Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Latest Posts: Friday January 20, 2012

1) How lovely is the golden-rayed lily of Japan? The auratum lilies (of which we have many) are just opening here.

2) Of matters related to social class and social conscience (or basil, cardoon and lawns, to put it in gardening terms).

3) Grow it Yourself – cardoon (warning: it needs space).

4) Tikorangi – the new Texas? What intensive petrochemical development next door actually means to us.

5) Lovely lily, lily love – the first instalment of photos this week in a new album of lilies currently in flower here posted on our Facebook garden page.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday January 20, 2012

Our indifferent summer continues, the lilies are opening and the clematis look great. I am working in the rockery and we hear there are to be at least another 22 wells drilled in the close environs. Yes folks, we live in the proud energy heart of New Zealand, the new Texas of the Long White Cloud. Taranaki may be dairy heartland with one of the best growing climates possible, but we embrace the boom and bust of the petrochemical industry with unquestioning fervour. It is just a shame that a fair amount of it is centred right in Tikorangi where we live. To raise any objections is to be a sad-sack, a Luddite or worse – a greenie who stands in the way of progress and employment.

Over the years I have devoted a lot of time and energy to trying to get measures to mitigate the impact of the petrochemical industry on local residents. I don’t actually blame the private companies who will do as much or as little as is required of them in any given situation. And to be fair to the company involved next door to us, they have never employed the intimidatory and bullying tactics we saw in the past with other companies. In fact they are unfailingly courteous and do their utmost to keep us informed and to act on any concerns. But the bottom line is that their activities impinge heavily on residents close to their sites.

I hold the councils to account – the District Council and the Regional Council. And they have never done anything at all to inspire any confidence in their planning (what planning?) or in the rigour of their monitoring. No, they think it is great because it keeps the money flow going and they appear to do all they can to remove any impediments to the companies.

So we have learned to roll with the punches and take the long view. We can’t see the sites from our garden – even if that is because we have so many trees. I can generally avoid having to drive past the sites because most of them are up the road from us. We have adapted to the gradual increase in heavy traffic, much of which runs along our two road boundaries. I don’t want to be able to hear the site work either and most of the time I can’t. If fracking nearly the entire sub strata of the area where we live causes problems down the track as many around the world fear, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

We are circling the wagons and looking inwards. Oil and gas is a finite resource. The Jury family were settled here and planting trees long before that resource was even discovered. I anticipate that we will still be settled and planting trees after the resource has been used up.

In the meantime we smell the lilies.

Latest Posts: Friday 9 December, 2011
1) No fewer than 700 Higo iris waiting to be planted out in Plant Collector this week.
2) Yet another joint venture infomercial masquerading as a reputable garden reference book – the Tui NZ Flower Garden this time.
3) The current quest for self sufficiency, of sorts at least. More a measure of a high quality of life here than a point of principle – Abbie’s column.
4) Grow it Yourself – rhubarb this week.
5) And absolutely nothing to do with gardening but a link to my other website (www.runningfurs.com) where I publish book reviews of a non gardening nature (mostly cookbooks, children’s literature and a bit of adult fiction) – the latest of which was indeed a cookbook: The Molten Cookbook by Michael Van de Elzen. Food porn, my chef friend calls it.

At last the temperatures are rising and it feels as if we may be on the cusp of summer after all. The tall white foxgloves have been bringing me much pleasure, simple though they are. We saw these used to great effect at Hidcote Manor in England but, being a biennial, it has taken eighteen months to get them performing here. I am hoping they will seed down as readily as their pink counterparts (most of which are being consigned to the compost to try and keep the white strain pure).

We have been somewhat amazed in recent weeks watching the entire condominium of nesting birds in the crown of the Queen Palm (Syragus romanzoffiana) – they must be fifteen metres up and it appears that every nesting space is occupied. The dominant population is sparrows with the odd starling having made a move on vacant property. As we sit in our favourite conversation spot, we look out at the many comings and goings, while the tui nesting in the nearby rimu attempts to patrol the entire area and convince all other birds that they are deeply unwelcome.

The celmisia in flower is a reminder to me of the next website project – building the record of native plants we have in the garden. This is of less interest to New Zealanders who tend to fall into one of two camps – the dedicated purist (natives only) and the rather dismissive (“natives are so boring”). In fact, we use many native plants in the garden but interspersed with exotics. I read an opinion recently that the use of native plants is an important way of anchoring a garden into its environment and its country of origin, which seemed to make good sense.

Latest posts:

1) Clean and green in New Zealand? Not as much as we claim and, alas, not at all if you look at the common treatment of our rural road verges.

2) Digging and dividing clivias – one in the Outdoor Classroom series of step by step guides.

3) Mid winter photos – on our new Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/thejurygarden I have to admit, however, that I have not been out with the camera on the rain sodden days when we threaten to wash away and there have been rather a lot of those lately. We had a massive 237ml in June alone (or about 9½ inches for those still on imperial measurements) and we won’t be far off that in the first half of this month. Our winters can be wet. But the snowdrops don’t mind and it has only been the two hailstorms that have damaged the early magnolia blooms.

4) Nothing whatever to do with gardening (but I am guessing some readers also have other interests), I have just launched a separate website devoted to book reviews of a non gardening nature: www.runningfurs.com For some years, I have reviewed books, firstly for the Taranaki Daily News but these days for the Waikato Times. I have always had a particular interest in children’s books and in New Zealand fiction. I went back to the children’s books a few years ago because I thought we might be lucky enough to receive the gift of a grandchild at some time in our lives and our book collection could do with updating. There is no sign of any grandchildren any time soon, but I keep the best books and pass on the others. These reviews, along with a few on books for adults, did not sit with the gardening websites so I have not done anything with them before. But the advent of The Naughty Corner by Colin Thompson made me want to table these reviews for others – it is quite the funniest picture book I have read in a long time.

Latest posts: Friday April 29, 2011.
1) The voluptuous splendour of Vireya rhododendron Rio Rita in Plant Collector this week.
2) Garden tasks for the week including autumn pruning and getting garlic in early.
3) Outdoor Classroom this week looks at hard pruning large, scruffy camellia bushes.

Tikorangi Notes: Sunday, May 1, 2011
Another weather bomb last week (as we seem to call extreme weather events these days) had people drawing comparisons to the infamous Cyclone Bola of 23 years ago (I can date Bola because it coincided with the birth of our son) but it was not of that magnitude here. Still, tearing winds for two days blew over pretty well every plant in the nursery, snapped a large branch off a prunus which blocked half the road (surprising how long it took for anybody to tell us that our vegetation was a traffic hazard!), snapped a large branch from one of our old man pine trees and generally dislodged anything that was loose. A friend down the coast tells me it wrecked about 20 trees in his garden so we are guessing it was worse elsewhere. Now we are into clean up mode but calm, clear weather has returned. There is not a lot of autumn colour remaining after the winds, but the Cyclamen hederafolium continue to flower. This particular tuber is undeniably large but its production of blooms is so excessive that we have been making jokes about it being on steroids. There is no human intervention, however. It is just hellbent on outdoing every other cyclamen in the garden.

When Felix and Mimosa Jury laid out their gardens here at Tikorangi, near the Taranaki coast of New Zealand, it was the early 1950s and rhododendrons were one of the most highly prized plant genus. There were not many different cultivars available but keen enthusiasts around the country imported whatever they could, mostly as seed, and there was considerable exchange of material. In those early years, the species dominated. It was the disappointing performance of many of those cold climate plants which provided the initial impetus for Felix to start hybridising in a quest to create plants better suited to our very mild conditions.

Gardening on volcanic soils with regular rainfall throughout the year, one could be forgiven for thinking we are ideal rhododendron territory. However, while we do not have hot summers, neither do we have the winter chill necessary to many of the rhododendron family. Frosts are very light and few in number. The lack of winter chill means that thrips stay alive and multiply. Silver leafed rhododendrons are common. Added to that, the bright, unfiltered sunlight which gives this country the dubious honour of being the skin cancer capital of the world, can burn and crisp both foliage and flowers of vulnerable plants.

While many of the species merely dwindled away here, we certainly tried our best. Our computer data base shows that over the thirty years of the nursery, we have produced and sold around 60 different rhododendron species, although some are merely different forms. Not many of them last the distance as garden plants of merit for our conditions. One of the stand-out species, however, is Rhododendron polyandrum. It keeps good foliage in the garden, its flowers are beautiful and showy (though rather soft so inclined to weather mark), the peeling bark is attractive, the fragrance is such that it hangs heavy in the air several metres away. We don’t mind that it is an open, some would say leggy and rangy, shrub because we don’t want all plants to be the tight, rounded bob that defines R.yakushimanum.

R.polyandrum was the star breeder plant for Felix. Taking its strengths, he thought that it should be possible to extend the range of flower colour and to select for more compact and better furnished cultivars. He was right. The polyandrum hybrids share several characteristics: the foliage is visibly derived from polyandrum being small, dark and almost leathery, showing excellent resistance to thrips and leaf burn. The hybrids, however, are blessed with rather more leaves than the mother (which can be a little sparse in the foliar department). Typically, the hybrid flowers are held in flat trusses like R. polyandrum but there are more flowers to the truss, so many that the plants can look like a wall of bloom at their peak.

Felix only named one of the cross with Royal Flush Townhill and it stands out after several decades as a top performer. Bernice was named for Mrs Bernice Kelly, a dear friend of Mimosa Jury and a favourite of Felix’s. With a crimson throat, the tones change through pink to near white on the edge and it remains one of the more colourful in the maddenii range. It has a light but pleasant fragrance and relatively compact growth to about 2 metres. Year in and year out, it performs consistently well.

Felix was not as restrained in the selection and naming process of his polyandrum x Sirius series. In fact he named too many of them but it was an enormously successful cross and we still have other sister seedlings performing every year in the garden. Barbara Jury, Felicity Fair, Katie and Moon Orchid are all a little different, but maybe not so very different that all warranted registration. There were fifth and sixth selections, registered as Christine Denz and Sunset but these were never propagated. Barbara Jury is the prettiest, cleanest yellow with a narrower bloom and good scent. Lovely though it is, we discontinued producing it commercially because it is weak in the roots and succumbs to phytophthora – described by Mark as too ready to whiff off. Moon Orchid is a superior garden plant. It has a larger flower with frilly lobes and slightly more apricot toning because the base colour of yellow is suffused with pink on the outer petals and the throat is green. Katie is the most peachy orange in colour because the yellow is now mixed with red tones on the backs of the petals. The flowers are a little smaller, the scent a little less pronounced and the growth a tad more vigorous but the differences are reasonably subtle. The last of the quartet was Felix’s personal favourite – we know this because the name Felicity Fair is a play on his own name. The flower is pastel creamy yellow with definite pink tones on the outside of the throat, combined with excellent foliage and good fragrance. Of this particular cross, with the benefit of experience, we would name Moon Orchid and Felicity Fair as the best selections.

The polyandrum selections are all late season flowering. The first of the Jury hybrids to open in early season is White Doves (scopulorum x formosum var. inaequale). While not overly spectacular, it is extraordinarily floriferous with white bells held loosely hiding all foliage and it is a consistent, healthy performer.

We have an ongoing love affair with the showy R. nuttallii family here in our garden at Tikorangi, particularly the more tender sinonuttallii which could be described as a Rolls Royce rhododendron with its heavy, bullate foliage, wondrous peeling bark and simply astounding long, lily-like fragrant trumpets of heavy substance. Felix’s Floral Legacy (nuttallii x sinonuttallii so technically still a species) gave an increased robustness of constitution and yet larger blooms. Where space and favourable climate allow, this is a spectacular rhododendron.

Both Felix and his wife Mimosa laid claim to the original cross of sinonuttallii x edgeworthii which came to be called Floral Dance. While Felix certainly raised the plant, by a process of deduction, Mark worked out that his mother must have done the cross so these days we credit it to her posthumously. It brought a somewhat more compact habit into the nuttallii family, though only relatively so. The really bushy, well furnished plants such as the yakushimanum family hold onto their leaves for at least three years whereas most in the maddenii group are only carrying two years of foliage at any one time so they are always going to appear a little more sparse. Floral Dance shows the most appealing characteristics of both parents – very deep forest green bullate foliage, mid sized, good textured mostly white trumpet flowers with frilly lobes flushed darker pink and strong fragrance. It is simply a beautiful rhododendron.

This particular breeding direction was continuing the efforts to get more colour into the maddenii group. However, it was not until later when Mark came to grips with the fact that diploid and tetraploid rhododendrons can not be crossed, that he was able to better predict potential outcomes. It explained his mother’s failure to successfully cross sinonuttallii with Bernice.

In his turn, Mark looked at extending the colour range in nuttallii, in combination with more compact growth. I can still recall when he told me he had crossed sinonuttallii with RW Rye, because I quipped that he would likely end up with a run of seedlings with small white flowers and no fragrance. At the time, when I was at home raising preschool children, I was just secretly proud that I actually knew both parents. I was wrong because what emerged was a run of soft yellow, scented seedlings with nuttallii trumpets. From these, Mark named only one – Floral Sun. At last we had a compact habit combined with some of the best sino nuttallii characteristics. After two decades, the original plant has barely reached 130cm in height and about the same in width so it is sturdy and compact. The bullate foliage is mid green but the real joy are the flowers – frilly, fragrant and in soft honey yellow tones. It is still a source of delight here.

Working the theme of extending the colour range, Mark crossed augustinii with the excellent white form of maddenii we have here, hoping to introduce blue tones to the good performing maddenii characteristics. He named Platinum Ice which is a lovely rhododendron but, to the hybridist’s disappointment – lacking in some of the better features of the parents. The lilac buds open to flowers with the augustinii form but in maddenii size in a pastel shade which fades out to white. It is a good looking plant with good foliage but it lacks the fragrance and the pest resistance of the maddenii and the intensity of hue from augustinii (which is a beautiful species that does not like our conditions – it is a race between the thrips and the bronze beetles as to who can take it out first). So while Platinum Ice marked a colour break, it is still less than was hoped for in performance.

Returning to polyandrum as a breeder, Mark tried a number of crosses and has named one, Floral Gift. His records at the time state quite definitely that this was Michael’s Pride x polyandrum but the seedling shows nothing of Michael’s Pride and bears no resemblance to other crosses done at the same time. However, there is no doubt about the polyandrum parentage. Sometimes cultivars can take a long time to prove themselves. There was sufficient that was good about Floral Gift to warrant selection – sturdy habit of growth, compact, healthy foliage, an intense fragrance which is the equal of polyandrum but with heavy textured flowers which resist weather damage. It set flower buds on very young plants and flowered earlier in the season. Floral Gift’s blooms are white with a slight pink flush on the petal backs and a yellow throat. We lost a little confidence in this cultivar because it proved to be a tricky nursery plant – easy enough to strike from cutting and grow but fiendishly difficult to get a decent looking plant for sale when grown in containers. It looked sparse in the foliage and generally scruffy. But as plants in settled in and grew around the district and particularly in our local botanic park, we revisited Floral Gift and decided it is a very good plant. In a garden where we shun mass planting of single cultivars, we think this one is good enough to warrant planting in groups throughout the garden.

Faced by a somewhat sceptical buying public who think that rhododendrons should be nice bushy shrubs with full ball trusses (forget all these lovely walls of loose trumpets and bells exuding fragrance), Mark turned his attention to trying to get healthier foliage in the more traditional rhododendron appearance. Meadow Lemon is one of this ilk. It is Percy Wiseman x Lems Cameo, showing greater health than its parents without the need to spray. Pink buds open to a classic full truss of frilled soft yellow flowers. We are told that this cultivar is impressive in the New Zealand Rhododendron Association trials of NZ raised cultivars.

We have other successful seedlings from this particular hybridising direction in the garden – attractive full trusses in lilac, various pinks, reds and colour mixes but at this stage, that is where they are staying. While the genus of rhododendron has retained some of the status of its glory days in this country, it has had a huge slide from grace in terms of market share and a corresponding drop in value. These days a podophyllum raised over a few months from tissue culture will command a higher price in a garden centre than a rhododendron which has taken three years to grow and has decades of breeding history or plant hunting behind it. It simply is not worth putting a new cultivar on the market. We are philosophical. Plant fashions come and go and in the meantime, we derive a great deal of pleasure from the rhododendrons in our own garden.

Mark continues to dabble with rhododendrons which perform well in our climate, of late working with arboreums which show high health characteristics but tend to achieve giant status. Whether any of these reach the market remains to be seen. Alongside this, he has continued with vireya rhododendrons but these are another story altogether.

For the record, other cultivars registered by Felix include Abigail Jury (yakushimanum x Dido) – lovely plant with a beautiful bloom but too difficult to propagate so never a commercial viability, Soft Shadows (yakushimanum x argrophyllum) and Lollipop Lace (williamsianum x loderi) – in the last case merely raised from overseas seed and registered by Felix. The form of Saffron Queen (xanthostephanum x burmanicum) throughout New Zealand is, as far as we know, the Felix Jury form from repeating the earlier Williams cross. In those early days, he felt he had to stick to the grex name. The griersonianum x grande and macabeanum crosses attributed to the Jury family can be traced back to Felix’s brother, Les Jury, who was better known for his camellias. None of Les’s rhododendron hybrids were commercially viable although there are some handsome plants amongst them.

Mark has never registered his hybrids, although Felix and Les Jury were more meticulous in this aspect. Mark does not do paperwork. We do, however, make an effort to keep the information on our website current and accurate.