Smoking bushes

May has started out wonderfully. The succession of warm days and mild evenings has made this a delightful autumn. We have had no frosts to speak of in the Wairarapa valley, and the lack of wind has been a blessing for those of us who love autumn trees and shrubs. Most plants seem to have managed to hold onto their leaves longer than normal – some have not even coloured up yet.
There is, of course, a down side to this settled mild weather. It has meant that the lawns have kicked back into growth, and although they are scarcely at spring pace, they are still growing aplenty. Weeds are also whipping ahead. I turned over some soil about three weeks ago, planting autumn seedlings, and the bare dirt has been invaded. I needed to go over it again this weekend, weeding. The soil was nice and damp though, and the weeds all came out easily enough.
What with weeding and mowing, it was Sunday afternoon before I found any time to go and have a tour around the countryside, looking for autumn foliage. The Head Gardener is an unemployed bum now (for three days between jobs!) so she found the time to come with me and we made our way eastwards.
I was on the lookout for some colour on a group of smoke bushes that are among my favourite autumn shrubs. These particular plants are mature shrubs – perhaps as much as four metres high – and I have watched them since I was a child.
They are the American version of smoke bushes, Cotinus obovatus, so-called because the leaves are egg shaped. The European version, C. coggygria, probably better deserves the common name because this species has plumes of misty purplish flowers in early summer. These would be enough to earn the epithet of ‘smoke bush’, but they fade over the summer and become even smokier and more deserving of the name. They colour up in the autumn but the display is nowhere near as good as that of their American cousins.
C. obovatus is taller growing that its EU relative, and does not have the same amount of flowers, nor the same degree of smokiness. Maybe it is the politically correct smoke bush – the smokefree one. However, what is lacks in flower power it more than makes up for with foliage display. The leaves take on hues of orange, scarlet and purple as the winter approaches, giving a startling display.
The shrubs we looked at used to bring us a lot of trade, as each autumn we had people calling in at the nursery, asking what the shrubs were and where they could buy some. As we knew they would be in display each early May, we made sure we had plenty of stock.
Overseas it is possible to buy named clones of these beauties, with different coloured forms being favoured, but I do not think they have arrived in New Zealand yet.
There is a variety of the European form that is worth growing for a different foliage display, a deeply coloured form called ‘Royal Purple.’ This has deep wine purple coloured leaves with a shiny surface. It has gigantic flower heads of light mauve over summer, and then colours up almost as well as the American forms in autumn.
All the forms share a similar set of requirements. They like a sunny situation and prefer cool, free-draining soil. They do not like the soil to be over-rich, and they certainly do not need fertiliser applied. If grown in rich soil they grow rather coarsely and do not colour up so well. They do respond very well to trimming and shaping. The neater bushes will give better a better display of autumn foliage. They flourish in colder areas with dry summers.
After we had sated ourselves on the smoke bushes, we took off again, heading out into the country. We saw some wonderful poplars, and tasted some spicy wild apples growing on the side of a gravel road. We even saw a friend on a piebald horse accompanied by his young daughter on a rotund little pony, droving a ragged mob of sheep along the road near their farmlet. What we did not see was a great deal of autumn colour apart from an impressive avenue of scarlet oaks glistening in the late afternoon sun.
Early on Saturday morning I had taken my camera down to the municipal park to take some photographs of the autumn display. I headed straight to my favourite tree, a mature Ginkgo biloba. It was at its very best – covered with the bright gold leaves that this tree is so renowned for.
If you have room for one of these magnificent trees, at the risk of being sexist, make sure you find a male. They have better form and they do not have the messy fruits that the female trees bear at this time of the year.
The male trees like ‘Autumn Gold’, ‘Fairmount’, and ‘Saratoga’ all start out with relatively slender habits but become “rounded with maturity.” Sounds like every male I ever knew!
Many prize the female fruits for the plum-sized nut contained within the flesh, but, boy of boy, that flesh stinks! It has the most regnant dirty-socks smell, and it is very difficult to remove.
Just alongside the Ginkgo was an unidentified red-leaved Japanese maple, Acer palmatum. It is growing in a sheltered area away from the worst of the winds and like most of the red forms of this popular maple, it colours up spectacularly. When its leaves fall they mingle with the butter gold Ginkgo leaves the effect is worth an extra trip, so next weekend I’ll take the Head Gardener with me and we will go have a look.

Thoughts from Wanganui

Strobilanthes gossypinus


Our recent trip to Wanganui featured a few fabulous hours spent meandering around the pathways at the delightfully retro Wanganui Garden Centre in Gonville. As I said last week, this garden centre is a throwback to the way garden centres used to be twenty years ago, with an amazing range of plant material, much of it grown by the owners, and an informed and helpful staff who know their plants.
Last week we looked at some of the interesting native plants ranged through the many beds in the nursery, this week we will look at some of the interesting exotic plants, but before we do I must say that the exotic highlight of the journey was something we saw on a Sunday afternoon drive up the Wanganui River road to Pipiriki.
For much of the journey we traveled through groups of naked ladies, as they lined the sides of the road and ran up through the roadside paddocks. We stopped for a look through the amazing Catholic church at Jerusalem, well-known to all old hippies as the haunt of the poet James K Baxter, and even found naked ladies in the convent garden.
I am referring, of course, to Amaryllis bulbs, seen in many shades of pink through to carmine red. I have never seen so many naturalized in one small area. A fabulous sight but back to town.
I had enjoyed my time among the native plants at the Wanganui Garden Centre, seeing a number of new varieties, and a number of old forms I had only read about. The same applied to the exotic plants on offer.
I am a huge fan of foliage in the garden, and can be relied on to make my way to the divaricating plants, much to the Head Gardener’s dismay, as she does not like them at all. However, as well as tiny leaves on erratically branched shrubs I am keen on strongly foliaged shrubs and was intrigued to see a bed of plants with lovely architectural shaped leaves in a most unusual colour. The leaves are greenish but with a hint of silver, and they are topped with fine bronze hairs, more strongly visible on the young leaves. The leaves are interestingly ribbed, like some of the blue Hosta varieties.
The small shrub glories under the name of Strobilanthes gossypinus ‘Persian Shield’, and reportedly grows to about 80 cm high, slightly less around. This is going to look great with other coloured foliage shrubs and perennials and with strap-leaved plants too. I think it will probably look best in a small group. It will look great in pots too, perhaps glazed terracotta pots on the patio.
Although it looks quite hardy – silver foliaged plants usually come from quite hard climates – I think it will probably need protection from frost as Strobilanthes species seem to mainly originate in subtropical areas of the world, and I think this species comes from southern India. In the wild these plants tend to be monocarpic – they only flower once – but this species reportedly takes ten years before it flowers so it will be long-lived in the garden.
In a bed just across the pathway from this solid silver-leaved beauty was a lightly foliaged South American beauty, Calliandra “Blushing Pixie.”
The Calliandras are legumes with very fine foliage, perhaps like a small Albizzia. The flowers are remarkably like an Albizzia as well, a puff of flame coloured stamen bursting out of the fine foliage. They are very easy shrubs to grow, needing light soil and full sun for them to perform at their best. They have light sensitive leaves and they fold up at night, which makes an interesting talking point with children.
Coming closer to home, I was interested to see a new Grevillea in the same bed, one with bright red flowers. It was labelled as Grevillea “Deua Flame”, a name that sounded more Maori than Australian to me, but this is a true blue Aussie.
It is, in fact, a form of the recently described species called Grevillea rhyolitic, previously a part of Grevillea victoriae, often grown in New Zealand.
It occurs naturally in New South Wales and is hardy in temperate climates in well-drained soils and full sun to partial shade. It is seems likely to be tolerant of medium to heavy frost.
It grows to about 1.5 metres high and bears clusters of bright red pendulous flowers in clusters through much of the summer. I am sure this is going to become a very popular variety in New Zealand.
I had a trawl through the fruit trees while we were wandering around and was impressed with the wide range of varieties that were available, including a large number of connoisseur apple and pear varieties. I was intrigued to see the lovely golden apples of the ornamental crab apple, Malus “Golden Hornet”. This is a very popular variety in the United Kingdom but is rare in New Zealand, as we seem to prefer red crab apples like “Jack Humm” or “Gorgeous”.
This is a form of the Japanese group of apple hybrids known as Malus x zumi, and forms a small tree suitable for small to medium gardens. In the spring, it covers itself with white, pink-flushed flowers, and then in the autumn it is covered with smallish yellow apples – smaller than “Jack Humm” or even “Gorgeous”. They seem to survive stripping by birds well into the winter, which is probably a sign that they are sour for a long time. If you are on the lookout for a small deciduous tree with spring flowers and summer fruit you could do worse that look this one out.
The other fruit I saw for the first time was a dwarf form of the Irish Strawberry Tree, Arbutus unedo “Elfin King”. This charming little variety only grows to about two metres high, less if grown in a container, but still produces lovely sweet fruit. This is normally a small to medium sized tree, evergreen and very easy to grow so the dwarf form will prove popular with those with smaller gardens.

Dame Edna would be proud

Gladiolus 'Nymph'

As I write this it is Sunday evening and it is very hot - our late and dry summer continues without abatement. In the un-watered parts of our garden things are very dry and in paddocks all around our district the naked ladies have made their appearance, splashes of bright pink showing against the straw shades of the pasture.
I refer to the bulbs, Amaryllis belladonna, of course, rather than unclothed female members of the rural community.
I have had a trying week. My seed from the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris was found to have a slight fungal infection when it arrived at the border in Auckland International Airport. As a result it has had to all be destroyed. Although I am slightly frustrated, I so understand why they did what they did, and I support the work that the inspectors do, so I’ll just have to grin and bear it. I have a lot of seed from my own crosses, and as others lost their seed at the border, I’ll share that around with some of the other growers.
I have been cursing the very dry season too. Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year and I love looking through the bulbs on offer in nurseries, working out what I am going to plant this season. I have to say that the warm and dry garden has put me off a little, but this weekend I did go down to the garden shop to select a few bulbs.
I have grown to love Gladiolus as I have aged, not something I might have predicted. Their showy flowers are sometimes difficult to place properly in the garden, but I grow a few for the house in my picking garden and wouldn’t be without them now.
This is, of course, not the right time to be planting florists’ gladiolus, the type most of us grow, but the dwarf forms should be planted now. I already a large clump or two of these, but I have added a few more varieties this season.
These are usually sold as Gladiolus nanus, but this name seems to have no authority. It is just used to describe the dwarf early flowering forms. They are unlike the larger florist forms, and although they are a similar size to the summer flowering “butterfly” gladiolus they are much more wild-flower looking.
These “nanus” forms should probably be called G. colvillei, the name given to winter-flowering hybrids based on G. tristis and G. cardinalis.
G. tristis is a highly scented species from South Africa, sometime available from specialist bulb nurseries. It usually has slightly insipid flowers but it makes up for that by having the most wonderful scent, especially noticeable at night. As you would expect G. cardinalis is bright red flowered. It is also likely that G. carneus is involved as many hybrids have flashes of colour on their bottom petals very reminiscent of this species.
Perhaps the most famous of these the variety known as ‘The Bride’; it has white flowers with a greenish centre to each flower, giving a very cool look in the garden. ‘Nymph’ is another very reliable older form. In this case the white flowers have cream markings on the bottom three petals, each cream area being surrounded with a thick carmine pencil line. These two are both very hardy and long-lasting varieties, and both do well in my garden.
This year I am adding ‘Halley’ and ‘Charming Lady.’ I hadn’t seen ‘Halley’ before and was taken with its creamy yellow flowers, set of with a red throat, colours more usually associated with the larger hybrids. I assumed that it was a new form – I was somewhat taken aback to stumble across a reference to it in a 1917 garden journal! The journal recommended planting this with yellow Californian poppies (Eschscholzia) but as I have only just this year managed to weed out the last of the white ones I planted nearly ten years ago I don’t think I’ll be doing that! I think I’ll plant them in the garden I have filled with other yellow flowers. I think it will flower about the same time as the white and yellow freesias.
“Charming Lady” is quite different to the foregoing, in that it has pale pink flowers shoot through with lilac. It is lighter in the centre. I have a garden with Alliums and other spring flowering bulbs and I think these colours will all go together very well.
At the other end of the flowering season – about now in fact- comes another fabulous Gladiolus species – well, it is now, but for most of my gardening career it was an Acidanthera. The botanists have rightly decided that it is in fact a Gladiolus – it will even cross with the large flowered hybrids.
This is another South African species with hooded white flowers and showy maroon blotches, coupled with an attractive scent. It is sometimes called Peacock Gladiolus, or even Peacock Orchids, although it is, of course, not remotely related to orchids. When crossed with the larger flowered forms some scent is brought across with the genes, but this is soon swamped in further crosses, so the elusive scented florists’ gladiolus looks as far away as ever.
All of these species prefer well-drained soil and will cope with full sun without any bother. In the hardest of climates they need lifting for winter but nothing in our region should pose any threat to them. You might need to keep an eye out for thrips in a dry season though. Apart from that they are plant-and-forget plants.

I have had a bit of a ‘herby’ weekend this weekend, as is befitting the weekend leading up to ‘Herb Awareness Week.’ I spent Sunday morning tidying up my back flower border and planting a gift rose. The international nursery responsible for releasing ‘White Romance’ rose onto the market contacted me about my scepticism about it replacing ‘Iceberg’, and has given me a plant to trial.
I saw “White Romance” for the first time this spring and I think it is a fabulous rose. Whether it replaces “Iceberg” is another matter, but next summer I will report on how this very double, and very romantic-looking, rose has done in my garden.
I cleaned the rest of the garden up while I was at it, pulling out some of the free-seeding perennials that had got out of hand. This includes some hybrid marjoram, seedlings from Origanum ‘Rosenkuppel.’ I planted this about seven years ago and it has gradually spread through the southern end of the border. It is easy to pull out, and at this time of the year when if shows its lovely heads of flowers – white on some plants, pinkish mauve on others - so I haven’t worried too much about it spreading. If it gets too bad I just pluck some leaves to eat with tomatoes!
I had a crack at my corner of basil mint too. I planted this in a pot at the back door a few years ago, but it has really gone troppo and tried to take over everything – I should have known a mint would do that. I find the flavour and scent of this culinary herb too coarse for my taste (I love mint and basil so it seemed like a good ideaat the time of planting) and I wasn’t picking it and keeping it under control, so it has gone. Fortunately there are still plenty of herbs in the garden.
The Herb Federation of New Zealand has selected the International Herb of the Year, Lemon Balm, as their herb of the year too. This is a another member of the ubiquitous mint family although its genus name, Melissa, is derived from the Latin word for a bee. The specific name (officinalis) means “from the shops” so it has obviously been in commerce for a very long time.
As you might expect from a mint cousin, lemon balm is very hardy and makes a clump of stems up to a metre high. It is shallow rooted and, again like its cousins, spreads with creeping rhizomes. The leaves are deliciously scented with tangy lemon.
In late summer this plant covers its self with white flowers and they in turn are covered with bees.
Herbalists have used this plant for hundreds of years as a relaxant. It is said to be useful for calming a over-busy brain and has mild anti-bacterial properties. It is commonly used to make herbal teas, often in association with spearmint. The leaves are often crushed and spread on the skin as a mosquito repellent, and an essential oil derived form the plant is very popular in aromatherapy.
The other traditional European herb being highlighted this week is the golden daisy known to botanists as Taraxacum officinale. This has leaves in a rosette from the base, the leaves being jagged and hairless. Each individual flower is carried aloft on a hollow stem and is the brightest gold imaginable.
It is, of course, the dandelion.
Most of us would be scared to bring any more dandelions into the garden than were able to make their own way there, but in colder climes the dandelion is well-regarded as a salad green, especially in spring when the leaves are not quite so bitter. The roots are collected in autumn and dried and roasted to be used as a coffee substitute. The roots exude white latex that is commonly used to treat warts, topically. Herbalists swear that dandelion has good liver and kidney restorative powers.
I must confess that I am not converted to the use of dandelions – in fact I took a few out today when cleaning up the garden.
I also removed a specimen of one of their native herbs of the year – a koromiko. Regular readers will know that koromikos (Hebes) are among my favourite flowers so I would be reluctant to remove one, but it was one of the own seedlings that was shy at flowering and added nothing new colour-wise to my collection. Besides, I needed the room to plant the “White Romance.”
Koromiko has long been used my Maori as a cure for dysentery and diarrhoea – many pakeha use an infusion for this purpose too- and was an important ingredient of Mother Aubert’s patent medicines.
In most cases the best way to use koromiko is to collect the green unopened tips of a robustly growing plant and steep them in water. Crushed and bruised leaves can also be used as a poultice for a boil.
The other featured native herb is the manuka, Leptospermum scoparium. My back garden features a lovely variety of the ‘Electric Red’, which I limbed up this morning to allow the perennials underneath it to get some light. I’m feeling a little guilty now.
Most of us will be familiar with manuka oil and its many uses – mainly in the pure oil form or in soaps. It has proven antifungal and antibiotic properties, and manuka honey is widely regarded as having beneficial effects on the immune system.
All of these plants are easily grown – in some cases all too easily grown – so present no cultivation challenges. I suggest that they can just be planted in flower beds (except dandelion of course) and treated as part of the normal garden rather than as special herbal plants.

Summer blooming iris

I grow my Pacific Coast Iris seedlings in a slightly unusual manner. Our climate is quite different to their homeland – we have wet and cold winters, and hot and dry summers. They would not survive the summers very well without extra watering, but they do not like having wet feet. My answer has been to grow them in a mulch of bark from Pinus radiata. The Monterey Pine is the most common timber tree in New Zealand, having a phenomenal rate of growth in our climate. As this is so well drained I need to apply summer water.
I think a consequence of that is early flowering of seedlings. I sow my seed in March, prick the seedlings out in late spring and usually plant out the following March. Some of the seedlings will flower the following spring, but usually only one or two each batch. Sometimes a larger number will flower in the summer, probably as a result of the extra watering.
This year one of my older seedlings has had a summer flowering season, a seedling called 2003-109, grown from ‘Cross Purpose’ seed from the SPCNI pool.
It’s pretty enough and I would have kept it in the garden, but it might be useful to breed with more extensively if it passes on its re-blooming characteristics in the following generations. The I can look forward to irises all summer too!

A wedding and a wonderful weekend in Wanganui

On a recent sunny weekend, the Head Gardener and I travelled to Wanganui to attend a friend’s wedding, and to catch up with some of my family, the River City being my father’s ancestral homeland.
More years ago than either of us care to remember I took my then new girlfriend, now the Head Gardener, to Wanganui for a day trip. We looked around the art gallery and the museum then made out way up to Virginia Lake. High on the hill above the lake stands a glasshouse proudly called the “Winter Garden.” I managed to convince my beloved that this garden was a gift by my family to the good people of Wanganui, a deception neither of us have forgotten, and one of us has not forgiven.
So this weekend, on our way to the wedding on St Johns Hill, we went back to the lake and the gardens. I have been a few times in recent years and have been a bit disappointed in the plantings but this time around we were very impressed with the garden – but not with the lake. We had been warned that the city had been experiencing a paucity of precipitation (borne out by the very dry looking gardens and lawns) and that the lake was suffering. It was cowpat green and giving off a most unpleasant odour. We didn’t get too close to the lake at all.
The first thing I was taken with was a bedding display in the large lawns in front of the “Winter Gardens.” It was a grand circular bed filled with two different French marigolds. These marigolds were past their best and many had seeded. As a result of the seeding a multitude of sparrows and other seed-eating birds had colonized the flower bed and were busy scoffing the autumnal harvest.
The real highlight of the bed though was the large planting of the bright red perennial lobelia, L. cardinalis, that was providing a convenient roost for the many small birds.
This is a Mexican species with beetroot red foliage - in fact, it is well worth growing this plant for the foliage alone -but its crowing glory is the brightest scarlet red flowers that top the deep foliage in summer.
Despite coming from Mexico, this flamboyant dark-skinned beauty prefers slightly damp soils, in full sun. It will grow perfectly well in normal garden soil but can also grow in the margins of the pool. The dark red foliage dies almost completely away over the winter so do not go thinking that the plant has died – it is just taking a well-deserved rest. It can be divided at this stage and replanted, but it also grows easily from its fine seed.
The most common form of L. cardinalis is the one called ‘Queen Victoria’ with slightly deeper red foliage. There are green leaved forms but to me it seems pointless to grow these when the red leaves are half the point of the flower. I think it looks best when planted with light green foliage or flowers (the lime-green Nicotiana looks stunning with it) or grey foliage and/or white flowers.
There are a number of hybrids available in the market, largely derived by crossing L. cardinalis (so named from the cardinal red flowers) with the North American L. siphlitica (I’ll leave you to work out what medicinal use gave this species its name). This is a blue flowered species with green foliage, although there is a lovely white flowered form around too, just called ‘Alba.’
There are now varieties in most shades from white through pink and mauve, to red, blue and purple. Among these is the very popular ‘Cinnabar Rose’, with rose pink flowers.
After photographing the Lobelias, and scaring the sparrows, we made our way up into the “Winter Gardens” themselves, a complex of a large display glasshouse and an attached “Beach to Bush” garden.
Scattered through both the interior and exterior gardens are lots of statuary and garden ornaments. I am a plant lover and such ornamentation usually leaves me unmoved, but on this occasion I was pleasantly surprised as the decoration blended in well – except, I have to say, for a large red and gold concoction, looking like an over-sized Christmas bauble.
The first thing to take everyone’s eyes as they entered the glasshouse was the stupendous display of enormous tuberous begonias. These are largely named varieties (they are labelled discretely but it is easy to see what varieties they are) and they are all grown in large bucket-sized pots. They are staked and supported and the floral display has to be seen to be believed.
At the wedding reception I was talking to a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of years, and asked after her parents. She pulled out her digital camera and showed me a photograph she had taken earlier that day. It showed her father looking resplendent among the begonia display!
The tuberous begonias and their associated pot plants like bromeliads, impatiens and orchids are obviously thriving in the constant warmth and relatively high humidity in the glasshouse. I loved a Japanese influenced garden, complete with white impatiens to replace the traditional azaleas, bamboos and statues.
I strolled through the sandy part of the ‘Beach to Bush’ garden too, having a wry smile at the beach-like atmosphere created, complete with half-buried torsos and beach chairs.
The bush part of the area is a blue-shaded lathe house – a sort of shade house with thin slats of wood creating the shade. It was filled with native plants – ferns, perennials and some lovely creeping fuchsias – but I was very surprised to see that the bush was underplanted with bright red begonias!
At first I was a bit taken aback, but I am sure the gardeners and designers were making a point about how we should be using our native plants to create gardens, not replicas of native forest, and how a little humour in the garden can provide a lightened effect.
And for the lady gardeners the really important news. The bride was exceptionally beautiful, and the bridegroom made the most entertaining and romantic speech at the reception. All the ladies at our table were ooo-ing and ahh-ing.

The little darlings - dahlias

Taratahi Lilac

As the summer heat comes to its apex (in theory at least) our choice of bedding plants for garden display is going to come under severe pressure. Those of us who planted petunias will probably not be too happy this year as they have not really thrived. Most of the “warm” annuals, such as geraniums and zinnias, have struggled with the intermittent weather and the cool evenings.
Some bedding plants relish this sort of weather though, and I have noticed that some types seem to have flourished – the Impatiens in some local body gardens seem to be doing very well for example.
One planting that I have been taken with is on a sloping bed in a local park. There is a mixed planting of yellow and red bedding dahlias, backed by some bush Nasturtiums. The dahlias have been planted in separate blocks of yellow and red, and they look marvellous.
I am a great fan of dahlias for the summer garden as I believe they provide a long period of flowers for both the garden and the house. The bedding sorts have been so improved over the past few years as to be almost unrecognisable. In the past they were not uniform as to size, and the colours were at best variable. They were only available in open pollinated varieties and there were some awful colours in the mix.
That has all changed with the introduction of the F1 hybrids like ‘Sunny’, first brought into New Zealand by their Japanese breeders in the early 1990s. There have since been a number of new strains, including what is probably the best dwarf form, ‘Figaro.’ This is an improved form of the old ‘Rigoletto’, being both more reliably double and also smaller.
The wholesale buyers of seed will be able to buy this in single colours, but I don’t think any local seed companies offer it in this manner. Early in the planting season you will probably find that some of the larger bedding plant suppliers have grown punnets of single colours for your bedding schemes.
I have noticed that the yellow form seems to be a lot more consistent that the red and orange forms, with the reds in particular showing a few rogue types with shades that tend more or less towards orange.
Many of you will remember the old ‘Redskin’ variety, with, of course, purple foliage. There is an attractive update on that form too, with the ‘Diablo’ range. The dark foliage works particularly well with lighter coloured flowers – yellow, orange, white and light pink in particular – but the darker red forms do not work so well.
Over the past few years I have been growing a few of Keith Hammett’s new garden dahlia introductions in my ‘dark bed’. This is a bed that has a lot of dark foliaged plants in it so Hammett’s new series with its near-black fern-like foliage fits in brilliantly. I especially like ‘Knockout,’ which has bright yellow flowers most of the summer, making a wonderful contrast. I think my next favourite is the startling ‘Scarlet Fern,’ as bright a red as the name suggests. In the next little while two further varieties will come available – I’ve had a sneak preview and they look great. ‘Best Bett” has lovely soft apricot flowers while ‘New Horizons’ has red flowers with bright yellow highlights. Another new one was released late last year.
Despite my best efforts I failed to make it to the Ellerslie Flower Show last year but friends who made it to the show all tell me they were most taken with Hammett’s latest introduction ‘Kapow.’ This is another in the dark foliaged series but in this case has white, or perhaps light pink, flowers that have a strong magenta stripe down each petal. The effect is every bit as stunning as the name suggests.
It is not going to be an easy task to find this variety but keep your eye out for it – it may be more available next year – as it is going to be a star of the garden in the future.
It is not well known but some of the world’s most popular dahlias have been bred in Masterton, where the Fraters have a successful breeding programme. They have been responsible for a number of varieties that have done very well in Australia – three of their ‘Taratahi’ varieties are in the top 100 varieties as judged by the members of the American Dahlia Society. The most popular of these is a lovely lilac pink cactus variety, ‘Taratahi Lilac.’ I must say that flowers in this range are not really my go, so I prefer the scarlet ‘Taratahi Ruby’ or the beautifully subtle yellow and orange blended ‘Taratahi Sunrise.’ The latter two are both of water lily form.
There are also an increasing number of very dwarf forms grown nowadays and they are perfect for growing in containers or in very small gardens. These varieties only grow about 40 cm high and are available in a wide range of colours. I like the ‘Dahl’ series, with a number of different named forms around, all with the second name ‘Dahl.’ These are all semi-double to double forms and are reliable flowering types.
The ‘Little Dahlings’ range is slightly smaller and has single flowers.
I grow a number of small forms, and have noticed that they drop seedlings. Being ever the optimistic gardener that I am I generally leave them to grow on and flower. At first they were dwarf varieties, mainly in the red/orange range, but this year one has sprung up to be about two metres tall, with moderate flowers on very elongated stems. The flower is nothing to write home about so I think it is probably time I started taking the seedlings out, and bought some new dahlia varieties for next summer.

Flashy Aussies

Eucalytpus ficifolia

Some years ago a friend told me a story involving a case of misleading advertising. He told me he had seen a house advertised for sale in the columns of his local newspaper. One of the strong selling points was that the property was covered with “near native trees”. He was intrigued about this so he went to view the property. And what were the “near native trees?”
They were Eucalypts. The house was sited in the middle of a huge plantation of gum trees.
We both had a big laugh at the sheer audacity of the real estate agent, while acknowledging that, while there was a case for calling plants of our nearest large neighbour “near natives”, it was a bit cheeky.
Turns out, though, that the realtor knew more than we did – either that, or they fluked a lucky guess. Palaeontologists have kicked in behind the real estate industry by reporting that at one time, there were indeed species of Eucalyptus flourishing in New Zealand, albeit about 50 million years ago.
They died out, of course. Perhaps out climate was just too wet for them and they could not find too much room in our ecosystem. Their cousins, the ratas and pohutukawas, certainly managed to fill niches throughout most of New Zealand so maybe they blocked the Aussie imports.
When pakeha settled New Zealand it did not take them long to realise the potential uses for gum trees and they were soon scattered throughout the islands. Their main use, of course, was for shelter and timber, but many species that have made their way into our gardens too.
At the moment there are some wonderful examples of that brightest of all Australian plants, the red flowering gum, Eucalyptus ficifolia. This is the spectacular Western Australian with fig-like leaves and the blazing flowers of red and orange in its best forms.
This makes a wonderfully shaped small tree when mature – often (but not always) single-trunked, but always with a rounded crown of dark green leaves. These leaves are covered with the large bunches of flowers, usually red, for periods in mid-summer. This is not a huge growing tree like a Sydney Blue Gum – it will probably only grow to about seven metres.
This species is usually grown from seed, and is inclined to be a little bit variable, but the flowers are usually from deep red to orange. Pink and white forms sometimes occur in the wild, and garden grown plants sometimes have flowers in this colour range. I do not think they are anywhere as attractive as the brighter forms. In Australia grafted plants of named varieties are available, but I don’t think they are in the trade in New Zealand at the moment.
There is one problem with this spectacular small tree for those of us who garden inland – it is frost tender. Once established it will cope with most frosts in our part of the world so a bit of care during the first couple of winters will be well repaid. Funnily enough, for a plant from Western Australia, this plant actually prefers to grow in a reasonable wet area as it grows in part of the state with naturally high rainfall.
There is another gum with attractively coloured flowers, once often planted but not so popular nowadays with our smaller gardens, the Pink Ironbark, E. sideroxylon ‘Rosea.’ This is much hardier than the foregoing, but it is also much taller and less colourful, and comes from a much drier climate – you just cannot win sometimes.
My grandparents had one of these in their Masterton garden. It grew to at least 15 metres tall (and might get taller in the right place I would think) and it made a great feature for that part of the garden. Their form had lovely deep pink flowers, but again this can be variable. The flowering time is from late autumn through to late spring, so a generous flowering can be expected over winter. This has the delightful effect of providing nectar for homey-eating birds, including of course the tui.
The foliage on this species is nowhere near as dark as the red flowering gum, and the tree is more branched and lighter foliaged. My grandparents grew plants at the base of their tree – you would struggle to do that with a mature E. ficifolia – so it can be an attractive option for the larger garden.
If you are keen to help bring birds into the garden, there are other Australian options. The winter-flowering Banksia intergrifolia is often used as a shelter tree, largely because it is very wind tolerant, even withstanding salt-lade sea winds. The leaves are dark green above but silvery underneath, so they are very pretty when they shift in the wind.
The flowers are bottlebrush shaped and an attractive shade of greenish-yellow.
This is quite hardy and will cope with quite a few degrees of frost. It is not the most stunning of plants but if you have a bit of room, it is worth planting for the sake of the birds.
There is another summer flowering tree that will also provide food for the birds, the stunning silk tree, Albizia julibrisin ‘Rosea.’ This Oriental favourite – it grows wild from Japan through to Iran – has a lot to recommend it. The light foliage makes this an easy tree to grow other plants (including lawn) underneath and its spreading habit of growth means it is still appealing when it has lost its leaves fort winter.
At this time of the year, the branches are covered with silky carmine-red flowers.
I think this is the perfect tree for the backyard as it provides a nice light shade over summer but is clear for the winter. It will grow in any well-drained soil and needs no special care.

A summer journey up Taratahi

Pimelia longifolia

I try to have a little challenge for each summer. This is never anything that anyone is ever going to make a reality TV programme about, such as herding cattle in Mongolia, battling hurricanes in the Florida Keys or digging deep under the jungles of Central America looking for remains of ancient civilisations. My summer expeditions are more localised and gentle than that.
This year my aim was to get back up to the top of the Tararua Range that overlooks the valley I live in – in particular the summit of Taratahi, Mount Holdsworth.
Maori have a method of describing how they fit into the world when formally introducing themselves – they give their mihi, a formalised introduction that says what waka their ancestors arrived in Aotearoa on, which iwi and hapu they belong to, who their parents were and what their name is. They also say which mountain and river they belong to.
Taratahi (“one peak”) stands proud on the skyline from Masterton and is the visible termination of many streetscapes – and it is the mountain I belong to. Ruamahanga is my river.
It was a windy day when I climbed the flanks of Taratahi recently. Down on the plains the air was still, and there was scant high cloud, but as I drove toward the mountain I could see that misty clouds were being driven over the top of the range and being sucked down, covering almost all the alpine zone.
Normally my intent in climbing is to get to the very top of the mountain (I am a man after all) but this time I was only interested in reached the transition zone between the beech-clad (New Zealand beech, Nothofagus, not northern beech) forest and the shrub and tussock dominate higher areas. Mid to late January is a good time for photographing flowers in this area, and I was keen to add one or two photographs to my little collection of alpine flora.
I was also hoping to get a better photograph of the blue swamp orchid, Thelymitra cyanea. I had found one of these in flower in the swamp that lies in Pig Flats when I made the journey in late December 2005 but my auto-focus camera had been unable to focus on the individual plants and I had come down from the mountain with about five fuzzy photographs of an indeterminate shaped blue object against a sharply defined moss bed.
I was a little surprised to find a flower in the manuka (Leptospermum scoparium) growing on the edge of the track at the exposed site called Rocky Lookout, about a quarter of the way up the mountain. I photographed the plant here though, feeling a bit pleased with myself that I had found the solitary plant in flower.
Half an hour later I crossed Pig Flat and saw hundreds of blue swamp orchids in flower!
Further up the mountain, as I popped my head out of the deeper forest into the sub-alpine zone, I found a number of native shrubs in flower, including the charming Pimelia longifolia. Why this alpine charmer is not grown in gardens I do not know.
The tops were shrouded in mist so I only ventured as far as Powell Hut, which was hidden from the valley by clouds.
I stayed for a quick lunch, grabbed a few photographs and then made my way back down the hill, meeting dozens of others making their way up.
Coming back down the hill I noticed, among the trampers, a number of red-bodied dragonflies skitting about, but when I tried to photograph them they simply flew away. Lower down on the flanks of the hill I spotted a large kapokapowai Uropetala carovei sitting on the branch of a dead manuka tree. Growing up to 85 mm long, this is the largest of New Zealand’s 11 dragonflies. It is a slow-flying, slightly lumbering species, long-lived, normally living near water. The nymphs take four years to mature.
I came home well satisfied. I had the photographs I wanted, and the bonus of a photograph of a dragonfly to show my athropodophilac son.
Now I just need another challenge for the rest of summer.

Sweet pea bushes

As summer moves on, and the raspberries finally stop fruiting it is time to clean out the bed they grow in, to remove the old spent canes and to tie up the new canes. Most raspberries, of course, fruit on wood they made the previous year, so it is important to remember to keep the supply of new wood replenished, and to remove the old wood.
I do try to keep an eye on the canes during the earlier part of the growing season as the job of training the new stems is a lot easier while they are still pliable.
While I was down in the raspberry patch, I had a wander along the back of the shrubbery that I wrote of last week. It is about three meters wide, with a number of large natives, and a few deciduous shrubs, including a couple of the more unusual Hydrangea species and a giant mock-orange, Philadelphus. I have been cogitating about how I am going to change this garden, more or less deciding on replacing the under storey with some native ferns, so I was taking a mental stock take of the existing planting when I came across a Polygala growing against the fence. I was a bit puzzled at first as I did not recall planting it, then I remembered that it was already here when we arrived, planted by the previous owners. I have not noticed it for a while, as it is so shaded that it does not flower very well now.
I had a chuckle because a work mate, Paul, was talking about Polygalas the other day, saying how valuable they were as a no-fuss shrub – and he is absolutely right, they are very useful shrubs. I told him I did not have any in my garden.
There are many, many species of Polygala, found scattered over most of the earth except our little corner of the world. The only one commonly grown in gardens is the South African species, P. myrtifolia. This has bright green leaves, and has tidy growth habits meaning it has become deservedly popular in New Zealand gardens. The usual form you will find is “Grandiflora”, which has larger flowers that the type species.
These flowers are reddish-purple and pea shaped, although the plant is not actually a legume. The flowers are held in clusters at the end of the branches, with a pronounced flush in the late winter/early spring, but also intermittently throughout the year.
There are other forms around too, with “Dazzler” being perhaps the best known. It has more compact growth and slightly more glaucous leaves. There is a smaller form again, “Liddle Dwarf,” grown by Liddle Wonder nurseries in Waikanae. It is said to only grow to 80 cm so it should be a great addition to the very small flowering shrubs available, especially with its extended flowering season.
There is a bit of a drawback to these plants – the colour of the flowers. The purple shade is strident and it is hard to find flowers that will tone in with them. Perhaps the best bet is plants that flower in a similar colour range, or perhaps in very light shades.
Plants do not get as popular as these have without a reason, and the main reason is the ease with which these shrubs grow. They will flourish in any good soil in full sun, and will even do well in poor soils, provided they are well-drained.
They benefit from as light pruning when planted and an annual trimming will keep them looking nicely shaped.
Most of you will have probably grown one or another of these, but few will realise that some forms of this species have become a pest in the north, in yet another example of a foreign plant succeeding altogether too well in its new environment. It seems that the problem stems from seedlings establishing themselves sin coastal areas of western Auckland. The forms that most nurseries offer are sterile and, as such, will not cause a problem out in the wild.
This plant is often known as the sweet pea shrub – Paul calls it that – but to my mind that name belongs to another shrub Podalyria calyptara. This is another South African shrub but this one has altogether different growth habits. To start with, it has the most amazing silky grey foliage. The leaves themselves are greyish green but they are covered with tiny white hairs, giving a silvery sheen.
The flowers are equally surprising – pale pinkish mauve flowers about the size of sweet peas, very nicely scented and carried with abundance in the spring and summer. These are very useful cut flowers, lasting for weeks if properly cared for. They probably need slightly warmer conditions than the Polygala varieties, and I suspect that they cannot cope with such strong frosts.
This is also a lot easier to mix in the garden as the subtle shades can be more easily accommodated. It grows to about two metres when happy.
Another Podalyria, the satin bush P. sericea, is also available in New Zealand. This also has silver leaves but is a lot smaller than the sweet pea bush, only reaching about 80 cm. the flowers are correspondingly smaller. The flowers are lilac rose and carried in large numbers in spring. They are followed by silvery seedpods.
And yes, they have escaped from the garden and are on watch lists in the north, so plant with caution, especially in coastal areas.
Another plant is sometimes called the sweet pea bush – the bright blue Psoralea pinnata, more commonly called blue broom. This has needle-like foliage and mainly flowers in spring. Commonly found in coastal areas, it is not so usually found inland as it will only cope with moderate frosts.
And, as I am sure you will have guessed, it has become a weed, this time on Great Barrier Island! Not so sweet after all.

That big bad bed in my backyard

Cosmos in flower among the Pervoskia

We have been in our “new” garden for nearly ten years now. In some ways it is barely recognizable from the property we bought. Over the years, we have added many garden beds and extended others –some of the changes have worked well while others have been less successful.
I think that the biggest disappointment has been the large island bed I dug in the rear of our section. This part of the garden has a sleep out and a pool, and it is an area we spend a lot of time in summer. When we arrived there was a tiny strip alongside the perimeter fence so I greatly widened that (from about 30 cm to over three metres) and completely barked the whole area. There were a few native trees in the area - a lemonwood, a golden akeake and a silver matipo – but there was adequate light for most plants to thrive.
That has changed over the years. The natives are now tall and cast a deep shade over the bed and to I need to shift many of the perennials I planted when I first made the bed.
One idea in particular had been a bit of a flop.
I wanted a summery feel to the edge of the border so I planted a row of day lilies, Hemerocallis varieties. I bought ten different varieties from one of New Zealand’s top nurseries, but the garden was, even at the time of planting, marginal for such sun lovers, and as the shade has increased, they have done worse and worse each year. It is time for me to shift them to a sunnier place.

I made the large island bed to give us somewhere to grow the sun-loving perennials and bulbs we both love so much. I took all the turn of a large area then put trailer load after trailer load of chicken manure and compost onto the soil before digging it all in. At the time, I made the bed I remember thinking that the soil felt dry but I thought the addition of all the humus would do the trick and I would have great soil. We garden in thin, well-drained soil, and it usually gobbles up humus, but does give wonderful soils if treated properly.
The new bed soon proved to be a sticky mess. It seems most likely that the spoil from the pool was spread into this area, and the soil we have worked on have proven to be far from the free-draining humus rich soil I had envisioned. Bearded irises, an important flower for us, have proven to be hopeless in this bed – they sulk and they do not flower. We even have a devil of a job getting Montbretias to flower!
Most of us are aware of the weedy Montbretias that often line stream-sides and damp places in New Zealand gardens, but few know or grow some of the vastly better Crocosmia varieties. These have flowers that are three of four times the size of the weedy species and have a fabulous colour range from soft apricot, through the usual oranges, to almost red. I grow ‘Star of the East’, which has large flowers of soft apricot-yellow – only I hardly ever see any flowers. It has grown well enough and has formed a respectable clump, but just does not flower very well at all.
Other plants have flourished in the soil. The Hellebores that are a feature of one end of the bed do fine and provide lovely flowers in late winter, and some Dahlias have done very well too. One has even seeded, the white cactus-flowered form, giving rise to a lovely pink decorative.
Another surprising success has been the sun-loving Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire – and no, it does not seem to have a common name. This is a Himalayan shrub with the amazing combination of grey leaves, white stems and lavender-blue flowers. The form usually grown in New Zealand, “Blue Spire’ is an award-winning variety raised in Britain. The flowers are larger and bluer than the type species. It is not a tidy grower – it tends to sprawl and flip about a bit so make sure it has a little bit of room. The books all say it needs great drainage to succeed, so quite why it is doing so well in this garden I do not know.
The plants that have done well tend to be those derived from meadow-growing species. A couple of Siberican irises have flourished, as have some self-seeded Delphiniums. At the moment the highlight of the garden is the bergamot, Monarda ‘Raspberry Wine.’

The bergamots have hooded tubular flowers atop strong stems – this variety grows about 1.2 metres high- and this bright raspberry-wine coloured form is lovely. There are other varieties in the purple-red-pink range.
The other plants that I am sure will flourish in this bed are the “queens of the summer border”, the Penstemons. These are brilliant value as they flower for months on end and are very hardy. The colour range is great too, and it would be possible to find Penstemon varieties to suit most garden situations.
We have a number of varieties in different beds but I have decided that I will plant up a number of these into this problem bed. I have already purchased a couple of forms that are happily bedded in. ‘Purple Passion’ has tiers of deep grape purple flowers that fit in perfectly with the other colours in this range in the bed, as does ‘Sour Grapes.’ I think I will plant the relatively new ‘Alice Hindley’ around the Perovskia, as her large pale bluish-lilac flowers will combine beautifully with ‘Blue Spires’.
It is surely one of the delights of gardening that gardens change with time and as they change, they allow different spaces for new plants. Meanwhile, I am looking for another new bed to plant those sun-lovers.

The lily of the Nile

Over the past year one of the noble institutions of the great New Zealand horticultural summer has come under attack, a plant that, although not a native, is almost as much an iconic plant of our summer as the pohutukawa. I am referring, of course, to the bluest of blue summer flowers, the ubiquitous agapanthus.
Last year BioSecurity New Zealand announced that they wanted to add agapanthus to the list of plants on the National Pest Plant Accord, saying that the free-seeding habits of some of the larger forms of this popular garden plant poses a threat to the environment, especially in more northern areas. It seems to have been fired up by a group at the Auckland Regional Council who were saying that up to 287,000ha of their region could potentially be infested with agapanthus.
Such claims were fought vigorously by the nursery industry and agapanthus is now registered as being of concern only in the Auckland area, and even then only for research purposes – there are no restrictions on the sale and distribution of agapanthus plants.
That hasn’t sopped a lot of people from forming the view that the plants are banned and sales have plummeted. One of New Zealand’s largest propagation nurseries reports that their s sales have dropped from 30,000 to 5,000 – and they are not happy.
It seems the very things that gardeners love about agapanthus make it a nuisance in the environment. The larger forms especially, have strong fleshy roots that will let the plant grab hold of any ground they find themselves in - the drier the better – and will soon establish themselves, even under evergreen trees or out in the hottest sun on a Napier beachside.
They can cope with the strongest north-easterlies straight off the sea, the harshest southerly whipping off Cook Strait, or the driest, hottest north-westerly. They will even bounce back from being walked over or driven over. They will find spots in nooks and crannies of banks and cliffs, and will reliably flower each summer, bright blue flowers shimmering over pest-free leaves.
They will not want cosseting. You will not have to water these plants each second day, and you will not have to get the organic insect spray out either- they seem immune to attack from any creepy crawlies, and their dark green leaves always seem to be nice-looking.
These are all good things for the gardener wanting a reliable plant that will thrive in the poorest of conditions, but they are also why agapanthus can be a problem in areas where they are not wanted. Thos beautiful blue (and sometimes white) flower heads are followed by attractive seed heads, and then by light seeds that readily disperse in the wind.
These seeds germinate readily. I recall they we grew some in the nursery, saving some seed from a plant down the road. I think every one of them came up. Similarly, I have some new seedlings in a garden along the side of our driveway, a garden made of large bark sitting atop compacted fill – about the worst kind of growing conditions you could imagine. It is narrow and difficult to water, so anything that can grow in it is allowed to, including a cluster of seedlings from my neighbour’s agapanthus plants, which sent their flowers sunwards over our drive, and drop their seeds into the bark.
The resulting seedlings show a great range of colour, from very pale blue through to much deeper shades of purple.
It is easy enough to remove unwanted agapanthus seedlings if you find them when they are young, but once they are established their strong root system makes them very difficult to eradicate. Many weed killers do not work either. You can spray Roundup over the foliage of these persistent growers and they will lap it up and keep on their merry way - useful for weeding between agapanthus and a problem if they are growing in an unwanted area.
I think agapanthus are very useful plants, and do not think they need banning from our gardens. The usual reason given for banning them is that they will invade the bush. It is true that they will grow in shady areas, and very nice the dark green foliage looks too, but they are very reluctant to flower under those conditions – they seem to need light to initiate flowering.
The biggest varieties are a bit of a handful in small gardens, though and I wouldn’t plant them in any garden of mine unless I had a large area I wanted to blank out. They look fabulous in country gardens and along the beachfront where they can be allowed to grow naturally.
There is a wonderful range of dwarf varieties though, and these are fabulous for the smaller garden. They do not seem to be quite so tenacious and do not seed with the same vigour so they present less of a threat to the environment too.
Which variety to choose, when there are so many to pick from?‘Peter Pan’ is an older variety but it is still one of the most popular of all the dwarf forms. It is sterile, so sets no seed, and is light blue highlighted with dark blue contrast. This is popular for bulk plantings or edgings.
‘Kinston Blue’ is a very dark blue form – probably the darkest among the dwarf blues – and is a very compact growing plant. It is deciduous.
‘Gayes Lilac’ is a New Zealand-bred form, with flowers that tend toward lilac, although they are not true lilac buy any stretch of the imagination. It is very nice though, especially among similarly lighter-toned flowers.
‘Streamline’ is another very popular sky blue form, while ‘Snowstorm’ and ‘Snowball’ are probably the best of the dwarf white forms.
‘Tinkerbell’ is a variegated sport of ‘Peter Pan,’ with deep green foliage banded white. It is a shy flowerer, but always looks tidy in the garden.

Genetics and Fuchsias

This weekend has been an interesting one, as it usually is when my geneticist son David is home. His level of learning is now far in excess of my own, and his PhD research has touched on areas of New Zealand plant and animal life, so a chance to talk plants is always welcome.

We took advantage of his being home to go for a walk through the forest at Pukaha Mouth Bruce, timing our walk to coincide with the kaka feedings. I guess the purists will be a bit upset at the concept of feeding these wild parrots but to amateur naturalists is a great chance to see native parrots up close - and by up close, I mean up very close. As the kakas descend from the surrounding forests to take up their station in the trees they take little notice of the humans gathered to watch, roosting a metre or less from the spectators’ heads. It is an amazing experience to be able to stand that close to a wild bird, and for a photographer it is a dream come true.
One of the things David has been explaining to me is the latest scientific thought on the influence of Gondwanaland on our plants. Gondwanaland is the name scientists have given the giant supercontinent that held all the Southern Hemisphere lands including the land we now call New Zealand. We parted company with Gondwanaland about 80 million years ago.
The theory I was taught was that many of our ancestral plants came with us at that time, and evolved in the interim. It now seems that this is very unlikely. Much of what is now New Zealand was submerged during the Oligocene, about 30 million years ago, and most of our ancient plants seem to have arrived in the period following that. Many of them arrived from Australia, and we have many plants in common with our western neighbour, including tree ferns, manuka and southern beech trees.
But we also have a lot in common with South America, where relatives of many of our plants and trees are also to be found, along with a great many of the most popular flowers, trees, shrubs and vegetables for the garden.
Among the plants that first appeared in New Zealand 30 million years ago, as dated from fossil pollen, is the Fuchsia genus, New Zealand being the extreme edge of its range across the Pacific from South and Central America where it is centred.
The New Zealand species have a number of peculiarities that separate them from their pan-Pacific kin. For a start one species, the ground-covering F. procumbens, has yellow flowers (well partly yellow at least) and they face upwards. This is a coastal species and is not reliably hardy but is well worth making an effort to grow as it is very pretty. The light green leaves are charming, and the flowers, although on the small side, are also very pleasant. The main reason for bringing it into the garden though is the wonderful display of berries once the flowering season is over. The berries are relatively large and are bright red.
I grow species this in hanging baskets on the patio where we can see the flowers at eye level and appreciate them more, and where they will be out of the frosts in winter.

Fuchsia procumbens

The other Fuchsia that New Zealanders should be familiar with is the kotukutuku, the tree Fuchsia that is such a feature of the forest margins. This is a semi-deciduous small tree which bears a large number of small flowers, which again are followed by attractive deeply coloured berries. The berries are called ‘konini’ by Maori and are said to be very useful for jam making – something I have no experience at. Old Maori friends tell me that kereru, wood pigeons, taste lovely when they have been eating konini berries, but again I cannot comment – I’ve never eaten illegal Tegel.
The garden fuchsias we grow are not derived from New Zealand species, although there would be potential for some interesting hybrids if they could be persuaded to produce viable seed.
Our garden plants, with their wide range of flower colours, forms and growth habits, are descendants of early introductions of some of the nearly 100 species to be found in South and Central America. They were extensively hybridized during the first half of the nineteenth century and reached their peak of popularity in Europe in the second half of that century, when they were among the plants cultivated extensively under glass.
In New Zealand, we can grow our fuschias outside, even in frost prone areas such as the Wairarapa. I grow some in pots on the patio, others on a south-facing wall of the house, and still others along an east-facing wall of the glasshouse. These plants get cut back by the winter frosts but I just prune out the ugly dead pieces in the spring and they soon shoot away again. Those in more sheltered areas would hardly even need to do that.

I like mine to grow in a natural fashion, but these plants are very easy to train. If you are looking for a stylish standard just keep one strong central lead growing, removing any side growths as they appear. Weeping varieties can easily be trained to grow in a basket by applying the opposite technique – just remove any leaders, encouraging side growth. This is, of course, easier on the varieties that have natural pendant growth – just keep an eye out when you are in your local garden centre.
These are no-fuss plants, but it does pay to keep an eye for thrips, which can attack the undersides of hanging baskets in particular. Just make sure you water the bottom of the leaves occasionally and they will be fine.
And just think. You’re growing plants that have been in New Zealand for 30 million years!

Looking back on a challenging year

Wildflowers in Lavinia's garden

The end of the year is the time we traditionally take stock of the year that has passed, and take time out to reflect on our aspirations for the year ahead.
In a personal sense, this has been a hard year for our family. In late autumn, our daughter Lavinia died in Rotorua Hospital. She had been unwell with an unusual form of reactive arthritis since she was at university, but she learnt to cope with her disability and to fashion as active a life as she could manage.
She lived in a small house on the top of a hill near Te Puke, surrounded by thousands of kiwifruit vines, and acres of avocados. She discovered the joys of gardening and fashioned a small garden of the truly cottage variety – flowers, herbs and vegetables fought each other for space in the lush volcanic soil. The occasional foray into the garden from one of her many dogs didn’t seem to faze her too much, and she appeared to have found her feet a little.
We were all worried when her visit to hospital for a minor infection turned from days into weeks, and distraught when she died of an undiagnosed brain abscess.

Lavinia

It was the start of a long and cold winter. In the depths of winter we had to plan our trips around the snow storms that were closing off all the routes between Masterton and Rotorua. We had one spectacular trip over the desert in between closures, when the whole plateau was clothed in a thick winter coat. We stopped briefly to take photographs of each other in the snow, and of the whipcord hebes bowed down with icy fringes.
The weather seemed to match our mood. An early warm spell held hopes of a bountiful spring. On one trip to Rotorua the Kuirau Park side of Pukeroa, the ridge that the Rotorua Hospital sits atop, was simmering with daffodils. We thought that maybe the worst of the weather was over, and a warm spring was about to arrive.
But this turned out to be a vain hope and winter returned with a vengeance. It seemed that week after week the southerly storms found their way north, cooling the ground and keeping spring at bay. My beloved Pacific Coast irises delayed their flowering, and were at their peak a full two weeks later than they usually were.
My tomatoes stayed firmly ensconced in their pots in the glasshouse as I fretted over whether the frosts had passed. In the end, I decided that I had to plant them out in the second week of November as they were getting very spindly under cover. They were in for a few weeks before we had a hard late frost and they were severely damaged, despite being covered. The frost blackened and destroyed many leaves, and burnt out the growing tips completely. They hardly had time to recover before we experienced a sudden burst of hail and they were once again damaged. This time the spotting led to blight. The poor old tomatoes look very sad and we will not have a great crop this year.
The roses suffered similarly early in the season. The cool temperatures and the lack of sunlight meant that many of the buds partly opened and were then either frosted or caught by rain, and they rotted.
In the end, the spring did come, and the iris seedlings, many flowering for the first time, were a reminder about the cycle of life in the garden. Each year there is an autumn, and there is a winter, but equally these times are followed by spring and summer. During these times, we harvest our stores for the leaner times ahead.
The irises held some lovely surprises, and I was looking for one pretty enough to name after Lavinia. Of course, there was none that pretty, so I took out my paintbrush and my labels and I started crossing some of the flowers, thinking that one day there might just be one worth the name. Those crosses that took have huge filled seedpods now and I am watching them carefully to make sure I gather all the seed and sow them for next season.
The vegetable garden has had it troubles aside from the tomatoes. The basil does not like cool soils and it is struggling, and the watermelons given to me by a gardening friend are just a joke. They are sitting there looking like something the dog has played with for a week or two.
But there is an upside of course. The cool and moist weather has meant the whole garden has been damper and, as such, has suffered less stress. Some vegetables have thrived in the cool spring - I do not think we have ever grown such luscious lettuces. As a bonus, the cool weather has stopped them from bolting and they have provided leaves for months. We virtually only grow loose-headed types now and they have loved the season.
The Rhododendrons up at Cross Hills in Kimbolton have loved the season too, and I don’t think I have ever seen that garden looking better than when I visited it in early November. The tulip display at the Wellington Botanical Gardens, which I have never managed to time right before, was breathtaking – not to everyone’s taste in their own garden I would think, but amazing just the same. The roses at Palmerston North, after a slow start, performed very well, and the bed of ‘Paddy Stevens’ that we planted in the new rose beds at Queen Elizabeth Park in Lavinia’s memory is doing well after a slow start.
I sat on the side of Pukeroa a week or two ago. Where the daffodils had had once held sway, knee-high plumes of grass flowers were shifting in the breeze. The grass had been left un-mown to allow the daffodils leaves to make next year's flowers.
And in Lavinia’s garden, the weeds, the flowers, the vegetables and the herbs still fight it out.

Christmas season in the south

New Zealand's own Christmas tree, the pohutukawa

Another funny Christmas season is upon us, and we will be sending each other cards and presents covered with the images of a different hemisphere. Jolly red-faced gift bearers will be captured smiling alongside blazing fires while snow mounds can be glimpsed through windows iced with delicate snow patterns. And the floral images will be all out of kilter too. There will be holly trees decorated with bright red berries, and bunches of ivy, and pts and pots of bright red poinsettias. Of course, there will also be mistletoes, but they have a functional purpose at this time of the year.
In our hemisphere things are flipped over. Instead of snow, we have sand, and instead of berry-clad hollies we have the bright red flowers of our own New Zealand Christmas Tree, the pohutukawa. We are able to have bowls of fresh garden flowers rather than drab evergreens, and we have developed our own floral traditions.
Prime amongst those has been the adoption of the Christmas Lily, Lilium regale, as the flower most associated with the season.

Christmas lily, Lilium regale

This highly-scented white beauty is a relatively recent introduction to western horticulture, having been found in China in the 1920s. It is very hardy and quickly became popular the world around, especially in southern climes where its habit of flowering in late December was treasured.
This lily is quite variable as to habit. It can be as low as 60 cm high (most forms are about this size or slightly larger) but can also grow very tall. I have some forms grown from seed that reach over two metres before they bloom. A couple of years ago they were attacked by a virus which sauces them to become a little fascinated, so I thought I’d start them again from seed. The seedlings have flowered this season – a week before the proper date I might add, and before the mother plants have flowered - but they are less than half the height of their parents. It will be interesting to see how they develop in the years ahead.
Christmas lilies are almost ridiculously easy to grow. They will grow in all but the wettest and poorest soils, and will even cope with semi-shaded conditions, although they do tend to grow out towards the light. They are probably at their best in light, well-drained soils with good humus content, in the full sun.
Like most lilies they have parcels of bright golden orange pollen in the centre of the flowers, and also like most lilies, this pollen can stain material so it pays to remove the stamen when picking for the house.
For many people Christmas is just not Christmas without these lilies. The Head Gardener was brought up with this tradition (her grandmother had big clumps in her garden, as did her mother) so we have a number of clumps scattered throughout the garden, and they tend to stagger their flowering, so we usually have some in flower for about thirty days, and also usually have flowers for picking for Christmas.
For New Zealanders, especially those in the north, the quintessential Christmas flower is the pohutukawa.
This coastal relative of the more wide-spread ratas scarcely needs any description, its deep red flowers having been associated with the festive season, and its summer focus, since pakeha settlement.
For those of us restricted to gardening in inland, and thus in frostier conditions, this treasured plant poses a bit of a problem. It can sometimes be persuaded to survive in relatively sheltered places as long as it can be nurtured through the first few years when it is more frost tender, but otherwise is too tender to survive.
Perhaps a tub of the lovely orange flowered form, ‘Tahiti’ might be the answer. This Pacific Islands variety has become very popular, at least partly because of the ease with which it can be grown in containers. It has silvery foliage and bright orange-red flowers that are carried spasmodically throughout the year, with a flush in late winter.
There are other smaller forms around too, mainly forms of the Kermadec Islands pohutukawa, but none are as easily grown as ‘Tahiti’.
I have noticed lots of poinsettias about this year in the shops, their bright red ‘flowers’ (actually bracts that surround the small white flowers) looking seasonally attractive. Many gardeners are tempted to try and plant these shrubs (for that is what they are) in their gardens. Once again, if they are in more northern areas they will probably get away with this but in our lower North Island it is harder to get these plants to thrive. R n
It might be better to try and grow them as house plants, but even then there are problems.
These plants naturally flower in the winter. In the northern hemisphere they are easily manipulated into flowering for Christmas, but down here it is a little more tricky. Fortunately the flowering is initiated by lengthening days, so poinsettias are grown in glasshouses with black shading, and are subjected to day6 shortening from about October.
In the home garden that is difficult but it should be easy to get your Christmas poinsettias to flower next winter. Just keep them moist during the summer, and then start shortening their days in the middle of April. You cannot have any extraneous light on the plant – even a table lamp will provide enough light to stop flower initiation. If you have a spare room that you never use at night that is probably the ideal spot to get your poinsettia alive.

New Zealand mistletoe

As to mistletoe….or should that be Kissletoe?
There are some wonderful native mistletoes, some with bright red flowers. They are rare plants now, threatened by possums, but some years they flower in profusion up at Mount Holdsworth. What better way to walk off Christmas excesses than to take some one you love and go for a walk. Ask the curator where the mistletoes are before you go, but if you don’t find any, you’ll still enjoy the walk!

Jungle beauties

A recent return trip from Rotorua saw me making a slight detour on the way home – I decided to take advantage of having a little extra time to make a trip through to New Plymouth, to visit to the garden of Andrew and Yvonne Brunton. Their fabulous garden Rosedale at Bell Block will be well-known to many of you who travel to the Taranaki Rhododendron Festival as it features a very attractive enclosed garden, formed behind high confer hedges, and a stunning river-side walk lined with Rhododendrons and camellias as well as other precious gems. It is one of Taranaki’s best gardens and always a favourite.
But it wasn’t the gardens I was going out of my way to see - it was the enormous shed on the side of the rose-lined driveway that leads to the garden. Within this growing shed the Bruntons grow over 1000 varieties of jungle cactus, Epihyllum, and it was these cactus I was making my way to New Plymouth to see. I had visited the nursery before, during the lead up to the festival, and was entranced by the display of the thousands of plants growing in the Brunton’s growing shed. I had visited too early in the season to see them at their flowering best though. I knew I should be right this time though as my epiphyllums as my were flowering in the glasshouse at home.
I had an interesting journey through the Forgotten Highway from Taumarunui to Stratford, through some of the most isolated country in the North Island, and some of the most scenic country as well. It was raining when I got to Stratford and the green pastures all the way through the journey made it obvious that Taranaki was not suffering from drought.
When I made it through to Manutahi Road, and up the colourful driveway I was expecting to see a great display of Epiphyllum flowers, but it was not to be. I was met firstly by Andrew, and then by Yvonne, both bemoaning the long cold winter and the cloudy and sunless spring that had left the flowering season many weeks behind. They apologised that the flowers would not be anything like their best for another couple of weeks.
The Bruntons were very disappointed at the weather.
They had started growing their large collection when Yvonne was given some leaf cuttings by an auntie. At that stage they were on a dairy farm near Stratford. Their joint passion for the ever-expanding collection of cacti, New Zealand’s best, led them to relocate to the warmer climate of Bell Block four years ago to concentrate on what is New Zealand’s only commercial Epiphyllum nursery.
In the wild the Epiphyllum species are literally jungle cactus. They are epiphytes that grow in the humus collected in the branches of trees, alongside other plants like orchids and bromeliads. Under these conditions they can get the filtered light they need, as well as a reliable source of moisture. The medium they grow in is very well drained so they are never sitting in water.
These wild plants all have white flowers, and the majority of them are night flowering. I well recall the large specimen of one of these species that my grandparents cared for (albeit spasmodically) in their sunroom. Once a year, for a few nights, the plant would proudly display a succession of stunning white, heavenly-scented, flowers.
When these species were introduced into European horticulture plant breeders soon saw the potential for crossing them with related but more colourful species of cactus, and a huge range of varieties was soon available, all of them day flowering and with colours ranging through most of the rainbow, with the exception of true blue. There is also a lovely range of bi-coloured and bi-toned forms as well as a range of flower size, from relatively small up to 20 cm or more across.
Being jungle plants, these beauties do have some particular requirements before they will perform at their best.
They prefer a well-drained potting mix to start with. The Bruntons use their own formula based on a standard potting mix but with added pumice. They say that some people recommend orchid mix but they feel this is too chippy. They suggest a 50/50 mix of orchid mix and potting mix would work well.
In the wild, Epiphyllums grow in filtered sunlight and prefer the same in the garden. They can be grown outside in areas not prone to frost, but also thrive on patios and in glasshouses as long as they are not exposed to the full rays of the sun.
Watering needs to be handled with care. They do not like to dry out at all, but they equally dislike becoming waterlogged. Either condition is likely to lead to the plant to rot. It is best to keep the potting mix on the dry side of moist.
They can be grown in the same pot for up to five years but do need occasional repotting. At this time make sure you use fresh potting mix and also ensure that you do not “over-pot.” A plant in too big a pot will not flower as well as a plant kept slightly root bound.
Pests are not usually too much of a problem but it pays to keep a watch out for scale insects ands for mealy bugs, as well as for snails and slugs.
These jungle beauties make the most amazing pot plants. Their succulents leaves give no real hint of the startling beauty of the flowers, which can be among the brightest of all flowers. If you are planning a trip to Taranaki anytime soon make sure you look the Bruntons up and call on them and see some of the 1000 different varieties they grow, plus some of their own new hybrids. These stunning flowers are worth a long trip – even one through the Forgotten Highway.