Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Latest Posts: 11/11/11

1) The exotica of Hippeastrum papilio in flower this week. To me it looks more like an orchid than a butterfly.

2) So you think you might like to open your garden to the public? Abbie’s column (based on 24 years of experience here).

3) Grow it yourself – parsley, a vegetable garden staple of underestimated value.

4) Cordyline Red Fountain receives high praise in Australia.

5) In the Garden this fortnight – the first of a new series written for the Weekend Gardener, detailing what we have been up to in our garden.

Tikorangi Notes: 11/11/11

With the end of our garden festival (formerly the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival but these days the equal mouthful of Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular), we woke up on Monday feeling like zombies. Ten days of standing on concrete and meeting and greeting of visitors takes its toll when the pressure comes off.

Our flowering remains late but no doubt the season will catch up soon. The curious Dichelostemma Ida Maia (formerly a brodiaea) has been attracting frequent comment and Rhododendron Ivan D Wood is justifying its place with its annual flowering – lovely colour range but the foliage is pretty unappealing for the remaining 50 weeks of the year. It wants to live in a colder climate than ours.

We are stripping out the retail area and are no longer selling plants, though the garden remains open. The plant sales list has been taken off this site until next September or early October. We will not be selling again until Labour Weekend next year when there will be a two week period of sales. We have just had enough of selling plants and would rather enjoy gardening and gardening conversations.

It was undeniably pleasing to see Gardening Australia name Cordyline Red Fountain amongst their top 20 plants in the last 20 years. Equally pleasing to see Fairy Magnolia Blush named amongst their top 10 recent picks for long term success.

Latest Posts:

1) ‘Tis spring – must be rhododendron time. R. johnstoneanum “Ken Burns” in Plant Collector this week.
2) A call for more rigour and less fervour in Abbie’s column this week – what used to be called The Good Life (courtesy of Felicity Kendall and whover Briars – was it Richard?) but is now styled Green Urban Living.
3) Grow it Yourself – beetroot this week.
4) Tikorangi Diary and notes about half price clearance special on most magnolias.

Tikorangi Notes:
I was delighted by the sight of the little waxeye gathering nectar from the veltheimia flowers outside my office window. We often see them working the Agapetes serpens (which I describe as the waxeye bush, for its ability to feed the birds) but this is the first time I have seen one feeding on the veltheimia which looks better suited to humming birds because of its very long, tubular flowers. We do not have humming birds in this country which has always seemed a bit of a pity to me. We would gladly trade blackbirds and sparrows for humming birds.

Rain has not helped the garden preparation this week – our annual festival (now styled the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular) starts in a fortnight so the pressure is on. I did feel sorry for the tour group here on Wednesday when it was hosing down but at least it wasn’t windy or cold! The magnolia season is drawing to a close with only Serene looking picture perfect now. But the michelias (now also reclassified as magnolias) have a longer season. The first of Mark’s new series, Fairy Magnolia Blush, is looking particularly pink this year. Indubitably pink which, in the world of white michelias, is pretty remarkable. More rhododendrons open every day though the maddenii and nuttallii types are generally later flowering and won’t be doing much for another fortnight. The garden is open every day now and we are generally around for plant sales – sound the car horn if we do not appear because we will be in the garden.

The photograph much admired by radio host and landscaper Tony Murrell on Radio Live this morning was the end of season snap of Serene taken last year. We might equally describe this as a fine example of why you do not plant a magnolia beside your swimming pool although in our case, it is why building the swimming pool beside the original Magnolia Serene was not such a brilliant idea of ours. The tree was there first. (Magnolia Diary 13).

Personally, I prefer the post-storm image of the original Magnolia Iolanthe (Magnolia Diary 9), planted beside our driveway although Lanarth (Magnolia Diary 4) dropping its petals more tidily and conveniently in our park is also a favourite.
All this is a little premature this season as we are just entering the new magnolia flowering season – there should be a splendid display out by next weekend.

And as a footnote, the petal drop around our lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush is a regular delight still in store for this season as the first buds are just opening. (Magnolia Diary 12).

In our southern hemisphere summer, Michelia alba is in flower. One could never describe alba as being in full flower – it just gently flowers over a long period without ever putting on a mass display. We planted it near our swimming pool so it could perfume the air in the summer months but as it grows ever larger, we are wondering if we have made a mistake. After about eight years, it is already around eight metres tall and showing no sign of slowing down. It has splendid foliage for those in warm enough climates to grow it and the flowers make up for their rather understated (almost insignificant) appearance with their heady fragrance. We have never seen any evidence that alba is fertile, either as seed parent or pollen donor and lean to the belief that it is likely that there is only one clone in existence and that is sterile. We have champaca (believed to be the seed parent of alba on the premise that alba is most likely a natural hybrid) which has attractive colour in the flowers but the forms we have seen are scruffy as garden plants.

Mark’s Fairy Magnolia Blush (the first of his michelias to be released) is also summer flowering but these are random blooms which lack the colour of the main spring season. We have decided that the move to lump all magnolia relations, including michelia and mangletia, into the magnolia group is not helpful so we are going to remain with the former nomenclature at this stage. Mark is of the view that michelias are a distinct group which warrants being kept separate. As far as he knows, nobody has yet proven that they can successfully cross michelias with magnolias, or indeed mangletias although some have claimed hybrids. We will wait for proof because we doubt that it is possible to achieve crosses between distinctly different groups without scientific intervention.

Many of the deciduous magnolias are summer flowering at this time but we never get particularly excited about these. They are bonus flowers, tucked in amongst the foliage, and they lack the impact of the spring flowering on bare wood though it should be said that Black Tulip has put up some fine dark flowers this year. Iolanthe, Apollo and Serene all have summer flowers – in fact most soulangeana hybrids will do so. With our very strong sunlight (blame the depletion of the ozone layer along with our clear atmosphere) summer flowers tend to burn.

Magnolia Serene has stand out dark foliage. Generally speaking, the foliage on deciduous magnolias does not excite much interest and in summer, most of them are just green trees with relatively large leaves. But when we cast our eyes around a number of trees in our garden landscape, Serene stood out as having deeper colour and appearing glossier than the others nearby. We think it has considerable merit as a specimen tree for its summer foliage as well as its form and spring flowering. Some magnolias stand the test of time and this is one of Felix’s where we are surprised that it has not been picked up more widely in the marketplace. With its later flowering (ref Magnolia Diaries 11 and 12 to see the flowers) it should perform well in cooler climates.

It is Magnolia Serene which is the stand out plant here in full flower this week. Big, beautiful and very pink and signalling the impending close to the deciduous flowering season for this year. This is the original plant, as bred by Felix Jury here (liliiflora x Mark Jury). The original Iolanthe may shade our vegetable garden; the original Serene drops most of its leaves and flowers into our swimming pool. Such is life when you live surrounded by trees.

The early yellows are in flower. While still reasonably sought after in this country as novelty plants (New Zealanders take red magnolias completely for granted but yellows are seen as unusual), the problem with most magnolias with acuminata in the breeding is that they flower too late in the season for us and the leaves have already appeared. Elizabeth, Yellow Fever and Sundance will at least flower on bare wood and are attractive enough, but what most people here expect is a butter yellow Iolanthe (ie very large, bright flowers on bare wood) and that is not anywhere to be seen yet. Instead we have pale primrose, small flowers and strappy flower form on plants that tend to rival timber trees in their rates of growth.

In New Zealand we have a harsh, bright light and the dreaded hole in the ozone layer down near Antarctica is usually getting larger at this time of the year so our sunlight is not well filtered. We are noticing quite bad burning on the late flowers on a number of magnolias. Liliiflora burns, as do liliiflora hybrids (though not Serene at this stage). It may be that extended flowering characteristics are not all they are cracked up to be here – crispy brown blooms are not a good look.

Finally, when conditions are right (no wind and light rain), we are always delighted by the sight of rings of pink petals that fall naturally around the base of our row of Fairy Magnolia Blush (Mark’s pink michelia). It is eyes down for a change, to catch this pretty sight.