Halloween

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

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.

Irises - show time!

Late spring and early summer are one of the most exciting times in the garden. So many flowers choose this time to be at their best that we are spoiled for choice – Rhododendrons, roses, azaleas, and my favourites, the many glorious irises.
It is also the time of the year for flower shows, of course, and keen gardeners will be out picking and preparing their favourite blooms for display, and others will be popping along to the various horticultural society displays to see what is in fashion
I started out my adventure in the world of irises on my hands and knees, in my grandparents’ garden. My grandfather was a huge fan of the large flowered Tall Bearded irises, the ones that most people think of when you mention garden irises.
Despite my interest in some of the other types, I have to admit that these are the aristocrats of the iris world. They have multiple flowers on sturdy stems, with an incredible range of colours. If you have never seen modern garden iris, you ought to get along to these shows – I am sure you will be amazed at the modern bearded iris. The colour range is staggering – all colours except true red – and the form has also evolved, with tougher petals and lots of flounced and ruffles.
Of course Tall Bearded irises do have a potential flaw in our windy climate – they are tall and as such they can be prone to damage if we have a windy spring. There is a range of sizes in bearded irises, right down to ground hugging types, so it is possible to grow some that are nowhere near as susceptible to wind damage.
Almost all the bearded varieties need the same treatment – well drained, limey soil, and an open, exposed site. They will cope best if they are placed on top of the soil rather than being planted deeply. As long as those few simple rules are followed they are easily grown, and will give plenteously of their wonderful blooms.

Tomato time again

This weekend is garden weekend, Labour Weekend, the traditional time to get all sorts of summer vegetables into the garden. Whether that is a good idea this year is an open question – are the southerly blasts we seem to be getting every week going to stop now, or are we going to have a continuation of cold nights?
I cannot pretend to know the answer, but I think I will be hedging my bets, and waiting a week or two before I plant my tomatoes out, and probably a little more than that before thinking of peppers, zucchinis and squashes.
Having said that I have already paid a visit to my local garden centre, looking over the wide range of varieties available, and choosing a few varieties for this year. I have them potted up and sitting on the bench in the glasshouse, allowing them to grow on a little bit before I plant them out.
I met a friend in the tomato section at the nursery and we discussed the various types on display. There was a huge variety, over twenty modern types for example. We agreed that we would both be growing some Sweet 100, well known for their abundance of small sweet fruit. We both pretended that we were growing for the children (or grandchildren) but we also admitted that we mainly grew them for ourselves, and that only about 40% of the fruit even got into the house. If you are first time growers of tomatoes, this is definitely one you should have in your mix.
My friend’s taste runs to much more exotic varieties than the aforementioned, and he will also be able to find an incredible range of heirloom varieties about at this time of the year. I was talking to a nurseryman friend about the popularity of these varieties the other day, and he said that many first-time gardeners, as well as more experienced ones, are excited about growing these different types. He said they are usually a bit slower to come into cropping, but they do fruit well later in the season, and certainly give a great opportunity for some adventurous salads.

Carrots for fun

‘Purple Haze’ - Jaspenelle Stewart

One of the major delights of having a garden is the pleasure that can be derived from sharing the bounty produced. It is fun to be able to give little gifts of flowers and fruits, and it is even better when those gifts can be used as part of a gentle encouragement to induce others into trying gardening on their own account.
I take particular joy in sharing our garden with some little friends of ours, de facto grandchildren who visit regularly. They always ask if they can take some flowers home, and are always keen to inspect the raspberry patch, forever hopeful that a crop may have miraculously appeared overnight. These inspections are regularly carried out in the depths of winter when we are struggling to find a vase of flowers, much less a trug of raspberries.
They have another passion which surprised me at first – they often ask if they can pull some carrots. It is not something I would have immediately thought of as being extremely attractive to two young girls, but they love the sweet taste of garden fresh carrots – and I suspect, they like being able to get their hands dirty digging for the carrots too.
I have a little surprise in store for them this year.
I have been hunting my local garden centres looking for F1 hybrid carrots, as I find they do so much better than the older open pollinated types. I simply could not find any until late this week, when one nurseryman had the cheek to show me some new hybrid carrots they had received – ‘Purple Haze’.
I am of an age that ‘Purple Haze’ is a Jimi Hendrix song about smoking marijuana, but it is an American bred hybrid, a Nantes style carrot, and the breeders have managed to take carrots back to their original purple colouring. The purple colouring only extends through the skin and outer part of the carrot – the core is still orange.
I cannot wait to see the kids’ faces when they pull purple carrots out of the garden!
The purple colour dulls considerably with cooking so they are probably best eaten raw, or perhaps just lightly steamed.
There are, of course, quite a few purple vegetables that share this trait. I have grown purple pole beans that also go green when cooked, and even purple capsicum loses much of its colour when it is cooked.

Herbs for health

The television programme that has been playing on Saturday nights recently must have had a few young people very excited initially, as it seemed to be offering advice on growing marijuana and opium poppies.
They were to be disappointed, although I guess a few will have stayed and watched James Wong presenting Grow your Own Drugs anyway, and may have learnt something about the value of gardening and the place many garden plants have in the medicine industry.
The programme has probably come at a good time, as many young New Zealanders are having their first taste of home gardening. A combination of economic belt tightening and a hankering for a more natural way of food production has seen many installing their first vegetable gardens. Some will be also looking at more natural health remedies too.
It is claimed that 60% of the world’s population rely on medicinal herbs for their medicines. In New Zealand nearly one-quarter of all prescriptions contain plant-based active ingredients - aspirin is derived from willow and meadowsweet, for example, and you are gargling with thymol (the active component of thyme) every time you open that Listerine bottle. Even the common heart medicine digitalis originally came from the wild foxglove.
On a personal level, I am perfectly happy to use take whatever my doctor prescribes for me, but there are plenty of herbal remedies for those minor ailments that do not really call for a visit down to the medical centre.
Perhaps one of the most fashionable of these medicinal herds is Aloe vera. This is one species in a large family of succulent plants, whose more decorative members are very much in fashion in the warmer parts of the country. They mainly have stately architectural leaves, arranged in rosette form and armed with bards, set off by dramatic candelabras of flowers.
Aloe vera, which is more restrained than many of its kin, is known as the burn-and-bandage plant. Its gel-like sap helps to regenerate skin tissue in cases of minor burns, scrapes, wounds, and sunburn, and then dries into a natural bandage. This one is not totally hardy and is often grown as a pot plant, but can easily be cultivated in a warm frost-free spot outside. The dried gel is said to work as an oral laxative, but I am never going to try that!
If you have got yourself successfully bandaged with the Aloe, but you are finding it hard to relax, a dose of chamomile may be just what you need. The best form is the annual species Matricaria chamomilla which makes a delightful apple-scented tea that is said to help calm anxiety, soothe insomnia, and treat minor digestive upsets. The leaves have been used as a poultice to encourage wound healing as well.
This is very easy to grow. It likes sandy soil and partial shade and as it loves to reseed itself in happy situations, sit will soon be happily ensconced in your garden.

Orchid season

There are some immutable constants in this universe; the speed of light never changes, pi is always the same, and each glasshouse, no matter how big it is, is always about 20% too small.
I thought I had addressed the smallness of my glasshouse (or polycarbonate house to be more exact) a summer or two ago, by expanding it by one fifth, but now I find, miraculously, it is still 20% too small.
Last weekend I pricked out this year’s crop of Pacific Coast Native Irises, and got the potted tuberous begonias out from under the glasshouse benches. They had spent the winter there, having a dry rest on their sides but it is now time for them to be kicked back into life by being watered.
I was scrambling for space. I had to shuffle around the various potted special plants, and even then could hardly fit everything in. I was especially keen to make some room because a friend had offered me some pots of one of my favourite plants, the little Australian Dendrobium orchids. As much as I tried, I just could not find any space at all.
That is a pity because this is the time of year for orchid societies to mount their spring shows. The Masterton show will be held on October 3 and 4, while the Hawkes Bay society will be holding their Sarcochilus show on November 7 in the Taradale Town Hall. The Masterton show will feature a large sale of very affordable orchid plants, and I was thinking I could expand my collection
I have a particular fascination with the Australian Dendorobiums – ‘dendrobes’ as orchid lovers call them.
They are derived from a number of epiphytic (growing on the bark of trees) and lithophytic (growing on rock faces or boulders) species, and they are smaller growing species (usually less than 30 cm) with reliable spring flushes of many flower spikes.
Again, they will do well in a special growing house with shade cloth walls and a solid roof to keep out the worst of the winter rains. Failing that, a nice north facing verandah will do fine. They enjoy the winter sun but need to be kept shaded over the hottest months.
I find they respond well to a small application of a long-term fertiliser. I know specialist growers go to all sorts of trouble, making up special feeding mixes for different times of the year, but for the average home gardener it is probably not that necessary – you will get perfectly fine results from the standard formulae.
Plants should be kept moist year round, although they can be allowed to dry oput a little in the middle of winter. Do not let them sit in water though, and make sure the pots are kept off the ground, as earthworms will enter through the drainage holes and make a mess of the bark mix.
The best-known species is he Australian King Orchid, Dendrobium kingianum, now officially Thelychiton kingianus. It is arguably the easiest Dendrobium to grow. It is the fastest growing and the most forgiving of all the Australian orchids, which makes it ideal for the novice grower. It ranges in colour from true albino white to a rich cherry purple, with bicolour shades of white with a rich violet eye. Breeders are currently working on lemon shades, true salmons and unusual sunset colours as well.
Take advantage of the opportunity to get along and see what specialist orchid growers are up to in their shows. Be warned though – you might find your glasshouse (or verandah) is about 20% too small.

I have been thinking about English playwright Denis Potter this week, as the first flush of Japanese flowering cherries hit their peak. In a famous interview with the novelist Melvyn Bragg, Potter, who had recently been diagnosed with the cancer that was to kill him, described the view out his window, looking onto a plum tree in full flower. He said what he saw was “the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be”.
The past few weeks have been brilliant for blossom lovers. The relatively warm weather of August pushed cherries into flower a little earlier than usual, and they somehow managed to flower through a week without any substantial wind. And the effect has been magic, with huge clusters of flowers gradually building to a crescendo, then slowly going past their peak, and silently dropping confetti-like petals on to the ground beneath. If only every cherry flowering season could have been like this!
No wonder the Japanese go to such trouble with the Cherry Blossom Festival each year, as they since the 7th century. The festivals are held throughout the country to celebrate the arrival of spring. They are so important the national weather forecast includes a blossom forecast leading up to the celebration.
These trees have it all. In the main, the foliage is clean and attractive through the main growing season, often with the bonus of interesting new leaf colour in the spring, and a correspondingly exciting autumn colour later in the season. Even in winter, many of the varieties have interesting branching patterns only made obvious when the leaves have fallen.
Most of us think the very full double pink cherries when we think of flowering cherries, but interestingly enough, it is mainly the single white forms the Japanese treasure. They especially value these for the midnight viewing sessions they participate in.
Probably the variety they most treasure is ‘Taihaku’. This forms a tall growing tree with a large rounded crown, and has the most spectacular large single white flowers. These saucer-shaped flowers are slightly fragrant, best noticed in the warmth of a calm afternoon.
‘Shirotae’ is the famed Mount Fuji cherry, which forms a flat-topped tree with tiered branches that often droop to the ground. The pure white flowers are sometimes single, sometimes semi-double, and are scented of hawthorn.

I took a lovely walk through our local park at lunchtime last week. My primary purpose was to go and check on the irises growing in the bed my grandmother donated to the town many years ago. I had weeded the bed a few weeks before, and knew the first of the flowers would nearly be out. Sure enough, there were a few flowers on the lovely gold and yellow form of Iris bucharica. This pretty species is the easiest of the Juno section – bulbs, but with persistent roots. It will grow in any well-drained soil and a sunny site, and is great for flowering in early to mid spring.
But it was not the irises that really took my eye – or my nos. It was one of the deliciously fragrant Viburnums wafting its delicious scent around the sheltered part of the park where it was growing.
I had been in a friend’s garden earlier in the week and was amazed to see four or five V. x burkwoodii growing around a relatively small garden. My friend loves scent and her garden featured a number of Michelias in heavy bud, so I can only imagine how fragrant her garden will be in a week or so.
V x burkwoodii is undoubtedly the most popular of the scented Viburnums. It has tight clusters of pure white flowers at this time of the year, with soft fragrance that I have seen described as being reminiscent of baby powder. It is certainly one of the few semi-deciduous shrubs that has retained its popularity over the years, and is perhaps among the top two or three scented shrubs grown in New Zealand.
It is a hybrid raised in Britain, between V. utile and V. carlesii. The former is an rare species in New Zealand, and I have never seen it offered. V. carlesii is usually findable and is a very fine deciduous shrub, growing about two metres high, although the specimen in the park was only just over half that. It was covered with the most delightful pink-budded flowers, opening to white, and scented even better than V. x burkwoodii in my opinion. It is hardy and, surprisingly, does well near the sea, but has never achieved the popularity of its child.

The spring vegetable garden

September is a busy time in the vegetable garden, as the main planting and sowing season kicks in for most of us. By now you should have the soil well prepared and ready for the upcoming season. I generally do not use green crops, preferring to add a lot of compost to the soil but either way, you should have all this humus well dug into the garden by now. Make sure to keep the pH level up at the same time, by applying a good dressing of lime. The bacteria that break down the humus also tend to lower the pH, and frequent applications of compost can quickly diminish the pH level. I find a good guide is to use about a handful of lime to the square metre each year. If you have any doubts about the pH level of your soil, most garden centres have kits which you can quickly check it with.
It is also time to start sowing carrots, parsnip, beetroot, silver beet, peas, swedes and turnips. Most of these need a relatively high pH and lack of success with beetroot in particular is often caused by lack of lime.
We have very free-draining soil in the vegetable garden, created by years of composting. This suits most root crops very well, but it also seems to suit the carrot rust fly perfectly. Over the years I tried various advertised chemical remedies, but I have to say we did not really get the problem under control until I started using a blocking method. I created a large cloche, but instead of covering it with glass or clear plastic I used some white shade cloth. The cloche is made to fit snugly in our garden beds and has proven very effective at protecting our carrots.
Last year I decided to lift the cloche a little higher, as it had been constraining the tops of the carrots. I built a small wall (about 100mm high) to sit the cloche on. Later in the season I lifted the cloche, thinking the rust fly time had passed, but alas, I discovered that the flies found the carrots and severely damaged our winter harvest. I will not be caught out this season.
Most vegetables taste much better when just picked from the garden, but that seems to apply much more so for carrots – they are sweeter by a long way, and also far tastier. I like to grow one of the smaller types – a Manchester Table type – but last year trialled a couple of F1 hybrid varieties from my local garden centre. I have to say they both performed very well (until the rust fly found them) and I will be repeating the trial this year. If only someone could make a variety that was rust fly resistant.
Beetroot is a very reliable growing vegetable that that has a number of uses in the garden. The young leaves can be used in salads; slightly older leaves can be boiled or steamed, much the same as silver beet; the young roots are delicious when roasted whole, and of course, the mature roots have a delightful taste of their own. Those brought up on canned beetroot will find the taste quite different – not as sweet and slightly earthy - but they are very easy to grow as long as the pH level is high enough. There are lots of varieties to choose from now. As well as the cylindrical red type most of us are familiar with, there are cylindrical varieties, and there is a good range of coloured forms – orange, yellow and white for example.
Some garden centres sell beetroot seedlings now. Make sure you have enough soil depth to plant the entire root (it is quite long for such a small plant) and this will work fine. If you do not have a lot of garden room, the round varieties can easily be grown in a container.

Proteas

There are quite a number of things we share with our Australian and South African cousins. As well as ancestral links to Great Britain, we also have a joint passion for cricket and rugby. We also share a love of gardening, and a love of the various members of the vast protea family.
It is one of those families that stretches across the southern latitudes, although it is centred on Africa. In New Zealand, are at the very edge of the distribution, our sole representative being the New Zealand honeysuckle, the rewarewa, Knightia excelsa.
As might be expected of a genus named after a king who had the ability to assume a wide variety of shapes, the proteas come in many different sizes and forms. The most familiar, though, and the most commonly planted, are those that the various forms of the shrubby Protea neriifolia, and its near relatives.
An old gardening friend of mine was a fiend for the various members of this family, and I always think of him when I see them in the garden or in the nursery. This weekend I came a cross a shipment of new plants in one of our local garden centres, and had a pleasant half an hour looking at them and making the acquaintance of a few new varieties.
One that took my eye was a new hybrid called ‘Margarita.’ This has quite large flowers of red, tipped with white beards. The flowering season is almost over with this one, but it still looked very attractive. Once the flowering has finished the old flowers are best removed, as this will allow the plant to make more growth and better flowers the following season. It is similar to the older ‘Pink Frost’, but the flowers are much more deeply coloured.
‘Frosted Fire’ is another in that vein, with rich red flowers with white frosted tips. It is more compact in its growth habits, perhaps only reaching 1.5 metres. It is very free flowering and very reliable in the garden.
Most of use are more familiar with the usual P. neriifolia type, with pink flowers tipped with black, and ‘Ruby’ is a selected form in this range, with deeper coloured flowers than usual.
I was really taken with the subdued colourings of ‘Peach Sheen’. This hybrid has flowers like a large P. neriifolia, but instead of being pink the flowers are a most unusual light peachy-orange, with a delightful shininess. The flowers are tipped in traditional black.
The last of the new varieties that took my eye was the somewhat risqué ‘Burgundy Nipple’ – and yes, that is what it is called, but for the life of me I cannot see why it has such a suggestive name! The flowers are not nipple shaped (or should I say, not like any nipple I have ever seen!) and they are not burgundy either. They are pink with the usual black tips, and look very attractive. I guess the name derives from the buds, which seemed to be darker coloured, but I cannot imagine what made the breeder give the plant such name.

Tinkerbelle

The two little girls next door have a new kitten, 'Tinkerbelle'.
She has visited us irregularly, but seems to be able to hear when our adopted granddaughter Emily visits, as she immediately comes over to check her out.
Yesterday Emily kept 'Tinkerbelle' happy b y racing around with a bamboo stake which the kitten was happy to chase.
Today Emily was not here,but Tinkerbelle still visited. She was slightly amused by my gardening, but when I made it clear I was not fussed about her playing in the recently weeded soil, she got the huff and stalked off.
Until she found a bumblebee.
She then spent the next half an hour harassing the poor thing until it died.
Despite my well-known aversion to cute and cuddly kittens, I did find this amusing, so..........

Michelias

It is still late winter for vegetable gardeners. Most of the summer cropping plants are only just being sown – tomatoes and the like – and many vegetable gardeners will only start to think seriously about their garden in two months time, at Labour weekend.
For us flower gardeners though, spring has well and truly arrived. The daffodils are in flower or heavily in bud, and even the tulips are showing buds. The plum blossom is at its height, and golden forsythias are flowering everywhere.
In my garden my sweetheart is putting on a great show in her bed – and I do not mean the Head Gardener. I mean my Magnolia ‘Sweetheart’. This is one of the best of the hardy Magnolias, bred by the Jury family up at Tikorangi, north of New Plymouth. A few years ago Mark Jury showed me the original seedling tree of ‘Sweetheart’, now a large specimen in the standing out area of the nursery. It is certainly a spectacular sight with big beautiful bowl-shaped flowers held erect on the branches. The flowers are rich pink on the outside and pale pink on the inside. The tree is absolutely stunning, and a feature of our backyard at the moment.
Just as spectacular is a beautifully scented tree just around the corner from us. A friend who writes a very interesting blog about her children and her craft activities wrote about the tree, as she and her children had stopped to admire it on a walk. She called it a Magnolia, and I gently corrected her, telling her that it was in fact a Michelia, one of a large family of plants very closely related to Magnolias.
Imagine my horror when I went to look up for some information on a new plant I am considering planting in my garden, and finding that the botanists have changed their minds, and have now included Michelias among the Magnolias.
It is a good idea for gardeners too, as the differences between them seem minor And inconsequential for those who want to grow them. The most commonly commented on Michelia is the large shrub/ small tree Michelia doltsopa. This is a late winter/early spring flowering treasure, with large strappy white flowers (perhaps like a Magnolia stellata but bigger) with the most interesting lemony scent, which will waft across the garden on a warm day. The tree is slightly reminiscent of Magnolia grandiflora, and the fragrance is similar.
There are a number of forms of this plant, some of which are grown from seed and as such are uncertain as to flower type and quickness to flower. I think the best bet is to obtain cutting grown plants of the variety called ‘Silver Cloud.’ This is very floriferous from an early age, the shimmering flowers popping out of furry cinnamon buds.
This tree will eventually get up to ten metres in the right conditions, so make sure you leave it a bit of room, but it is a rapacious grower.

Asian greens

The long warm and dry entry to spring seems to have come to a bit of a halt, with a wet and cold weekend. I was recovering from a nasty head cold so I was only too happy to spend most of the time inside. I had some special seed delivered by a friend, which made me venture into the glasshouse, where I tried not to look at the huge crop of iris seedlings I have steadily germinating. I already have more than I can cope with, and they are still popping up through the soil. There will be some difficult decisions to make in the weeks ahead!
I also spent some time in the office in the main street, and walking around a back street to find some food for lunch, I came across a number of what appeared to be fish trays standing in the middle of a concrete yard behind one of those Asian-owned discount stores. I sneaked a look, and was surprised to see they were each filled with potting mix, and there was a rapidly-growing crop of an Asian green of some kind in each one. In the main they appeared to be one of the bok choy/ pak choy/ choy sum varieties, but there also seemed to be some Asian chives or garlic chives.
I was intrigued to see some a great little vegetable garden in miniature, and tried to talk to the proprietors of the shop about which varieties they were growing, and why they had chosen them above others, but I failed miserably to make myself understood. As a result, I am not absolutely sure which they were growing.
Bok choy and pak choy are perfect plants for growing in containers, as they need to be grown very quickly. They can be grown almost year round in New Zealand provided they are grown in full sun, and are kept well-fed and well-watered. In such conditions they will reach maturity in about six weeks. They are often available as seedlings in garden centres but they do seem to perform better if sown in situ rather than being transplanted – I have found the shift sometimes makes them bolt into flower.
They are a little prone to slugs and snails, especially when young, so make sure you protect them against these slimy pests.
Most Kiwis will have had some experience with eating these once exotic vegetables. They are sort of like a cross between a cabbage and a silver beet – if that sounds at all attractive – and are best suited to quick cooking techniques, like stir frying or steaming.
These green are members of the Brassica family, and as such are prone to the same caterpillars etc. in the summer season, but at this time of the year they should be relatively free from attack.

Lily of the Valley

There is something very satisfying about the hanging bells effect you get from the various plants that are called ‘Lily of the Valley’. From the tiny little ground-hugging perennials that most deserve the epithet, through to the various trees and shrubs that share the name in common usage, the appeal of the small white campanulate flowers is undeniable.
The true lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis, is a deliciously scented herbaceous perennial that favours shaded and cool spots. It belongs to the lily family and carries small rounded pure white bells on single flowering stems in spring, the stems arriving at the same time as the bright green leaves. The flowers are fantastic for picking - they last well in water and give their scent generously.
I have found this can be a funny character to get established in the garden. It seems to prefer semi-shade, and definitely likes deep, humus-rich soil, but even when provided all these, can still be temperamental about establishing itself. Perversely, once it is happily growing it will proliferate prodigiously, almost becoming a pest.
My mother had this charmer growing in a damp east-facing garden and it flourished, in the same conditions as Cannas and even the dreaded ginger lily, now declared a noxious weed. The garden was certainly very scented for much of the year, with a large tree honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, nearby as well.
I only have the pink form (imaginatively called ‘Rosea’) in my current garden, which is a bit odd, as it is nowhere near as vigorous as the white form. Now is the right time to find ‘pips’, as the dormant rhizomes are called in the trade, for sale in nurseries and garden centres. You should plant these ‘pips’ with the growing tips just showing and about 5 cms apart, in soil with added animal manure.

Which hazel?

I can tell spring is approaching – the first of the irises and daffodils are out. ‘August Gold’, a lovely dwarf daffodil with golden flowers managed to open on 31 July this year. I guess that makes it ‘31 July Gold’ this year!
I am excited to see these first spring flowers out, but I am less pleased to see another harbinger of spring – sex-mad ducks. At this time of the year the overspill from the nearby reserve cruise the neighbourhood, looking for likely pick-up places. They invariably for a paddle in our swimming pool until shoo-ed away. It must be time to get some sort of cover arranged I think.
A friend sent me a message about a tree she had found when out for a walk, and wondered if I was aware of it. She had spotted an upright growing small tree covered with creamy-white flowers, the branches arranged in a tier-like fashion. She was sure she recognised the flowers as being similar to a plant she grew as a groundcover at her back door, so she hunted through her notebooks to find the name. She came up with Loropetalum chinense. It seemed to her the tree might be a form of the same species she was growing, and she did what we all do nowadays when faced with such a dilemma – she asked Mr Google for his assistance. The tree and the ground cover were soon identified one and the same, forms of a Chinese species.
As it happened I was familiar with the very tree she was writing to me about, as it was growing in the garden of an old gardening friend of mine. His great delight was growing rare and unusual plants, and then bringing them down to the garden centre where I worked to see if I knew them!
This was one he could not fool me with. I had first seen a mature example of this tree in the Massey University gardens when visiting for a course one August. It is a late-winter flowering close relative of the old fashioned favourite Witch Hazel, and has similarly strappy petals, from which it takes its Latin name. In the wild there are both pink and white flowered forms, the white forms having the additional bonus of an attractive scent which seems missing in the pink.
The white flowered form is an elegant shrub which tends to be wider than high. Cuttings taken from lateral branches keep this sideways habit of growth and this trait has been fixed in the ground covering forms.
Over the past decade or so there has been a huge increase in the availability of the pink flowered and purple foliaged, forms of this plant, and the white flowered varieties, infinitely more subtle than their slightly raucous brothers and sisters, are much less seen.

Cool weather bulbs

At this time of the year a few fine days make all the difference to how we feel. After weeks of being cooped up in our houses it is really great to be able to wander around the garden, and maybe even accomplish a little desultory weeding. And there are always little treasures to be found as some plants seem to shake themselves out of their winter slumber at the first sign of any warmth.
It should not be a surprise that the snowdrops are among the first bulbs to appear, as their name gives an indication they flower in the middle of cold times. I have often seen photographs of Galanthus, the botanical name for these white beauties, flowering through a break in a European snow drift, but I have to say it is not something I have seen in real life in our more temperate clime.
Early this morning I snuck down to my garden through lawn-crunching frost, to see what the snowdrops in flower at the moment looked like with frost (as close to snow as I am going to get in Wairarapa) but the effect was rather disappointing. I was up earlier than the flowers – they have enough sense to stay closed up in the cold of the early morning, only opening when the sun is warmer later in the day.
There are relatively few species of Galanthus – only 20 or so – but there are many different forms and varieties which are especially popular in the Northern Hemisphere, where their hardiness and ability to flower when no other bulbs are out, is treasured. There is even a name for those who love snowdrops – Galanthophile!
By far the most popular species is the Common Snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, This is a very widespread species, with wild populations from Russia across to Spain and Sicily. It is also found in the countryside in Britain but these plants are thought to be naturalised rather than naturally occurring. In the wild they mainly grow in woodland and alongside streams, an indication that they prefer humus-rich soil and do not like to dry out.
Florally all snowdrops are remarkably similar – they each have three outer petals that splay out when open, with a ring of smaller inner petals in a tube, each of these inner petals marked with a prominent green spot. There are variations on the theme – in some species the spots are almost contiguous – and many interspecific hybrids.
With some a small amount of variation to play with it is remarkable that plant breeders have played with these plant so extensively, but there are over 500 varieties registered, a truly staggering amount. I cannot imagine how anyone could say with certainty which variety is which without extensive knowledge

Polyanthus

Even in the depths of winter there are joys to be wrought from the winter garden. There are the subtle flowers of winter sweet and Daphne bholua, whose charms, very much in a minor key, would be lost in the cacophony of spring. There are the subdued colours of those under rated perennials, the Winter Roses, members of the Hellebore family. There are also the tiny bulbs that grace the coldest months of the year – the perky little Crocus chrysanthus hybrids, with their sparkling little flowers, and the joyous little reticulate irises, their bright flowers popping up among the grassy foliage.
Then there are the exuberant winter flowering bedding plants – the pansies, poppies, primulas and polyanthus – all of them valuable tools for bring a bit of cheer to what can be a drear time in the garden.
Pansies have been on a roll for the past decade or so, and have surely taken over as the prime flower for this time of the year, and they are deservedly popular. Be careful though – there are many dark forms and the flowers just seem to disappear among the foliage in these darker times of the year. Stick to the lighter colours – the yellows, the pinks and the light blues.
The bedding primulas, mainly forms of the fairy primrose, P. malacoides, are extra valuable as they provide a light effect with their tiers of small flowers. I would not be without some of the white forms in my garden each winter. Poppies I could not live without – their simple flowers also seem to be somehow sophisticated.
But polyanthus hold a special place in my heart. They are one of the plants I remember best from my mother’s garden, and over the years I have grown many varieties, both commercially and for my own fun.
They were originally bred from the simple yellow primrose that grows wild in the hedgerows of England, its light yellow flowers of good size held singly on each stem. It is likely the polyanthus is derived from the oxlip, a hybrid from a primrose/cowslip cross. The cowslip is also yellow flowered, but each stem holds a head of smaller flowers. The oxlip is an intermediate form, with flowers in clusters, each flower between the cowslip and primrose in size. Other Primula species have been involved in the complicated breeding of these winter treasures, resulting in a bewildering range of colours and patterns.
The strongest growing polyanthus I remember from my mother’s garden was the old pale yellow form with deep yellow throat. It was so vigorous the foliage almost looked cabbage like. It was not perhaps the most attractive colour but en masse it looked wonderful. It also had the delightful scent that only yellow forms seem to have.
The big breakthrough with polyanthus came with the introduction of the Pacific Giants strain, originally bred in California. They were uniformly large flowered, had a good range of clear colours and were great performers – for their first year. Perhaps they would perform as perennials in their homeland, but in anything other than the mild climates of California, they struggled to live through for a second year.
From there things only got worse, at least in terms of perenniality. The breeders took up improving Pacific Giants until they came to dominate the seed and bedding markets. Almost all the plants sold in punnets in New Zealand are Pacific Giants, usually from Japanese-raised seed strains. They are good, reliable plants, and you can be sure you will get a good garden display. The bigger garden centres will have these single colours if that is your preference.

PCNI seedlings

This is the time of the year I love. The Pacific Coast native irises (PCNI) – native to the United States, that is – are germinating.
It is always exciting to see the little children that one has carefully planned popping up through the soil. As always, I have far more seedlings than I can possibly plant out, so I will have to do some culling at the time I prick the seedlings out. At this stage, it is just fun to look at the grassy foliage of the new seedlings, and then come back here and look up the breeding books, that will give clues as to why particular crosses were made.
Just as importantly, this year’s divisions seem to have worked well too. I have been under some pressure to start naming and releasing some of my seedlings, as PNCIs are so difficult to find in New Zealand. I am keen to ensure they are plants that will shift well, as the PCNI have a bad reputation of not shifting easily. I divided my ten favourite plants, with at least ten divisions of each, about three months ago. So far, all seem to be going well, so I have my fingers crossed.

Yum, yum -yams and other oxalis

Unlike most gardeners, I have a love/hate relationship with Oxalis. Most of us have an out-and-out hate relationship with the many species of this widespread genus. We find them forever trying to take over our vegetable gardens by burying their many corms deep in the soil, or we find them steadily encroaching underneath the fence from the neighbours garden. Other species are persistent weeds in acid soils in lawns, while yet others make pests of themselves in container-grown plants.
So how could I have any kind of positive relationship with them?
There is one species I could hardly live without over winter – Oxalis tuberosa. This is an interesting plant from South America, where very many Oxalis species are found. It has the shamrock shaped leaves that many members of the family are blessed with, and it is a reliable grower throughout most of our region, although the tops are slightly frost tender.
It is, of course, the vegetable crop that most of the world calls oka, but which we Kiwis call the yam – not to be confused with the tropical crop that is also known as the yam.
As you might expect of an oxalis, this plant is relatively easy to grow, even though it does need a long growing season. The little tubers are best planted once the weather has warmed up, perhaps in late October or early November, at the same time we are all planting our other summer-growing tender crops. They are best planted in raised rows, similar to potatoes as they flourish in light, free draining soil. They are good feeders so it pays to work in some potato fertiliser at the time of planting, but they prefer a slightly acidic soil (you will not be surprised to learn, as they do, of course, contain oxalic acid) so you can go easy on the lime.
They need to be grown as long as possible; the bulbs are not produced until the night length is the same as the day length. They will require watering over the driest of our eastern summers, but seem to be relatively pest free. They will be ready to harvest when the tops dry off, usually in late March or April.
I have a small collection of some of the many decorative Oxalis species, largely in terracotta pots. At this time of the year the various forms of O. pupurpea are at their best. This is another South American species, from Chile, and is grown for its attractive winter flowers. There are a number of forms available in New Zealand. The one I like best is a purple foliaged variety (which I assume gave the plant its name) which I have seen described as ‘Nigrescens’ but I am not sure it is not the same forms grown in the rest of the world as ‘Garnet’. The deep leaves are wonderfully offset by the glowing pink flowers. These flowers are very difficult to accurately capture – they have a shiny gloss and the flowers always appear lighter in photographs than they do in the garden.
I grow two other forms of O. purpurea, with (oddly enough) green leaves, one with glowing white flowers, the other with shining pink flowers. There are yellow and cream forms of this species too, but I have not grown them.