comes complete with nodding flat flowers in a sombre purplish-red colour – almost black enough to satisfy the most angst-ridden teenager!

It prefers shade or semi-shade where it will make a good ground cover.

More sort ofs........

2010-01-17T11:00:00.000+13:00

Last week I wrote about the much neglected zonal pelargoniums, or geraniums as most people call them, inspired partly by the wonderful flowering season they have been having this year. I confess I have even squirreled a few cuttings from plants I have seen growing too close to the footpath. I will undoubtedly end up with more plants than I can use, but there you go.

I have always had a fondness for ivy leaved geraniums, with their slow trailing (or climbing) growth habits making them very useful in many parts of the garden. The more vigorous varieties can be allowed to climber up a trellis – we have a passionately shaded deep red form (it is almost black actually) sliding up the outside of the glasshouse – while the less vigorous varieties can be left to feature in hanging baskets.

There are many varieties, in all the usual pelargonium shades, as well as a few with very decorative leaves. One of the best of these is the old variety L’Elegante with grey-green leaves, each with a white edge that turns pink if the plant is kept somewhat dry. It has single white flowers which bloom in clusters.

Each nursery seems to produce its own branded series of ivy leaved pelargonium, so it probably pays to buy them in flower.

Regal pelargoniums are the flashy brothers to the zonals – a bit less hardy, but with larger flowers in a wonderful range of colours.

In the inland parts of Wairarapa and Hawkes Bay these need a little cosseting – they really do not like frosts and need to be kept protected over winter – but in warmer areas, and especially coastal areas they thrive, giving generously of their abundant flowers through summer.

These almost shrub like plants have been derived from strains that were originally predominantly lilac and purple, and were taller and stragglier in growth. Sometimes you will see a variety like this in an older garden, usually growing fairly wild.

Hybridisers have got to work on them improving the growth habits, and greatly improving the flowers. Today it is possible to find straight colours in almost all shades of red, pink and purple, and in many cases the flowers are blotched or feathered with wonderfully contrasting colours.

These guys need similar conditions to the zonals – good drainage, plenty of water during the growing season, and the occasional tidy up to keep them in shape. Apart from that there are few problems growing these beauties.

Geraniums- well, sort of....

2010-01-10T14:58:00.000+13:00

Some plants just do not get the respect they deserve. Perhaps they are too easily grown, and maybe they are too closely associated with working class gardens, but some plants are never given the credit they deserve, and are not planted often enough nor thoughtfully enough in our gardens.

Perhaps the best example of that is the poorly regarded zonal pelargonium, more usually known as the bedding geranium. This free flowering, summer blooming succulent-stemmed shrub is very popular in many parts of the world, but here is relegated to municipal bedding schemes and the like.

It is a travesty as this wonderful plant has any amount of colour, it is drought and wind hardy –not so keen on frosts of course- and is as reliable as anything through the summer. In some more northern areas of the country rust can be a problem, forming on the undersides of the leaves, but this far south it is nowhere near as bad a problem, and zonal pelargoniums are unlikely to be bothered by too many diseases.

There are many thousands of different kinds of this adaptable and versatile plant, some grown for their colourful leaves –the “zonal” in their name refers to their leaf markings – others for their brightly coloured flowers, while yet others are treasured for their exquisitely shaped flowers.
Perhaps the most commonly seen forms today are the seed raised varieties offered for sale in garden centres and supermarkets. These are raised from very dear hybrid seed, and have been developed overseas for the potted plant trade. In most of Europe and America, these plants are largely grown to be planted out for a season then discarded. Traditionally the bright red forms are the most popular – often planted out with white petunias and blue lobelias to give a very patriotic garden - but the hot pinks are also very popular today.

One colour that has been taken up with fervour by some local councils is the “orange” strain. This is not orange really, but is an orange-ish form of scarlet, and is very effective in the garden. I have seen it bedded out with greenish Nicotiana plants, and the beds work very well. This would also work a treat if you had a terracotta planter or wall to work with.

Just because these are raised from seed does not mean they cannot be kept going from cuttings. Most of you will know that these plants are ridiculously easy to strike. I just snap a stem at a node, and leave it in a shady place for a few hours. This allows the cut area to form a little callous, which stops it from rotting before it can root. Then I just pop the cuttings into a sharp potting mix – I usually add some pumice to a standard mix – and watered well. They will usually have rooted after a week or two.

I was recently visiting as gardening friend, who always has a wonderful collection of unusual and choice plants to see, and she gave me a cutting of her scarlet red rosebud form, which is now happily setting roots in the glasshouse. My favourite among these, though, is the eye-catching “Apple Blossom Rosebud”, which has extremely full flowers which have a greenish centre, white petals and bright pink edges.

Those Peruvians again

2010-01-04T18:18:00.000+13:00

A bit of a break over Christmas and the New Year saw me wandering the streets, taking my early morning constitutional, peeking over the tops of fences as always, seeing what is happening in other people’s gardens.

One thing that stood out was the number of gardens with a mix of old and new Peruvians splashed around the garden - Peruvian lilies that is. These are Alstroemerias, named after the Swedish botanist Baron Klas von Alstroemer who collected seeds on a trip to Spain in 1753. They were from plants collected by Spanish explorers in South America, and must have excited him with their bright, almost gaudy, flowers, and their very tough perennial nature.

My first experience with these flamboyant lilies was in my grandparents’ garden, where plants threaded their way through some of the abandoned beds. These large island beds, once home to big collections of perennials, had been allowed to revert to shrubberies, but various very hardy perennials remained. The ones I remember best were orange to gold Alstroemeria, as they had colonised the beds and gave a bright display each Christmas.

There are about fifty species of Alstroemeria in South America, in two broad groups – a summer growing cluster of species from Brazil, and a winter growing group based around eastern Brazil. My grandparents’ flowers would have been forms of the Chilean species, A. aurantiaca which has bright yellow flowers, usually spotted with maroon. It grows very readily in any free draining soil – perhaps too readily actually, as it becomes overcrowded quite quickly, and then sets out for pastures new. It is not a great problem to control, but it can be a bit of a pain.

I also remember the intriguing species, A. pulchella (also called A. psittacina) which has a similar growth habit to the foregoing, but also has the most intriguing narrow trumpet shaped flowers, in green and red. It looks very entrancing, but this is far too energetic for anything other than very hard conditions. Given a free run, this will – well, run freely.

I had quite a battle with this for a couple of years in a free draining, elevated garden, but did eventually get it under control. This weekend I noticed it in a town garden, growing in quite dense shade under some trees, where it had wandered a little but did seem to be largely under control.

These species, and hybrids derived from them, were very popular cut flowers. I remember my grandmother filling vases with these bright lily-like gems. They lasted well in water and brightened up the house considerably.

For commercial growers they were not a great crop as they had a restricted flowering season, until the 1980s, when a group of America plant breeders decided to take matters in hand, and crossed the winter flowering types with the summer flowering forms, and succeeded in establishing a totally new type of Alstroemeria which was more or less evergreen, and which flowered for long periods each year.

Further breeders saw the potential for using these plants in the garden and in the potted plant trade, and concentrated on reducing the stature of the plants and removing the aggressive spreading trait. The first of these new varieties started appearing perhaps fifteen years ago, with willowy growth and smallish flowers. Work has continued and now there is a great range of smaller growing plants with stocky growth habits and relatively large flowers. I have some clumps that are ten years old and only about a metre across. I cannot imagine a summer garden without a display of these South American beauties.

The last PCI of 2009

2009-12-31T20:57:00.000+13:00

Each year we get a few seedlings that try to flower about ten months early. Their first flowering should be (in this case) September/October 2010 but they want to flower near Christmas, so this year we had this seedling from Pacific Frost on the Christmas table. Cool eh?

The last walk of 2009

2009-12-31T20:32:00.002+13:00

It has been a rather peculiar summer season so far, with alternating warm and cool spells. The Christmas break has been a good example with very warm days (over 26C on both Christmas and Boxing days) but then cloud and a front for the following days.

I have been itching to get up Mount Holdsworth, the 5280 foot mountain that looks over our valley. This morning I got up early and was on the road at about 6.30. I was astonished to see the tops were sprinkled with snow, and had to go back to the house and get extra clothing.

It was a great walk!

It was cool all the way up, and once I was above the tree line, after about two hours, I met up with some snow and a cold wind. I made it to the summit, then slowly came down, photographing as I went, including this view from the trig looking north.

This Pterostylis species that lives just below the bushline was nearing the end of its flowering, as evidenced by the reddish hue at the top. This is a cute little terrestrial orchid, perhaps 20 cm high and about 3 cm across.

Just below the summit I found some Bulbinella in flower in the snow. They looked fabulous.

Further down I found some more Bulbinella, growing in the snow grass.

There was also plenty of Eeidelweiss in flower, the North Island species, Leucogenes leontopodium...

and the very pretty eyebright, Euphrasia cuneata.

Once I was on my way down past the bushline I put the camera away until crossing the Pig Flats bog when I noticed a solitary flower on a Caladenia. These orchid flowers are tiny - only about 40 mm across - but they are great.

When I got home I showered and then lay in the backyard with my geneticist son, who is home from his PhD studies. Although Polynesian landsnails are the vehicle he has chosen to investigate his questions about speciation, he is also interested in spiders. We were amused to find five different species on one large perennial Anemone in the garden.

I made a comment about the hidden insect/beetle/bug life occuring all around us that we know nothing about - a throwaway line - and came inside to process my photographs from the walk. I had taken another photograph of another Bulbinella, as it was flowering through the spikes of an Aciphylla species. I do not take my glasses when climbing so the photography is sometimes a little hit and miss - so you can imagine my delight to find this, with all the weevils and beetles on board!

Click on any of the photographs for a higher resolution view.

There can be few better ways to start the day....

2009-12-24T09:58:00.000+13:00

....than getting to work in a garden.
The weather has been bad this year, with very strong winds which severely damaged the roses in Queen Elizabeth Park, including the bed of 'Paddy Stevens' we planted in 2006 to in Lavinia's memory.
I knew we would all be going to see the bed tomorrow (Christmas Day) and wanted it looking nice so I brought my secateurs to work, and started the day by pruning out all the damaged wood.
I also managed to grab an opening bloom for my desk, so this is how my workstation looks for Christmas Eve....

Regal lilies for Christmas

2009-12-20T10:43:00.000+13:00

Among the things we all love about Christmas are long-established family rituals. For some families it is midnight mass or a church service in the morning; for others it is silver coins carefully hidden in the Christmas pudding, usually cleverly contrived so each diner receives one; for some it is an orange and a gold foil-covered chocolate coin at the bottom of Santa’s stocking; and a selection of sinful foods!

For many of us the garden plays a part in this ritual, and a crop of potatoes is especially planted in September to be harvested on Christmas Day, or maybe a row or two of peas to be gathered for communal shucking after the presents are opened in the morning.

I like to spend a bit of time gathering some flowers for the Christmas table early in the morning, usually having a variety of different summer flowering types to choose from. One flower, though, is essential as far as my wife’s family is concerned – the Christmas Lily, Lilium regale.

This icon of the Kiwi Christmas was virtually unknown in my own family. My parents gardened on the unforgiving Lansdowne clay, anathema for lilies, and my mother’s interest in these aristocrats of the flower world did not go past the gorgeous Lilium auratum she struggled with for many years.

For my wife and her family, the heavy scent of Lilium regale is as essential a part of Christmas as sherry-laden trifle, chocolate almonds and Boxing Day ham, and once we were married I was instructed to start growing some.

Fortunately they are very easy to grow, and we soon had a nice clump established, derived from bulbs from other members of her family. It required no great skill as Christmas Lilies are very easy to grow - they flourish in any sunny garden with well-drained humus rich soil. If you are working with clay ridden soil, try adding some gravel or sand to improve drainage.

Like most lilies they prefer to have their heads in the sun and feet in the shade so I mulch ours with straw each year. They like a bit of food so it pays to fertilise each year, I but use a slow release kind (Osmocote or similar) or blood and bone, as animal manures will cause some problems.

Christmas Lilies can be found in pots in garden stores at this time of the year and will transplant well enough as long as you keep them moist in the months ahead, but they are probably best planted as bulbs in winter. The bulbs are usually planted about twice size of the bulb, about 6 – 10 cm below the soil.

When the flowers have finished, allow the stems to die back naturally. When they turn brown they are ready for pruning off. Christmas Lilies make good growth and will need to be lifted and replanted every four to five years. When replanting, dig the bulbs up in winter and replant immediately. Do not store the bulbs or allow them to dry out.

Summer plantings

2009-12-13T20:45:00.000+13:00

December is a funny month. It is usually a frantic time, as we focus on the upcoming festivities, and perhaps even plan some holidays. But it is also about December the weather starts to settle down into a more predicable pattern, and we can think of those lazy, hazy days of summer. Unfortunately, for those of who garden on the east coast, summer means hot days, often windy, and prolonged spells of rainlessness.

This year has started kindly as far as rain goes. I made a trip up to Hawke’s Bay the other day and it was reasonable green all the way – not Taranaki green, but not east coast summer brown either. The forecasters are hedging their bets a bit this year, not really saying whether or not we will get a stinker drought, but whatever happens as far as rain goes, we will all be under some pressure to keep our water consumption down in the garden.

Fortunately there are a few things we can do to help ameliorate our lack of summer moisture.

Perhaps the most important thing to think about is correct plant selection. We live in dry areas, and cannot grow wet climate plants without a lot of difficulty.

I was really impressed with the street plantings in Hastings the other day. Someone has put a lot of thought into the sorts of plants that will survive a summer baking without too much watering, and have come up with an interesting range of shrubs that seem to be doing very well.

One of the people I was travelling with was enchanted with the use of lavenders as street side plantings, and I agree – they have grown very well, and probably need minimal care. I was also taken with other Mediterranean plants I saw growing in municipal plots, in particular a range of rock roses, Cistus. These sorts of plants, with their silvery leaves and tough textures, will thrive in the heat of summer, and will always look tidy. For native lovers, Hebes were also used extensively and well.

In the garden we can extend the range a little more with some shrubs that would be a bit too untidy to use as street plantings, especially the Australian and South African shrubs that thrive in our climate. Proteas, Leucodrendrons, Regal pelargoniums, Grevillias, and many others, will all do well and will easily cope with the summer dry.

Extra colour can be added by other dry loving bulbs, perennials and annuals, as well as a good dose of the very fashionable succulents, such as Aloes and Agaves.

Many natives wild thrive in these conditions too, especially some of the smaller leaved Coprosmas, the silver-leaved and golden flowered Brachyglottis, and many of the Hebes, which were also a feature in the Hastings gardens.

A stroll in the hills

2009-12-06T21:38:00.000+13:00

I had not been up in the Tararuas this season , and have a plan for later in the summer, so I thought I had better get some miles into my legs. I went up the Atiwhakatu track this morning, deviating onto the old track to find see whether the red mistletoe was in flower. It was, and it looked fabulous. The old track ... not so great .... as it is falling apart in places. Still, it was a lovely walk up to the newly built hut. It had a few visitors, and looks very nice - certainly a vast improvement on the old hut.

I came back down to the Hooper Loop track, then made a quick detour up to the Mountain House track and came back down from there. It looks like the one yellow mistletoe on that track has died.

It is still the night of the tramp rather that the day after, but I do not feel as if there will be any muscle repercussions.

Sprouts

2009-12-06T21:29:00.001+13:00

It seems silly to be talking about winter when summer hardly seems to have started, but for those of us who are keen vegetable gardeners, the seasons tend to blend into each other.
In winter we are starting off the seeds we want to plant in spring, and in early spring we start sowing the early summer vegetables. Now that summer is almost here, it is time to keep planting some of the winter garden staples, in particular Brussels Sprouts and leeks.
Each year I am appalled to see these seedlings for sale in garden centres in April and May. I guess there must be a few people each year who are tricked into buying these vegetables long past the time they could possibly grow effectively, but I am sure they do not come back the following year. Brussels Sprouts and leeks are both slow growing and need to be planted before the year turns over.
That makes for a slight problem as far as the Brussels Sprouts go. If you share my reluctance to spray vegetables you will possibly have come to the same conclusion that I have regarding growing brassicas over summer – it is just not worth it. If you use the less deadly insecticides like Derris Dust, you have to spray or dust so regularly and assiduously to keep the bugs away that you will almost certainly miss a day or two and end up with decimated crops. I have given up on planting broccoli and cauliflower after the start of December, and we eat so little cabbage that it is not worth worrying about.
But I do love Brussels Sprouts and try to grow a row or two of these each year.
They need to same sort of soil as most brassicas – humus-rich, well drained soil with high pH suits them best. I like to dig in some compost a week or two before planting, liming the soil at the same time. It is important to think about applying lime almost every time you add compost to your soil, as most composts are likely to be low in pH. The lime will also help protect against that curse of the brassicas tribe – club root. For further protection, make sure you do not grow brassicas in the same place year after year – even two years in a row is not a good idea. Soil that has been prepared for brassicas will be well suited for growing either a root crop or something like beans the following year, so make sure to rotate your crops, even if your vegetable patch is quite small.
If you are going to grow your own from seed you will have to get a move on as it is already getting late for sowing. If you can find an F1 hybrid variety I think that is the best option to go for. The increased vigour of the new hybrids makes them worth looking for, but do not be surprised at the increased price you will have to pay.
If you are like me and content to just buy a bunch of seedlings from your local nurseryman that will do just fine too. You might not be able to get hybrid plants though, as most prefer to work with open pollinated seed – it is so much cheaper.
However you got your plants, once it is time to plant them, space them about 40-50 cm apart, in rows of a similar distance. Make sure you water them in well, perhaps using a weak liquid fertiliser as well.
I was taught that Brussels Sprouts should always be planted into very firm soil, and should be planted very deeply. Some books insist that you should stamp the ground where you are going to plant your sprouts before planting, and then plant them as deep as the first leaves.
These ideas come from the length of time Sprouts are in the soil. They need to be well anchored and they also need to be regularly fed. I find it pays to stake them as they get larger, as a good blow can topple them as they get mature, especially if they are wet and heavy at the time.

Elementary my dear Watsonias

2009-11-28T17:31:00.001+13:00

I was reading an interesting piece about gardening in a popular magazine last week. A prominent Auckland gardener was talking about a slight trend she had noticed towards growing flowers again. I was surprised at first, then got to thinking it was an Auckland thing, the trend towards non-flowering plants anyway. Then I thought again. When I walk through the streets of most New Zealand towns I can see the results of a drift towards evergreen shrubberies, grass gardens, and architectural feature gardens.
Each of these gardening styles has it merits, and parts of my own garden reflect some of these ideas, but I cannot imagine a garden without flowers providing too much interest.
I was thinking about this the other day when I drove over the Rimutaka range to Wellington. There is a very pleasant garden lining the roadway at Te Marua, where someone, and I suspect it is not an ‘official’ garden as it is too colourful, has planted up a wonderful bed of perennials and bulbs – and there are flowers everywhere.
It looks quite easy-care, as there are lots of gazanias and other daisies as well as a sprinkling of other easy-to-grow perennials, but the highlight of the bed, for me at least, is the wonderful display of soft salmon Watsonias. They look amazing, and blend so nicely with the other hues in the border.
There are many species of this South African member of the iris family, and all long term gardeners will be very familiar with them. I wonder how many younger gardeners have grown them though as they seem to be almost impossible to buy in garden centres. Maybe it is because they are so easy to grow gardeners just swap them among themselves.
I recall my mother had large clumps of a number of different species, with slightly different forms. Her favourite was a very tall growing species – it grew taller than her – with light pink flowers. I suspect it was W. versfeldii. It makes large clumps of corms, much like small Gladiolus, and can be counted on to be in flower for weeks in late spring/early summer.
Another one she cherished, although she always told me she was not sure whether it was a Watsonia, a Tritonia or a Sparaxis (all closely related), is the reddish, tubular-flowered, W. aletroides. This species flowers earlier in the spring with narrow cylindrical flowers about 75 mm long, and tipped with white. It flowers on stems up to a metre high, and at one time was a very popular cut flower, although it is seldom seen nowadays.
There are a number of large flowered hybrids in gardens, many of them from a programme initiated by a Melbourne nurseryman, and named after Australian cities. I think the salmon variety we see in gardens is the variety known as ‘Melbourne’ but others have continued to play around with these plants and it may be a more recent introduction. Others in the Australian series include the white flowered ‘Hobart’ and the deep rosy mauve ‘Canberra.’
There is a number of interesting dwarf species, including the pretty species named as W. stenosiphon in the Wellington Botanical Gardens. This may be wrongly named, as there is a great deal of confusion about the naming of Watsonia species in New Zealand, at least partly brought about because so many of the species are very variable.

Cabbage trees

2009-11-22T17:52:00.002+13:00

This weird spring has had many gardeners scratching their heads, wondering quite what the climate gods are going to throw at us next. Most of us have planted our summer vegetables, but every week or so another southerly comes through and we look out our windows at night, worried that the morning might see a frost.
So where is the weather headed for summer?
It looks suspiciously like the meteorologists are ducking for cover on this making statements about possibly slightly warmer or perhaps slightly cooler weather, and maybe above, maybe below average temperatures.
But Maori lore is telling us we are in for a hot, dry summer. There is a long-held belief that a better than usual flowering season among ti kouka, cabbage trees, indicates the following summer will be warmer and drier than usual. Looks like we are in for a warm one based on the exceptional flowering of cabbage trees this spring.
The strong stems of these giants of the lily world are a strong feature of the New Zealand landscape, and many New Zealand artists have drawn on their strong outline to portray the New Zealand landscape.
Maori harvested ti kouka, eating the new leaves, and preserving the roots in a complicated process, to extract the sugars. Early pakeha settlers are also said to have eaten the hearts of young trees, giving the plant its common name.
Our relationship with the cabbage tree in the garden is a little more complex. Although very valued in the larger landscape – both in the wild, and in parks and commercial plantings – we are more reluctant to bring the ti kouka into the garden.
I am sure this is partially due to the problem of the fallen leaves. Mature trees tend to drop lots of leaves in the late spring period, at about the same time as our lawns grow with the most vigour. Cabbage tree leaves have very strong fibres – Maori used them to make fabric - and they will win a battle with lawn mower blades. This has meant many gardeners – especially those whose job roster includes lawn mowing – are very reluctant to have cabbage trees around.
There are two steps to take. The first is to ensure the trees are planted in gardens rather than as specimen trees in the lawn, where the leaves will prove a problem. The other is to gather the leaves and keep them until they are completely dry. Under these conditions they make superb kindling.
There are a few species of cabbage trees for the garden, and a few cultivars as well.
The most common species is Cordyline australis, with long green sword shaped leaves. This is the wild form most commonly seen in the wild and it is easily grown as long as a little care is taken at the time of planting. It will flourish best in well cultivated soil, and establishes most quickly if given a good head start with adequate watering.
The toi, C. indivisa, is a beautiful tree with broader leaves, often with a purplish cast and an orange midrib, and heads of the most amazingly scented flowers. It grows naturally in the mountain forests of our regions, and is a always a delight to stumble across when in on a tramp. Unfortunately this charming species is not easy to bring into the garden. It seems to need the higher rainfall and moister atmosphere of the mountains.
C. banksii is another forest species, with shorter stems and longer leaves. There is a nice purple form of this species that is sometimes available from specialist nurseries. It is another species that does best in cool and moist conditions.

Pink bells weeping

2009-11-15T19:46:00.001+13:00

When the middle of November arrives the roses in my garden are only just starting to burst – they are always a little later than other gardens. I suspect it is only because I grow very few modern bush roses, being content to have some modern shrub roses, and a few of David Austin’s English roses.
So it was a surprise when a friend of my uncle rang me to tell me I should call in and have a look at the roses along the front of his house. He said they were at their very best and I should call in on my way home.
I do not know what I was expecting to see, but I can assure you it was not three huge weeping standard roses, each over two metres high, covered with tiny roses, a mix of shades of pink. The effect of these lovely parasols along a neutrally toned house frontage, in what is essentially a wooded garden with a heavy emphasis on foliage almost made me fall off my bike!
The gardener (I call him that because he was at work in the garden when I called) explained they were mature specimens of the weeping miniature rose, ‘Pink Bells’, grafted onto 1.8 metre standards. The arching branches have formed a dense mat and are never pruned in the conventional sense. Rogue branches that grow too exuberantly are removed, and an occasional trim is sometimes delivered, but the roses are left to their own devises. They are planted in a dry, sunny spot that obviously suits them well, and are left to get on with their display.
When I saw the plants they were a jumble of different shades of pink, as the flowers fade as they age. This variety does rebloom, but not with the gusto it applies to its first flush.
There are a number of varieties that are suited to growing this way. Perhaps the best known is the lovely soft pink ‘The Fairy’, with its glossy green foliage. It has pretty little rosette-style flowers in clusters, and will repeat during the summer.
If you are more a dark red rose sort of person you could try ‘Crimson Shower’ with its delightfully old fashioned looking crimson blooms. It is recurrent and is healthily resistant to black spot and mildew.
If you like old roses you might think of growing ‘Buff Beauty’ as a weeper. This variety has very sweetly scented flowers that are almost apricot, deeper in the centre. It is a lovely rose that works well as a weeper.

One of thse good Sundays

2009-11-08T20:03:00.004+13:00

There is nothing like a good Sunday adventure to fill the memory banks with good vibrations, so to speak. Today I managed to load up a few.
I have been helping a Maori friend and a group of pakeha friends with the problem of an old totara marker board from an urupa (cemetery) in the country out the back of Carterton. The board had been rescued from a creek by the farm’s owner, who then handed it to the local historical society, who was very unsure about what to do with it. I helped a researcher delve into its past, and it was decided (in keeping with usual Maori custom) to bury the marker within the confines of the cemetery.
A new fence has been erected around the site of the cemetery and a little board marking the site has been erected. Today a blessing ceremony was held. Here the Reverend Puanga Ratapu is performing the ceremony with Rex Hemi.

Afterwards the landowner (Brian Gawith) and one or two others joined me in climbing a steep little hill at the end of the Ahiaruhe road to walk over an old paa site – very interesting, and near the Ruamahanga River, of interest to me of course. While we were there, a beautiful burst of song indicated the presence of a shining cuckoo, which we were fortunate enough to be able to see high in the branches of a kowhai tree.

All in all, a great day – one to keep stored away.

Loony toons

2009-11-08T19:54:00.002+13:00

Has the bad spring weather finally broken? I certainly hope so as I have finally taken the plunge and planted my tomatoes in the vegetable garden, with the expectation the string of frost-bearing southerlies has finally abated and we may now get a succession of warmer days and nights.
After I had planted and watered in my tomato crop I went for a stroll around the neighbourhood seeking out inspiration for this week’s story, and stumbled across a very dramatic sight.
A few blocks away from our house I found a very interesting feature tree in front of a house painted light blue. The tree was a mature Chinese Toon, Cedrela sinsenis ‘Flamingo’. I do not imagine the house painting was deliberately planned to highlight the foliage of the tree at this time of the year, but it certainly had that effect – the contrast between the almost powder blue of the house and the light pink of the Cedrela was startling.
The Cedrelas are trees from the warmer parts of the world, their name deriving from the Greek word for a cedar, but they are not even slightly related to cedars - in fact, they come from the same family as mahogany. The timber from some species is highly regarded, as it is slightly fragrant and easily worked. It is sometimes used for musical instruments, sometimes sold as mahogany.
The Chinese Toon is a popular tree in warmer gardens the world over for its spectacular spring foliage display. It has a very erect growing habit, making a little forest of upright stems and branches. In spring these stems are topped by clusters of ash-like leaves (botanists call them pinnate) which are slightly furry (pubescent) underneath.
The colouring is quite unlike any other tree, as the new leaves assume a rosy pink tone, with a bright red rib in the middle of each leaf. The effect of one of these trees, shining in the sun is unforgettable. I do not know whether they look better against the bright sky or against a dark green backdrop of other trees.
As the leaves mature they gradually lose their pink colourings and become slightly creamy-pink before eventually turning green.
If you are particularly adventurous you might want to consider using the leaves for a garnish or as an addition to your salads. The fresh new leaves definitely have an allium-like fragrance – sort of onion-y but with an overtone of garlic - and they are reportedly eaten by the Chinese, who either salt them or eat them fresh. I cannot vouch for this however, and I would think it would be wise to be cautious about scoffing too many at any one sitting.
There is an old adage that good fences make for good neighbours, and if you want an entente cordiale with the people next door it would pay not to plant this tree alongside a fence line, as it does have a propensity to sucker, and your friends next door may not share your passion for pink salads.

Flight of Butterflies

2009-11-01T21:01:00.004+13:00

A few years ago a friend gave me some seed from a cross made in America between the Siberican Iris 'Flight of Butterflies' and Iris ensata. The frist of the seedlings flowered this year, and I have to say there seems scant effect from I. ensata. The seedling is pretty enough though, and each stalk seems destined to carry six flowers, on three branches.
My friend the Iris Hunter tells me Flight of Butterflies is a 40 chromosome variety, so I have tried to daub some PCNI pollen onto it, in between the awful weather we have been having. It will be interesting to see whether there are any results.

Halloween

2009-11-01T20:19:00.005+13:00

The American tradition of celebrating Halloween has slowly spread to New Zealand, although it is not the wide-spread community activity here that it is in the US. Here it largely celebrated by very young children, who usually only call on family and close neighbours. This year our adopted grandchildren called around, suitably attired and absolutely in character. I managed to snap Summer (above) and Emily(below) standing in our back porch. I think you'll agree they look very fetching!

Cornus

2009-11-01T20:03:00.003+13:00

It has certainly been a hard spring for horticulturists – the unseasonably unsettled weather has given growers all sorts of worries. Commercial outdoor tomato growers have been unable to get onto their paddocks because they have been too wet, and they must also be concerned about the likelihood of late frosts this year. A succession of southerlies that have swept up the country, leaving snow to low levels have also left their tell-tale white marks on the early morning garden.
I generally plant my tomatoes in the first weekend in November, but I am feeling a bit gun shy this year. The ground is still quite cold and I do not think the plants will be away to any great advantage, but on the other hand, I do not want them getting too leggy in the glasshouse. Perhaps next weekend.
Some plants seems to have relished the odd weather this year, none more so than the dogwoods. These often deciduous shrubs and trees hail from the United States and Asia, and they are among the most popular of all flowering trees in America. In fact, they are so popular they are the state tree for both Virginia and Missouri, although, bizarrely enough, the most popular is one called Cornus florida. There is a little pun at work here - the word ‘florida’ is a Latin one, meaning flourishing, or flowering exuberantly, and the American state and the tree were given the same name for this reason.
These dogwoods are ideal plants for our climate because they prefer cold winters and hot summers – in fact, as you venture further north they become difficult to keep alive. They prefer a sunny spot with only the lightest shade to do their best, and once established can cope with sustained dry periods.
This time of the year they are at their best with a magnificent display of flowers – although the flowers are strictly speaking coloured bracts that surround the true flower, in a similar fashion to Leucodendrons for example. There are generally four of these bracts around each flower.
Cornus florida is a widespread species from the United States (and yes, it does grow in the northern parts of Florida), usually with creamy white bracts in mid-spring. Needless to say, with such a wide range there is a fair degree of variability and nurserymen have been selecting this species for many, many years and have come up with a very interesting range of varieties.
Among the best of these is ‘Cloud 9’ which has large pure white flower bracts that appear in spring. This cultivar is more tolerant of heat than many other Cornus and is very strong and vigorous. Over the past few years I have noticed some landscapers have picked up on the value of this tree and I now sometimes see it used in multiple plantings in formal situations. It always looks great.