Albizia julbrissin 'Rosea'

This past week has been a trying one for gardeners, with unrelenting heat, temperatures of over 30 degrees for days on end, and little sign of any respite. As I write this on Sunday it is almost unbearably hot, with not even a breeze to cool things down. Then forecasters are saying we might have a windy day tomorrow, with the chance of rain from the west, so I guess there is a fair chance we will not even see much from that quarter.
It seems to me the only place to be in the garden at the moment is in the shade, under an umbrella or in the shadow of a mature shelter tree.
I visited a garden in the south Wairarapa recently, a garden that featured an ancient oak tree – well over a hundred years old I would think. It had been well looked after and I could see signs of recent tree doctor work, with carefully cut limbs visible. The rest of the garden had obviously been “made over” a few years ago, and featured a couple of clusters of semi-mature shade trees, most welcome in the heat of a Martinborough summer.

The first of these was a grouping of the charmingly pink-flowered Albizia julbrissin ‘Rosea’.
This deciduous tree has the most graceful fern-like leaves through summer, and then pink to red fluffy
flowers that feature long silky stamens that give rise to its common name, Silk Tree. This is a quick
growing tree, with a delicate arching growth habit so that it even looks attractive even when without
leaves.

It is perfect as a shade tree as it does not cast a dense shade like a beech tree – in fact, it creates a
lovely filtered shade and it is easy to establish a garden underneath it. It is also a relatively mess-free
option for the garden, as the fine leaves rapidly disintegrate in the autumn, making it easy to keep clean and tidy. Actually, the leaves are so tiny they would probably blow away in a typical Wairarapa
autumn!

Sometimes this tree sets seed – it is a legume and has long pods with large seeds within. In some parts of the northern North Island and in the nelson area it has become sparsely naturalised, so think about planting this if you live in a warm costal area where it might get out of the garden and into the
landscape.

Another kind of garden

Photograph of a bumblebee approaching a Penstemon - Dr David Winter

In the past have I written about the various kinds of gardens that we create – gardens that are filled with flowers,  those that are crammed with a multitude of unusual and rare plants, and those where the concentration is on the overall effect of the garden, with design being a strong component of the joy the gardener derives.

This holiday season I had an insight into a different kind of garden, thanks to the efforts of my scientist son, home from Dunedin. In December Radio New Zealand broadcast an interview with him as he showed their science correspondent Veronika Meduna around his garden – the link is here http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/20121206   I was intrigued to listen, as he had many admirable skills but top notch gardening is not one of them, and his hillside patch is an interesting mix of pioneer plants (weeds, that is) of various stripes, with a few garden patches interspersed.

Turns out he was not showing her around his garden plants so much as guiding her to various spots in the garden where different insects and other creepy crawlies were hiding out, and regaling her with details of how interesting it all was.

When he came home for Christmas he informed me he was going to be harvesting from my garden for the lab sessions he takes at Otago University, and I thought he was interested in the genetics of some of our plants, but again I was wrong.  He spent a part of each day while he was home gathering bugs of varying kinds that had been attracted to the death trap that is our swimming pool. 

There is a remarkable variety of flying critters of all kinds to be found in different states of swimming and drowning in the pool – cicadas, flies of various kinds, bees (both honey and native), bumble bees, a variety of beetles, and even a few spiders.

It made me see the garden the way he, an inveterate invertebrate lover, sees it – as a place where humans construct an environment to attract as many different kinds of wild life as possible.

He took me on a little tour of my garden, showing me some perfectly cylindrical holes (with piles of soil beside them) in the compacted mulch around the old vegetable garden, pointing out that these were the nests of the small native bees we had seen in the pool. We then went hunting to see if we could find the bees at work in the garden, and quickly discovered them at work on a flowering hebe – there were dozens of them zipping in and out of the small flowers on each raceme.  We also found them at work on a parsley plant I had allowed to flower, alongside native flies and honey bees.

When I spent a morning slowly filling up the wheelbarrow with weeds and trimmings from the garden, I took my time to unload it, looking carefully at the range of invertebrate life I had also accidentally gathered, and was surprised at the variety.  As well as the earwigs and slaters I had expected to find there, I could usually find three or four different species of spider, a couple of different ladybirds (including that lovely steel blue ladybird which has become more common in recent years), and a range of scale insects from trimmings, “fluffy bums” (juvenile passion vine hoppers) and even a few ants and aphids.

It was a bit of an eye opener for me, as I would have said I was an observant gardener who took notice of the environment I was gardening in, but I guess I have not quite seen the garden as such a source of biodiversity, and it made me think about some of the things we can do in the garden to encourage a wider range of wild life into the garden.

'Con C Dor' the lilies

It seems that each summer has a theme in the garden.  It might be a cool and wet year, where the traditional summer crops like peppers, egg plants and tomatoes really struggle but green-leaved vegetables like lettuce relish it and flourish.  Or it might be a very hot and dry summer which gives the flower garden hell, meaning bedding plants shrivel up and roses drop most of their leaves by the start of February and look dreadful.

This summer will be the year of giant lilies in my mind.

A couple of weekends ago a gardener who is a friend of friends rang and asked whether I would like to help identify a large lily that had many, many flowers she had growing in a pot at her back door.  It was a little out of town in a country garden so I happily set out one evening to have a look, more or less expecting it to be an Asiatic or Oriental lily that had been infected with a virus, leading to a dose of fasciation.

Fasciation is a common side-effect of virus infection in many plants, causing “witches brooms” on deciduous trees and distorted growth on perennials.  In lilies it causes increased growth rates, flattened stems and a remarkable profusion of blooms, with literally hundreds of smallish flowers clustered at the end of the stems.  I was expecting having to explain that this had occurred, and that it was probably just a one-off and the bulb would recover.

But what I saw was a remarkably healthy looking lily, growing profusely in a huge terracotta pot, with lots and lots of flowers opened and opening,  and plenty of buds to come – with not a sign of fasciation anywhere.  The flowers were a very soft cream (almost white) with soft yellow centres, about 20 cm across and slightly scented.  These glorious flowers were borne on stems over two metres tall, making this a very imposing sight.

I was flummoxed as to what it was, thinking it was probably one of the hybrids between the Oriental lilies, such as the glorious Golden Rayed Lily of Japan, Lilium auratum, and the Asiatic species in the Trumpet group, including the likes of the Christmas Lily, L. regale.

When I got home I looked through my catalogues and thought I had come up with the answer in a catalogue from a South Island grower, a Oriental/Trumpet (OT) hybrid called ‘Con C Dor’,  only it was described as growing one metre high.  When I went delving into the on-line registration catalogue things got a bit murkier as I could not find any ‘Con C Dor’, but eventually I found it, under its proper name, ‘Consa d’Or’, where it was described as growing five feet in England, so I guess the extra foot can be put down to our better growing climate.
Then this week in the Times-Age I saw a photograph of another gardening friend (and ex-client of our nursery) Jean Farley standing alongside another giant flowering specimen of what appeared to be the same variety.  It was interesting that in both cases the plants had come from potted gift plants, suggesting they had perhaps been sprayed with chemicals to keep them small as I cannot imagine a two metre lily in a pot being a good gift for a hospital patient!

The Hydrangeas

In these hot and dry days of summer it is good to have some indicator plants that will let you know when the rapid application of some cooling and quenching H2O is urgently needed, and few garden plants do that as effectively as hydrangeas.  Once they have been in moisture deficiency for a day or two they will quickly hang their flower heads and withdraw the water from their leaves, their dried-up hangdog look a sure-fire indicator that you need to get the hoses out and watering commenced.

The popularity of these summer blooming stalwarts has waxed and waned over the years.  Once very popular in New Zealand gardens, they fell from grace a little, with a generation of gardeners regarding them as somewhat common, but they seem to be having a bit of a revival at the moment, perhaps spurred on by the arrival of a number of new varieties, and the uptake of gardening by a younger generation.

Older gardeners will recall when all gardens had a dollop of hydrangeas, often planted on a south-facing wall and then neglected.  There they would provide deep green foliage throughout the growing season and, as long as they were not butchered too badly at pruning time, they would usually furnish a nice display of flowers over the summer.  My first garden had such a row of hydrangeas, all healthy growing, awaiting my first pruning, then failing to flower for a couple of years as I pruned them too hard and somewhat injudiciously. 

My clearest recollection of those hydrangeas is the role they played in my first attempts of growing plants from cuttings.   I took slips from a number of different rock plants I had in another border, and lined them out in freshly-turned garden soil, using hydrangea trimmings to mark the end of the rows.  The inevitable happened – the only cuttings that struck were the hydrangeas!

All these were the most common form of hydrangea, ‘mop heads’.  This slightly disrespectful epithet denotes that the flower heads are entirely composed of sterile flowers, with much larger florets than the fertile flowers.  These flowers can look a little heavy, and indeed can be more than a little weighty, especially after a shower of rain.

The lacecap types, which have a mix of fertile and sterile flowers, probably should be much more widely grown than they are as they are as easily grown as mop tops, but are perhaps easier to mix with other flowers as the lacecap flower head is looser, more graceful and more subtle in its effect.  Often it is composed of a ring of sterile flowers around a central core of fertile ones.

The common garden hydrangeas as referred to as H. macrophylla, and as I said before, there has been an interesting range of new forms coming on to the market in the past few years.

I have been impressed by the picotee-edged form called ‘Sensation’.  This is a vigorous growing mop top with bright green glossy leaves, and masses of large flower heads with the coolest flowers of rose-pink edged with white.   The new buds are greenish, and an opening head has the most amazing combination of colours.

The new You-Me series is even more interesting, with a range of pastel colours in doubles forms, quite unlike anything grandma grew in her garden. ‘You-Me Forever’ has intriguing balls of double blue blossom while ‘You-Me Eternity’ (sounds like ‘Forever’ to me, but then I am just a linguistic pedant according to the Head Gardener)  has the same form but in dark pink.  These are fabulous plants and worth seeking out in your local garden centre.

The lost tribe of the Inca

Being a basically conservative sort of gardener, things can creep up on me a little.  A plant may be getting a little large for its space, or perhaps suffering from dieback or another ailment and I will not notice it usually.  But the Christmas/New Year period offers a chance to keep on top of those sorts of things.  I have more time to spare to just wander around the garden instead of rushing from plant to plant, and from weed to weed!  And I can also wander around with the Head Gardener, listening to her very subtle offerings about the suitability of various plants.

This year there are a number of overgrown trees that will need to be carefully thinned out, especially a large silver matipo, Pittosporum tenuifolium, which is growing hard against the back fence, and has spread its arms just a little too wide.  A crested iris, probably I. confusa I think, growing at its base has also had territorial ambitions, expanding to cover a large portion of the back border, and intermingling with a similarly-minded red Flower Carpet rose. These will all be trimmed, pruned and perhaps removed, to make room for some more interesting and exciting plants.
While I was sizing them up I also looked at a couple of patches of Peruvian lilies, Alstroemerias, which I planted about 12 years ago.  They were red and golden forms of the Inca series, and were a gift from their New Zealand agents. The Inca Alstroemerias are bred by one of the world's largest breeders, Konst BV of the Netherlands, specifically for use as garden planst.

I confess I was a little suspicious of these plants when they were given to me, being sceptical about the claims of that they were true dwarf varieties, and that they would behave themselves in the garden and not run all over the place.

I have had bad experiences with Alstroemerias before.  We had a patch of the unusually coloured A. pulchella, (also known as A. psittacina) from Brazil, which has flowers that are dark red marked with green and blotched dark purple. It was growing in very well-drained sandy spoil and it was a nightmare to get rid of – it took a few years of assiduous digging to finally get all the little tubers out.

We had a similar problem with a hybrid we bought for one of the back gardens.  A tall form, obviously derived from the energetic old species A. aurea which you will find romping around a lot of old gardens,  this one decided it liked the part of the north-facing bed it was in so much that it would take the whole bed over.  We have been digging it out for the past seven years and it still managed to throw a shoot up every year.  I think I would need to kill everything in the bed, remove all the soil, sieve it all and taking any tuberous remains away, before we would finally get control of it.

So you can imagine my caution about planting these gift plants, but I have to say they have been very well-behaved plants, both eventually spreading to about a metre across after many years, and both giving a great source of cut flowers, albeit with short stems.

Quite aside from their value as bright and cheerful garden plants for sunny parts of the garden, they are also one of the world's most popular perennials for use in bouquets as a cut flower, happily lasting for weeks.

But the time has come for a change, and I have been looking around at some of the newer varieties, including a number of the newer Inca varieties.  One that has taken my eye in my favourite garden centre is ‘Inca Joli’, which has a mass of deep orange-red flowers with a yellow striped throat, on a compact plant.  ‘Inca Pulse’ is similar, with bright and luminous warm red flowers with a bright yellow throat.  If you like more subtle colours, or you are a bicycle fan,

 ‘Inca Avanti’ might be your choice, with soft peach/pink flowers with yellow striped throats.

I was also rather taken with a couple of other forms.  ‘Bryce’ has unusually-coloured flowers – they are a jumble of apricot and peach, with yellow throats, speckled darker, and I would imagine that would look great planted in a terracotta tub or planter.

So it was a sunny day, and I was under strict instructions that I was not to go into the wilds of the Upper Ruamahanga River on my own, looking for the hidden lake that lies between the aforementioned river and its tributary,  the Ruapae.
So what to do.  It is still, calm and cool at 7.30 but I know it is going to get nicely warm.
Of course, I'll go up Taratahi/Mr Holdsworth.  All the time my son David was home, especially when his lovely partner Ana was here too, we hoped to go for a bug hunt/tramp in the hills, but it never happened, usually because the weather was too wet or too windy.
Of course, now that they have gone it was fabulous!
.
The tramp was delicious!  The first of the Thelymitra are in bud at Rocky Lookout, and there are a few in flower in the Pig Flat swamp.  And there are those who say our wild flowers are dull!

I wish I had David for the walk though.  On the alpine part of the walk I saw what appeared to be three different species of grasshopper; a large green, a large brown, and a much smaller green form as well.  There was a collection of moths fluttering around, mostly too ephemerally for me to be able to identify them, then as I wandered (or more correctly staggered) across Pig Flats on my way back down a beetle (?) landed on my arm - about 2 cm long, dark and slender with four prominent spots on its wings.
And for the life of me I cannot find anything that looks like it online.
Might have to get that macro lens for my camera after all.

Day lilies

At this time of the year our garden suffers a little from “Yellow Fever”.  I do not mean that the Head Gardener and I take copious weekends off and head over to Wellington to watch the Phoenix soccer team (although we do that occasionally) .  No, what I mean is that yellow starts to dominate the flowers in the garden, with many brightly coloured perennials coming to the fore.

Primary among these are the delightful day lilies, Hemerocallis, one of the most popular of all perennials in the United States, yet somehow neglected in this country.

Both the common name and the Latin name refer to the flowers’ ephemeral life span – literally here today gone tomorrow for these guys.  Hemero is Greek for “one day”, while “callis” means beautiful, so when the great plant classifier Carl Linnaeus was looking for an appropriate name for the genus in 1753 he hit on Hemerocallis.

Originally found in the wild in China, these plants have been hybridised for many years now and a wide range of plant forms and colours is available, although it has to be said that the yellow and orange shades probably still predominate.  Many gardeners have been familiar with the old thin-petalled yellow flowered varieties and are rather surprised when they see more modern forms, with their deeper colours, stronger texture, and much wider range of colours.  We grow a number of yellow and reddish forms, as well as one lovely deep mahogany variety, which we planted in our dark coloured border.

Daylilies are very hardy and will cope with anything the weather will throw at them in Wairarapa – they will bounce back from cold very well and will cope with drought reasonably well too, although they do like the occasional drink during the heat of summer.

There are two different growth habits among modern daylilies – some go completely dormant in winter, the leaves dying off completely for the colder months, while others remain evergreen right through the year.  I grow both forms and have to say the dormant forms are probably tidier in the garden as their dead leaves are removed as part of the usual autumn tidy up, whereas some of the evergreen varieties mainly shed their dead leaves in the following spring, and you can end up with a plant covered in flowers, but also with dead and dying leaves in the middle of the clump.  It probably pays to check which form any variety you buy is

Although day lilies will grow quite happily in most soil types, they do best in well fertilised, well drained light-ish soil.  We have some growing in quite stiff clay and although they are growing alright, they do not compare to those growing in better soil.  You can also grow these summer beauties in large containers, using a robust container mix.  If you do not have any, you could make up a variety of the old John Innes mix – equal parts of good garden loam, peat moss (or composted bark) and well rotted animal manure.

Day lilies are true long-lived perennials, with fibrous roots are varying from thin to fleshy and tuberous, extending from the crown, which is also where the leaves and flowers emerge.  They are very easy to divide and increase – just find where the fans are connected at the crown of the plant and carefully cut or pry them apart. You will find that some of fans are not properly connected and you will only need to disentangle their roots.  Try to be very careful when undertaking division because even though snapping some of the roots is very hard to prevent , it is important to keep as much of the roots as possible. If a fan snaps off of the crown without any roots you are doomed ­– the leaves will not grow new roots.   These are vigorous plants, so when replanting make sure you leave enough room around them for their expansion!

A new year's gardening and blogging

What with two books published in the past month, things have been a bit hectic here, and the blog has been suffering - so it is time to start all over!

There is a strange period in the vegetable garden around the New Year, as the first crop of vegetables and fruit, so carefully tended and carried through to provide special treats (new peas, new potatoes, strawberries and raspberries) for the Christmas table, has been harvested and there is a little lull.  It is time, though to start thinking and planning for the cooler winter months ahead, as well as continuing the succession of summer plantings.

I know it seems decidedly odd to be thinking of the dreary months that stretch out after May, but if you do not get under way with winter crops, there will not be a long enough season left for the plants to come to maturity.  In fact, it is probably a little late for some of these crops already, but we will push on and get these under way anyway.

The basic tenet we are working on is that most vegetable plants will stop growing over the winter.  If you have planted later in the season the crops will not have had long enough to mature into full size, and they will go into a holding pattern.  Once spring comes and the growing conditions improve, they will think it is time to flower and they will “bolt”, rendering them useless. 

Planting now (and keeping the newly planted seedlings moist) gives the plants the opportunity to take advantage of the extended growing season, when temperatures are at the most conducive for good growth.   It also means most will be approaching maturity when the temperatures start to fall in late autumn/early winter, and the colder conditions will hold them in a good state for months, enabling a protracted harvest.

One crop that needs to go in soon is a good supply of that winter staple, leeks.  I was thinking about these valuable vegetables the other day, out at ‘Brancepeth’ when we launched a book I co-authored with Alex Hedley about the Beetham family and their remarkable collection of buildings at ‘Brancepeth’.  There used to be very extensive kitchen gardens in years gone by, and I fondly recall the late Hugh Beetham coming in every year and buying multiple bundles of leeks for planting.

Nowadays it is not so easy to find field-grown leek seedlings – most of us have to be content with punnet-grown supplies – but if you can find plants that have been sown in the open ground it is far better to plant these.  They will be much thicker and more robust than punnet grown types which are usually drawn up and thin.  You could consider twice-planting these punnet-grown leeks if you have the space and time.  Just plant them out in small clumps in a nursery bed until they have grown on and made a bit of thickness, then plant them into their final spot.

Leeks like lots of humus in the spoil, so work some well-rotted animal manure (chicken pooh is great!) or humus-rich compost into the soil, working it in well.   If your plants are robust enough to be planted out now, trim the top of the leaves off, keeping about 50mm.  Plant by using a dibbler to make a hole into the well-prepared soil, and then drop one leek into each of the holes, which should be about 125 mm apart.  The best way to plant is to keep all of the bottom part of the leek in the hole, with just the 50mm of foliage showing, then just squeeze the top of the hole to keep the leek upright position – do not fill the hole – and water in very well.  Obviously you should keep the plants well-watered until the autumn rains arrive.

The spring blues

I do not know what it is about the colour blue, but it seems some people just cannot get enough of it in the garden – including the Head Gardener.  In fact, the first garden we made in our first shared house featured a blue and gold garden that was named after her beloved maternal grandmother.  It featured a few of her favourite plants, a few of which we also grow in our garden here.

One that did not feature in that first garden but is a feature of our garden here is a blue Corydalis, one of those unusual beauties that combine the ferniest-looking leaved with subtle blue flower I have seen described as “curious shaped”.  They certainly do have unusual shaped flowers, long tubes of mid blue, topped with white.   The first of these to become very popular in New Zealand was a variety called ‘Pere David’, named after the great missionary plant hunter.  There are lots of others varieties around, but they are all variations of the same theme – attractive filmy foliage, often with a silvery cast, topped with cool blue flowers.

These are natural woodland plants, and do their best in light shade, although I have seen them doing superbly well out in the open in gardens at the Dunedin Botanic Garden.  Either way, they need moist soil with good drainage to be seen at their best.  Although the blues are the most commonly grown varieties nowadays, there are other colours – yellow, white, pink and maroon types can be found, with the yellow and cream varieties perhaps being the strongest growing forms.

We have some forget-me-nots growing in the same bed as the Corydalis – no one could pretend that these are precious and delicate plants, but the softly-hued powdery blue flowers are surely as pretty as any.  They can certainly get away a bit, seeding with abandon, but they are such a pretty soft blue, and they are easily enough weeded out.

There are improved strains around, which are mainly smaller and more compact in growth while retaining the same blue flowers.  They look great in bedding situations but I think the taller varieties look better in the garden.

If you like forget-me-not flowers there are a number of similar but slightly different species and strains around.  I am a great fan of the lovely silver foliaged Brunnera ‘Looking Glass.’   This is one for the open garden with relatively large leaves of a shiny silvery hue, and makes a wonderful foliage statement in the perennial garden.  But at this time of the year, it has a bright bonus – masses of bright blue flowers, not large but carried in good numbers.  I have this in rich moist soil and it does very well, increasing nicely.

As much as I love the arrival of spring with its attendant lift in the spirits as well as a rejuvenation of the garden, I also dread the arrival of the grass growing, and hence lawn mowing season.   The once-fortnightly ritualised scalping of the remaining green areas around the house becomes a more regular chore until it peaks at about a four to five day interval, then tapers off again as we approach summer.

You might sense that I am not a great lawn lover.  For me, they are a slightly annoying requirement to help set off the gardens that I am really interested in.  Over the years here, I have removed one lawn entirely and embarked on an insidious programme of slowly reducing the size of the others by making extra gardens, then widening them.  I think the lawns probably take less than half the time they used to take when they were at their full extent.

My lawns are not in great shape either.  I do try to keep the broadleaved weeds down (more about that in a second) and I spray for Onehunga weed, but in reality my lawn, like the vast majority of lawns is a MDW lawn – mowed down weeds.  It is a mix of various grasses, clover and any other low growing weed that can cope with being topped regularly.

I do spray the lawns with a selective weedkiller at this time of the year –I managed to get it down this weekend, taking advantage of the fine, calm weather. My primary aim to keep the Onehunga weed under control, as nobody likes having their bare feet attacked by multitudes of prickles in the dry summer months.

Onehunga weed is a real pest when it gets established in a garden but it can be controlled relatively easily if look after at the right time of the year. It is an annual that has small ferny leaves growing about 20 cm across, with tiny greenish-yellow flowers. It starts to grow with the first rains of autumn, but doesn’t really kick on until spring when it flowers and sets many seed heads.  It is a bad problem in Wairarapa, because it flourishes in dry summer areas – as the grasses die back in our usual summer drought, it provides room for the Onehunga weed to germinate and grow.  When the seeds are almost mature they are easily picked up and spread by animals moving across the lawn – especially, it seems, bare-footed children.  It is important to get some spray onto these weeds before they have set seed as the plants are harder to kill as they get older, and of course the seeds have already been set.  If you have any of these weeds in your lawn (they will also grow on other bare patches in the garden) it will pay to get onto this job straight away.

I generally use a product I used to know by the trade name of Faneron, although nowadays it is packaged as ‘Prickle Weed Killer’, which I guess is a simple enough name to remember.  This year, though I used a combination product which will also have a lash at the broad leaved weeds like dandelion, hawk bit and the like.  I usually just spend an hour or two each spring forking the worst of these out, but I decided to try the easier option this year.

I was wondering around the outer streets of Masterton the other morning, relishing a day without too much wind and rain.  As always at this time of the year, my head was filled with gardens, because a stroll through suburban developments is an intriguing glimpse into people’s gardening fashions and passions, and is also an interesting history lesson in the sense that some gardens canbe very accurately dated by the plant palette that has been employed.

I could not help notice the number of very bad native gardens there are.  Some of them date back quite a while, before the more recent craze for indigenous planting, while others are newer.  Where these gardens fail (in my opinion of course) is that they do not appreciate that they are gardens, human constructs, not some bizarre attempt to make a fake New Zealand landscape.

In its worst manifestation, this style of garden is composed of lots of sedges, long past needing to be divided and replanted, some very scruffy looking New Zealand flaxes that have not been tidied since they have been planted, and a splattering of untrimmed Coprosmas, that have completely outgrown their allotted spaces.

But, I am delighted to say, there are also some inspiring gardens that are largely composed of natives and have been built in such a way they work as gardens, and still others where native plants have been cleverly incorporated into a wider planting.  Once combination was so clever and attractive I came back home to get my camera to take some photographs, and it was simplicity itself – a puawhananga scrambling through a red flowered manuka.

The puawhananga is the plant pakeha called the native clematis (there are others that we will get to soon!) and botanists call Clematis paniculata, and is undoubtedly the most beautiful, and also one of the most vigorous of the native clematis.  It can be found growing through forest margins and in bush land throughout New Zealand – there were plants in flower on the Rimutaka Hill road when I p[assed over recently – and is reliably hardy, although it can be hard to get established.

Like all the New Zealand clematis it is dioecious, a flash way of saying it carries male and female organs on separate plants.  This matters in the garden where we are looking for bigger flowers generally, and most of the varieties you can buy in the garden centre will have male flowers.

It is very difficult to transfer these plants from the wild.  They scramble along in the upper branches of shrubs and trees, and they flower a long way away from their roots.  To make things more complicated, the plant goes through a number of different plant habits too, making it hard to track back to the main plant.  On top of that they deeply resent being moved as well so you are best to buy a plant from the nursery.  .

When you bring C. paniculata into the garden you must remember to plant it the same say it grows in the wild.  It is a true forest denizen and needs conditions similar to its natural habitat - a cool root run, preferably in humus-rich soil, and good moisture.  It should be planted where it can clamber up a medium sized tree for best effect, as in the garden mentioned above where it was spreading from a three metre high manuka into a similarly sized cabbage tree.

Howling winds, scudding showers and slowly warming temperatures – must mean spring is just about here and it is time to start thinking about getting the vegetable garden kicked back into life after the slower winter months.

Despite the lousy weather I managed to get out into the kitchen garden for brief spells over the weekend, and pulled a few weeds.  I noticed the garlic and the shallots have made a great start with sprigs of leaves pushing through.

I spent a bit of time in the glasshouse too, mainly checking on my Iris seedlings, and the ungerminated Iris seed from Australia (they will germinate in the next few weeks).  It is very noticeable that the temperatures are rising in here too, and the once-weekly watering that sufficed over the winter will no longer do the trick and I will have to check on it most sunny days from now on.

The soil in the vegetable garden is in surprisingly good condition considering the rain, but we are very freely drained here, and I guess those who have heavier soil will still be wondering when they can get onto it.  It is very important not to work up soil if it is very sticky feeling, as it will help destroy the soil structure, and as we discussed last week, it is vital to ensure the best possible structure to the soil.  For gardens that are not cultivated often just adding some mulch annually will do the trick, but if you are turning the soil over frequently it is important to think about the way how you keep it healthy. 

I like to use home-made compost, and I try to dig in a good dose each year, but well-rotted animal manures will do the trick just as well, and some combination will probably work even better, as each component will have different mineral strengths.  If you are adding home-made compost it usually pays to add lime at the same time, as cropping tends to lower the pH of most soil and compost usually has low pH as well.  You can use a very fine horticultural grade, which will be released quite quickly, or you could get coarser agricultural grade (which is usually cheaper) and which will take a lot longer to release and thus can be applied at a higher rate but less often.

I managed to give my garden a bit of a going over the other weekend – just a rough digging really – so it is ready to have a final working up and then I can start planting some spring vegetables.  It is far too early to start thinking about frost tender summer-cropping plants like tomatoes and peppers yet (unless you have a glasshouse, in which case it is a good time to start with tomatoes especially) but as the soil warms up we can start planting and sowing some of the green-leaved types in particular.  Cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli, those cousins from the brassica family, should be well under way by now, but if you want to sow your own, there is still plenty of time to be doing that. 

Sowing and growing your own seedlings is a very economical way of doing things, of course.  It affords you the chance to grow a wider variety of cultivars and also means you can control the number of plants you buy at each stage of the planting season.  It probably also means you can grow just the particular type of seed you want rather than being restricted to the varieties your garden centre was to supply you.

When you go to buy seed you will probably be shocked at the discrepancy between the varieties on offer.  Older varieties, which are open-pollinated, are relatively cheap.  More modern varieties, produced by keeping two separate strains alive and then crossing between the two (called F1 hybrids) are much dearer.  In most cases it is worth paying the extra and getting the Fq1 hybrid seed, as it will almost certainly be stronger growing, will fruit earlier and will give a much sturdier product.  I think this especially applies to tomatoes and peppers – I would even think of growing an old open pollinated type of these.  

A lot of rot - in a good way

One of the aspects of gardening that newcomers and young people in particular struggle with is the idea that any kind of cultivation depletes the soil of its natural nutriments, and that intensive gardening of any kind requires keen attention to soil fertility and structure.

For some kinds of landscape gardening the process of growing plants and allowing them to die naturally and return to the soil will keep things more or less in equilibrium – woodland gardens can be treated this way, and many native gardens will also function perfectly well in this manner.  But if we are constantly removing vegetation from the soil and not replacing it – as we do when we grow bedding plants in the same soil year after year, or in an even more pronounced way, when we establish vegetable beds – then we need to think long and hard about how we treat the soil.

One of the things we can think about is returning the spent vegetation from the garden back into the soil, by recycling it through a composting system.   Young people, used to the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ concept in computers (where bad data into the programme results in bad computing results) are always amazed that there is a natural system where ‘garbage in, brown gold out’ is the rule!

The value of well composted material is two-fold.  Compost returns valuable nutriment to the soil, in the natural forms of the valuable chemicals plants need to function – nitrogen, potassium and phosphate in particular.  It also functions as a valuable way of restoring humus to the soil, ensuring the soil structure is maintained or enhanced leading to a better fauna of microscopic animals that help break nutriment down, and also helps aerate the soil, meaning roots will develop better and more efficiently make use of the increased nutriment available.

Having decided upon a compost system, how does the tyro composter get underway?

Firstly, choose a receptacle for your compost.  There are many containers that will suit, including plastic bins, wooden crates, and even simple cages made from chicken wire.  The optimum size is probably about a metre square, and they should be placed away from the wind, sun and rain so you can control the moisture level in the bin.  Also make sure you place the container on soil rather than concrete – you are going to be relying on soil critters to make their way up into the bin to do the work for you.

Now you can think about what can be composted, and fortunately there is a wide range of suitable material – lawn clippings and leaves from the garden, as well as fruit and vegetable scraps, tea leaves, and coffee grounds are all useful.  You can also improve the way the system works by adding thin layers of animal manure or seaweed, and alternating with coarse layers of straw or the like.  You can also use sparing portions of wood ash.

This little gardening story starts out in the living room of a motel in Dunedin on Sunday morning, where the Head Gardener and I were talking with our son and his partner about the difficulty of writing – theses in their instances, garden articles in my case.  Ana (the partner) asked if I had taken any photographs while in Dunedin that I could use for a story, and I said I had, but none for this week.

She then asked me what I was going to write about, and I had to confess that I had not really decided on anything – it had been a very hectic week, and I knew we were flying home later in the morning so I thought I would think about it on the way home.

As it turned out the flight offered no inspiration, and even a little gardening in our other son’s garden in Wellington did not give me any great ideas, although it might provide inspiration for a story soon.

As I drove home I was wracking my brains trying to think of something, without great success.  The weekend had been tiring, with celebratory meals and late nights, and my mind was not working very well.

But when I drove up our drive I caught a glimpse of the beautiful pink Magnolia ‘Sweetheart’ in flower down the back of the section, and I stopped the car, opened the boot, got my camera out and raced down to have a close look at it.

I planted this some years ago, but it was underneath the shade of a large lemonwood tree and it took an interesting growth path, one stem heading due north while the others clustered around the crown.  The removal of the lemonwood a few years ago has made all the difference.  It has enabled the smaller branches to grow out, and the whole tree, although rather lopsided still, now looks very Japanese.   And the flowers – well, if there is a prettier variety I have not seen it.   ‘Sweetheart’ has deep pink flowers, upright facing, with lusciously creamy interiors, the blooms being carried with abandon in early spring.  It is a New Zealand raised seedling of the popular British variety ‘Caerhays Belle’, and like most deciduous Magnolias, it requires a sunny spot with well-drained soil with plenty of humus.  It will need watering when fist planted, and in sustained dry spells, but once established is very hardy.

The pink Magnolia that many lust after is the wonderful M. campbellii, from the Himalayas.  When well-frown in a perfect spot, and in a season where we do not have any pesky frosts interrupting the flowering season, these are spectacular trees – there is one in the Palmerston North Esplanade gardens that I try to catch each year – but they can be a bit tricky in our colder inland climate.  They are also reluctant to flower early in their lives - it can take years before they bloom, so it probably pays to grow a more recent hybrid.

Fun in Cranbourne

I had an interesting garden day last weekend.  I had been on a flying trip to Melbourne to assist a  company developing a new computer system for the Wairarapa Archive.  It had been a very hectic couple of days with long hours and concentrated effort, and I was looking forward to a day off before flying home.  My hosts told me I would like the new botanical garden in the suburb of Cranbourne which I could easily reach by a short train ride and a quick walk.

I should have looked at the maps before I left, but I jumped on a suburban train and we took off south – for over 45 kms before reaching Cranbourne railway station.  I had not anticipated the train ride taking over an hour, but I was more flummoxed by the complete lack of signage telling me where the garden was.  To make things worse, Cranbourne is a pretty little town - about the size of Carterton I would say – with a six lane highway running through the town, and the first two people I asked had no idea where the garden was.

I eventually found a kind lady who pointed me in the right direction – through the town, past the racecourse, and a few country blocks further on you’ll find the gateway – from there it is another couple of kms!  Luckily I had put my walking shoes on so I set off, walking through a lovely crisp late winter afternoon – for about an hour and  a half.

It was worth it though.  After wandering along a road through bush land, and hearing and seeing all sorts of bird life and the odd bandicoot, I arrived at the heart of the 363 hectare area, the recently planted Australia gardens, with its marvellous concentration on the many indigenous species that make the island continent’s flora such an interesting one.

The centre of the garden is a huge red sand garden, designed to replicate the red interior, planted with circles of saltbush.  In spring there are flushes of bloom from wildflowers.  Arranged around the central feature are a number of themed gardens, with a dry riverbed garden, an arid garden, and a variety of Eucalyptus gardens, each reflecting a different aspect of the Australian environment.   There are at least five different Eucalyptus areas, with trees that have only been planted in the past few years, but it is already starting to assume a mature aspect.

I was interested to have a look through the various exhibition gardens, most of which are designed to educate local gardeners to use more plants that are suited to Australian conditions. 

There are some extraordinary plants on show, as well as a few interesting sculptures.  I particularly liked the electric blue sculpture designed to encourage people to think about how much water they are using in their gardens, and about ways to use water better.

Among the gardens I particularly liked where those that featured plants I knew we could grow in New Zealand.   Among those that were in flower (bearing in mind that this is not the best time of the year to go garden visiting!) was the rosy pink Grevillea ‘Sylvia’, a quick growing hybrid form that will grow to nearly three metres if left to its own devices.  These large flowered Grevillias have huge flowers that look like large racemes of stamen, quite unlike the spidery flowers of the smaller flowered types.

I had not seen ‘Honey Gem’ before, but was very taken with its large golden flowers, and its nice ferny foliage.  It is apparently not so hardy as ‘Sylvia’ and it also grows quite a bit taller, so it might be best left for the back of the border. 

It pays to give all Grevilleas a bit of a trim before you plant them, especially these taller forms which have a more open growth habit, as it tends to make the plant develop a thicker way of growing.

I was taken with a couple of Banksias too, especially the startling B. menziesii, which I hesitate to write about as I know it is hard to grow. Like all the best Banskias, it grows wild in Western austrlia, and demands very particular growing conditions – perfect drainage for a start, dry summers and the warmest place you can find to grow it.  It bears lots of fabulous pink and yellow cones through autumn and into winter.  It is a very popular plant for the cut flower trade, and you will see it in lots of overseas television programmes.     We used to sell a few of this plant to discerning Wairarapa gardeners, and I have seen some that have established well in stony places, and if you have the right conditions, this would ,make a spectacular addition to the garden.  I noticed that it attracted lots of honeyeaters too, so I guess the tui would like it.

What a silly season!

This is the best time of year in some ways - the start of the year for Maori, as the rising of Matariki in the sky indicates that start of the climb out of the depths of winter towards the planting season.
For us Iris lovers it is the start of the flowering season, with the delightful I. stylosa in flower, and some lovely I. reticulata hybrids popping out.  This is in flower in my garden at the moment:

There are other delights - the sombre I. tuberosa is also in flower in my garden.  This is a special flower to me as it was the flower I took my wife Jill out to see by torchlight on our first date, not knowing it had come third hand from her mother's garden (via her aunt and a nursery!)

As if that was not enough excitement for one day, some packets of seed have arrived from John Taylor in Australia, filled with the progeny from his fantastic breeding programme with PCIs, with a lot of hand crossed seeds from his fabulous award-winning variety withe the breeding name of A44 - see below. I sowed these today.

Then, while I was out and about I noticed a PCI in flower in my garden.  This is ridiculously early - they should still be about ten weeks away, but what a nice bonus!

Sweet smelling winter

This weekend has been a bright one here in Wairarapa, and it has been a great chance to get out and about in the garden.  Despite it being relatively cold, I was able to work in most of the garden beds without causing too much damage – wet weather, sodden soil and gardeners stamping all over the spoil leads to compacted soils and poor growth.

I took the chance to prune the few roses that I have around the garden, as they are showing signs of popping their leaf buds. I also cleaned up a lot of the perennials, some of which still had dead foliage from the autumn hanging on.  I was naughty – I really ought to have got onto this earlier as dead and rotting leaves look awful in the garden, and can harbour pests and diseases that are best banished from the garden.  I threw some extra compost on the soil surface too, to help keep the weed seed from germinating.

I went for a walk the other evening, and walking along a deserted country road in complete darkness I was surprised to small the sweet heady scent of wintersweet, Chimonathus praecox, wafting over from an unseen garden. This is a deciduous woody shrub with a slightly plain growth habit, and slightly coarse foliage, so it is not one that you would have in the most prominent sight in the garden.  When winter comes the plain theme continues, as this small tree (or large shrub) carries very insignificant flowers (usually – more anon) but what they lack in sight appeal they more than make up for with the most amazing heady scent.  There is a yellow form called ‘Lutea’ with slightly (and it is only slightly!) more coloured flowers, with the same spicy scent.

To be honest, although I absolutely love the scent of this shrub (and it shares part of its name with me) I have never planted it, as I do not like its scrappy growth, and would need to have a bigger garden before I found room for it.  But I am, delighted that my neighbours have a shrub in the garden, with branches that come across our fence, so I get to relish in its scent.

Although it is an element that is often forgotten about, a garden without scent would be a fairly sterile place, and I will always find room for a good range of highly fragrant plants.  I adore the clove spiciness of the various members of the Dianthus family, and love it when a border of pinks or carnations is in full flower, and I always have pots of Freesias for the patio near the back door.  One of the highlights of summer is the evening swim in the darkness, when the Lilium auratum is in bloom, the decadent scent enlivening the evening air.

Mid July is a funny time in the garden.  In reality, in most year there is little to do apart from a bit of cleaning up work.  If you have a large fruit tree or rose collection it is a good time to get cracking on with the pruning and tidying that winter brings, and it is also a good time to get some clean-up sprays on.

It is also a time when we get a hint of the coming of spring, with a few spring precursors putting out their first flowers.  I have the first of the spring irises in flower – the oddly coloured (green and velvet black flowers are unusual!) Iris tuberosa, sometimes called Hermodactylus tuberosus.  It is a sun-loving Iris from the shores of the Mediterranean, sometimes called the “snakes head iris) from the odd shape of the tubers, which have a hood-like effect at one end.

The first of the snowdrops is flowering too – the lovely double form called ‘Lavinia’, a present from a good gardening friend at the time my daughter died.  Like most snowdrops it flowers after the turn of winter, often popping out of the snow in gardens in the northern hemisphere, hence the common name.

I even found a delightful clump of very early daffodils (not jonquils or tazzettas, proper daffodils) flowering under a fence in Boundary Road the other morning.  They are tiny plants – not more than 15 cm high – but they looked so fabulous I went back later to photograph them.

There is something else out at the moment – the first of the flowering Prunus trees, the delightful Japanese apricot, P. mume.  The most popular variety by a long way is the sweetly fragrant ‘Geisha’, rose pink and single but so filled with stamen as to appear double flowered.  This species is very popular in both China and Japan, for ornamental reasons, but also for the fruit.

There are other flowering Prunus trees that are not grown as much as they used to be, but which are among the most beautiful of all flowering trees and shrubs.  I have always been very fond of the flowering almonds, especially the double forms of Prunus gladulosa. The best of these is the pink form, called ‘Rosea Plena’ – literally pink double.  It is a small-growing shrub with extensive branching.  In the spring it covers itself with bright pink flowers, and then in autumn it throws a display of reddish foliage.  At its best, this is one of the prettiest flowers in the garden, and usually sells on sight in the garden centre.

Its white counterpart, ‘Alba Plena’ (I am sure you have worked out that means white double!) has heaps of pure white flowers along the stem in spring.  Both the white and pink forms make wonderful subjects for cutting – they flower right along the length of the stem and look spectacular.  Cutting them back also encourages the best shape for the shrubs too.

I am also fond of the flowering plums, especially those with the dark foliage that gives such a good contrast to lighter coloured trees and shrubs throughout the summer growing season.  The old favourite ‘Blirieana’ has slightly double rich pink blooms in August, and is the result of a cross between P. mume and P. cerasifera ‘Pissardi’. It has slender arching branches and reddish purple leaves which turn purplish green in summer.   For those who are put off flowering plums by the tart fruit that some flowering forms also produce, this hybrid is sterile, so does not produce fruit.  It makes a good street tree and is used for that purpose both in New Zealand and in Australia, as it only grows to about four metres.

New Zealand Daphnes

Pimelia longifolia on the slopes of Mount Holdsworth

There are a few New Zealand Daphnes, although I have to say the most common of them in the garden does not look anything like a Daphne, and is a scent free zone.  Interestingly though, it is a plant you will find on rocky places on the Wairarapa coastline – Pimelia prostata, a small silver leaved shrub with small off-white flowers.  If you have ever tramped up the pathway to see the Castlepoint Lighthouse you will have walked past these plants at the bottom of the track, and on other rocky places on the reef.

There are some cultivated forms available in the nursery trade.  Perhaps the best of these is ‘Silver Ghost’ which is an attractive silvery groundcover. The flower heads are much larger than any other groundcover Pimelia and will also get around 30cm.  It is a great plant for walls or the edge of the border, but also looks great cascading down the side of a large pot.

There is another Pimelia that graces Wairarapa, P.longifolia, and it also grows alongside a track, but in this case you will have to climb a bit more, as I have seen it at its best on the track to the Mount Holdsworth summit.  Its common name is Taranga, and oddly enough, it looks a lot more like a Daphne than its sister the New Zealand Daphne.  Go figure! 

It has comparatively long leaves (as its name suggests) and bears lots of pink-flushed white flowers on the end of its stems.  The individual flowers look very much like Daphne odora, but they are larger.  They are said to be slightly scented, but I have never caught a hint of fragrance, but then again, I may have been too exhausted to notice.

This is not too easy to grow in the garden – it requires quite gritty soil and it does not like to get too hot over the summer.  It is hardy, as it does not seem to occur on Mount Holdsworth until Pig Flats, but it is found almost all the way to the summit.  It flowers in the early summer, but altitude makes a big difference as there are weeks of difference between the lower and higher plants.

If you are really interested in native plants you might be aware of the recently named Pimelia mimosa, found in the wild only on the steep, south facing cliffs of Te Mata Peak, high above the Tukituki River.  It is another silver leaved variety (like P. prostata) but unlike its cousin it is an upright growing form, with an attractive tight growth habit that means it forms a mounding shrub, which will grow to 40cm high and 1m wide within the garden. It has particularly silver foliage, set off by the white flowers are carried over a long time in summer, sometimes in great profusion.

Unlike some of the other forms of this plant, this one has evolved in harsh dry conditions, and will cope with most things a Wairarapa summer will throw at it, so should become a popular garden plant in our region, as it has in Hawke’s Bay.

Daphnes - sort of

Last week we looked at some of the evergreen Daphne plants that are grown in New Zealand.  For keen Daphne growers there are a few varieties we did not cover, but they are mainly species that are designed for the specialist shrub growers, those with an interest in growing the unusual or weird.

There are some fake Daphnes that are worth looking at though, plants that have the common name of Daphne but are not too closely related to true Daphnes.  

Firstly, there are the Japanese Daphnes, Edgworthia species, which unlike many of the false Daphnes are actually quite closely related to the true Daphnes.  The most common species is E. papyrifera, the yellow Daphne. It has a scent reminiscent of its more popular cousins, but it is nowhere near as powerful so you will need to get up close to appreciate its fragrance. It is a wonderful shrub for the late winter/early spring period, with handsome deciduous branches, each one tipped with a ball of white buds, about the size of a cricket ball.  As the season progresses and warms, these buds open to show off a glorious bunch of golden flowers. 

If you are really keen you might even make your own paper from this species.  The specific name refers to the fact that the Japanese make high quality art paper from the bark of these plants – they must grow acres of them to do it though, as they do not grow to two metres.

There is a rare evergreen species sometimes seen in specialist nurseries, the pretty E. gardneri.  It is not something I have ever grown but I have admired the small specimen of it in the special scented garden at the Wellington Botanic Garden, and taken a few photographs of it there, thinking that if I saw it on offer, and I had some space in the garden, I would like to try it.

It has waxy golden flowers – more colourful than E. papyrifera, but each flower ball is much smaller – perhaps more the size of a table tennis ball.

Neither of these species is especially hardy – they will cope with our winters but both probably need as warm a spot as you can give them.  They prefer humus-rich soil and like slightly acidic conditions.  Both have lots of nectar and the tuis will soon find them and pay visits to take some kai.