1) Some plants are difficult to propagate from cuttings, even more so for home gardeners without temperature and moisture controlled conditions. If you are not in a hurry, layering a plant can be a simple way of increasing numbers or of getting a back-up plant for rare or special material which may not be available for sale. This rhododendron has layered naturally where branches lie on the ground.
2) The plant needs to have low growing, flexible branches which reach to the ground. You may wish to try layering plants such as magnolias, rhododendrons, camellias, daphnes or conifers. Most woody plants can be layered over time but it is faster to do easily propagated plants like hydrangeas from cuttings.
3) Select a firm branch or stem which can reach to the ground. It does not matter how old the wood is though young growths from last season may root faster. Remove the leaves from the middle if necessary. Slice a thin layer of bark off the lower side (called making a wound). You can paint the wound with rooting hormone if you have it, but this is not critical.
4) Cultivate a small area of ground beneath the branch or dig a small trench. Peg the branch down so the wound is in contact with the soil. A hoop of wire is ideal for this part of the process. Peg it firmly so it cannot move. Cover the pegged area with up to 10cm of soil. You want to prevent the layered stem from drying out. Leave the branch tip uncovered. Now be patient. It will take a year for easy material and maybe as long as three years for difficult to propagate plants such as many of the rhododendrons.
5) When the layer has formed a reasonable mass of roots, cut it from the parent plant (think of this as cutting the umbilical cord) and either let it grow a little longer where it is or move it to some well cultivated soil – the vegetable garden is often good – so you can take care of it while it develops into a more sturdy plant.
6) You will usually need to stake the plant to train it to grow upwards and to start developing a good shape although you can sometimes plant it on an angle to get the main leader almost vertical.
Tag Archives: gardening
Continuing the quest to get to grips with perennials
Perennial beds at Auckland Botanic Gardens – white gaura with eupatorium and a salvia.
The January issue of the NZ Gardener magazine had a two page feature from Auckland garden designer, Xanthe White, on designing perennial borders. It is worth searching out if you are interested, because it is a remarkably succinct piece of writing tailored to in our conditions.
I say “our conditions” because gardening in this country is a year-round activity. In much colder climates, people put their gardens to bed for several months of the year and retreat indoors. I can’t recall any New Zealand garden I have seen which becomes a bare, dormant canvas in winter. Xanthe was suggesting getting a mix of perennial plants to take the garden through the seasons. Her recommended balance was to select 30% of plants that flowered in each of the peak seasons of spring, summer and autumn and 10% in winter. It is good advice, though you may be struggling to find a wide range of winter flowering perennials beyond bulbs and hellebores.
The long border at Great Dixter in England is regarded as a classic example of its type
The trade-off is that there is never a peak time for bloom. Nobody does herbaceous borders like the English do but it is not just because of their labour intensive property that we have not embraced them in this country. Few New Zealand gardeners would accept a garden which looked absolutely amazing in February, pretty good in January and March, starting to pass over by April, dead as a dodo through the winter months and resolutely green with no colour in spring. But if you want a garden that comes together all at once in peak perfection, that is what you can end up with. To manage blooms and fresh growth for a much greater period of time, requires very high level gardening skills, plant knowledge and willing labour.
The fall back position in New Zealand is to add in trees and shrubs and to encase the border in a neat little evergreen hedge. Buxus suffruticosa was the go-to option for this until the dreaded box blight took hold. This takes it away from a perennial border and turns it into a mixed border. We all do it. It is rare to see a straight perennial border here, outside of public parks and botanic gardens, without woody shrubs, trees and hedges added in to give year round structure and interest.
When it comes to understanding perennials, I would ever so modestly claim that we have a better than average knowledge of bulbs and woodland or shade perennials here. Getting to grips with perennials for sunny positions is a different kettle of fish altogether. Several years in already, I can see that it is likely to take the rest of my active gardening life to get the level of knowledge and skill I want. They are the mainstay of the summer garden and a major contributor to the autumn garden but my goodness it can be complex. I disregard spring because, honestly, we do brilliant spring gardens in this country. I see lots of splendid gardens filled with colour, lush foliage and scent throughout spring time. It is easy here. But I can’t recall seeing drop-dead wonderful summer gardens achieved without irrigation. By autumn, most of us are resigned to a somewhat scruffier appearance altogether. We lift our eyes instead in the hope of autumn colours from deciduous trees and shrubs.
The yellow perennial bay at Hyde Hall, the RHS garden north of London
Why do I say perennials are complex? There are so many variables. Not only is there below ground – the root systems and how these grow in conjunction or in competition with other plants – but there is such a lot to be factored in about above ground performance. Deciduous or evergreen, colour and shape of both foliage and flowers, peak display time, whether they need staking or dead heading and how often the plant needs lifting and dividing, size, how the plant looks when outside its star performance time, requirements for water, frost protection or winter chill let alone sun and light – and that is not a comprehensive list. These vary for each plant type. It is a lot of knowledge to build up.
The skills lie in avoiding the mishmash or hodgepodge effect. No wonder people go for the easiest option and mass plant a single tried and true ground cover perennial. The aforementioned Xanthe White article gives you a mid-line option if you want something more interesting but still relatively easily managed by the home gardener. I am anticipating spending the next decade at least getting to better grips with perennials before I think I will be happy with the results I can achieve. But that is fine. We have never seen gardening as a path to instant gratification.
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission
Plant Collector: Chaenomeles
Not quinces, as most people think, but chaenomeles or japonica apples. At this time of the year, the hanging golden orbs are a most attractive feature. I like to bring a bowl indoors because they are scented, in an aromatic apple-y sort of way and they last for many weeks. The plant itself is a deciduous, scrubby shrub, maybe 2 metres tall and, after many years, 4 metres wide. It has burglar deterrent possibilities with its ferocious spines but is not a thing of natural beauty beyond its attractive fruit in autumn and its lovely single, deep pink japonica flowers in spring. It will have been a named form that was purchased but the name is lost in the mists of time. It appears to be a hybrid – a cross between 2 of the 3 different species, selected for both flower colour and fruit and is most likely to be in the Chaenomeles x superba group. We have other forms that flower well but don’t fruit in the same manner.
Chaenomeles are native to Japan, eastern China and Korea. Unsurprisingly, given their long thorns, they are related to roses and in the roseaceae family.
The fruit is far too astringent to eat raw. I have been given a jar of japonica jelly but it was not memorable. Apparently they are very high in pectin so I may try boiling some down to use as a base for orange marmalade. I tried making chaenomeles brandy one year and it was fine, but we are not so keen on liqueurs in this household. I would rather drink the brandy without the year steeping with sliced chaenomeles and sugar.
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
Plant Collector: Dietes grandiflora
There is nothing unusual about the dietes flowering at the moment, but don’t let the fact that it is much favoured by amenity landscapers put you off. The reason it is seen so often in shopping centre garden plots is because it is tough and easy care.
It is a South African wild iris. Originally it was thought to be a moraea – commonly known as peacock irises – but that family grows from corms whereas the dietes forms rhizomes. Its flowers link it to moraeas, its rooting structure to the iris. Apparently the word dietes means ‘having two relatives’. ‘Grandiflora’ just means large flower.
The foliage is narrow, upright and pointed and it is evergreen. For most of the year, it just looks anonymous and not very exciting but it has such pretty flowers at this time. These are short lived but, as with many other irises, there is a succession opening down the stem. If the blooms remind you of an exotic butterfly, you may be pleased to hear that it is sometimes referred to as a butterfly iris. It flowers best with sun. While the plant will grow in relatively shady positions, you won’t get anywhere near as many blooms so try for full sun or somewhat dappled light.
As a garden plant, unless you want your place to look like a supermarket carpark, veer away from mass planting in favour of interesting combinations. I think it looks wonderfully effective planted with the tractor seat ligularia (Ligularia reniformis) but any contrasting big, luscious foliage is going to work.
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
The folly of the quest for garden perfection
Rhodohypoxis are to be in drifts, not clumps, thank you.
I commented to a photographer once about the immaculate interiors featured in glossy magazines and how our home could never look like that. She laughed and said she once went back to get some extra photos for a feature and the place did not look the same at all. Oh, so this is how they usually live, she thought.
It is an illusion made possible by the fact that photographs capture a single moment in time and it applies equally to gardens as to house interiors. I do it when I take photos. I look at the first image and then I will rearrange or remove something to get a clearer, more pleasing shot. The folly is when we think we can achieve and maintain that in real life. It is a trap to which many of us fall victim.
This train of thought came about recently as I spent a day redoing a garden bed. In my mind, I know exactly what I want and yet again, I am on a quest to make it happen. In this case, it is a bed with five clipped and shaped small camellias in it, backed by a clipped hedge. How much can you do with about 12 square metres of garden? A lot, it turns out.
This bed, in full sun, started as a cottage garden themed on red and yellow, full of roses, perennials and annuals. It looked lovely for 3 weeks of the year and messy for the remaining 49 weeks. It then went formal(ish) and I wrestled with finding the perfect ground cover. Rubus pentalobus (‘the orangeberry plant’) was too invasive. Violets were too vigorous. Cyclamen hederafolium were lovely for about 8 months of the year but were dying off during our peak visitor season. We changed the hedge last year from clipped buxus to clipped Camellia transnokoensis (tiny white flowers and small leaves). I reduced the number topiaried camellias which give the structure. I started inter-planting the cyclamen with rhodohypoxis for spring colour and a little ground hugging perennial called scutellaria with white flowers for summer cover.
How ironic that I still went searching for a photograph to show the garden bed looking good – but had to settle for Spike the dog creating a dust bath in the reworked ground covers. This is a long way from the mental image I have of what it is to look like.
My most recent effort was because the rhodohypoxis were looking too clumpy and I wanted them drifty, not clumpy so I spread them out, while trying to make sure that the cyclamen were sufficient in number to make an uninterrupted winter carpet. It is still looking dry and dusty at the moment but will it work?
Yes and no. It will, I hope, closely match my mental image at some points in the next year or two – but it won’t stay that way. Gardens have plants and plants are not static. The mistake is thinking that we can create constant pictures in our gardens and that when it most closely matches the mental image we have, that we can then keep it that way.
It is possible to achieve something nearing perfection in a garden. For a couple of weeks. For 52 weeks? Without an army of able staff and a stand out area of replacement plants “out the back” somewhere, I doubt it. None of us own Versailles where, reportedly, the entire colour scheme of the extensive parterre gardens could be changed overnight. Even Sissinghurst today has a large nursery out of sight, full of plants to bring in as required to spruce up the displays in the garden.
Does the answer lie in a very formal garden? Not unless you are going to use artificial plants. I have seen formal gardens where the hedges and shapes have lost their sharp edge because the wretched plants will insist on putting out fresh growth. When you lose the sharp edges in a formal garden, there’s not much of interest left.
It would be much better, surely, to rid ourselves of this idea that we can achieve photographic perfection in real life gardens. But that is easier said than done, as evidenced by my repeated efforts in the garden border mentioned above. When all is said and done, I am still worried about the scutellaria which may be better in partial shade than full sun.
Cyclamen hederfolium give pretty flowers from summer through autumn and carpet of attractive foliage until mid spring
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 