Tikorangi The Jury Garden

The ephemeral delight of the erythroniums in flower this week

Latest Posts:
1) Magnolia Athene in all her glory in Plant Collector this week and gratitude for the mid season varieties.

2) New Zealand’s Native Trees by John Dawson and Rob Lucas. Thank you Craig Potton Publishing for not cutting corners, simplifying and dumbing down on the assumption that most of us have the mental capacity and experience of a child.

3) The differing agendas of gardeners, novices and designers (or why I am happy to accommodate plants with a scruffy period which includes deciduous plants and bulbs)

4) Grow it Yourself topic this week is Mark’s absolutely most favourite vegetable – sweetcorn.

5) Clearance special this week is Magnolia grandiflora Little Gem – a snip at $12 but very limited numbers.

6) In Praise of Plunging – a traditional technique from the UK which has its relevance here, in our conditions too.

The pink puffery of Magnolia Serene

I suggested to Mark that the start of a new year here was marked by the magnolias and early spring but he was pretty adamant that it is the snowdrops that herald the new beginning. The snowdrops have long finished, most of the narcissi are passing over and while the magnolia season continues, it is on the wane – the opening of Serene heralds the end of the season because it is the last of the major ones to flower for us. But temperatures are rising, the rhododendrons are opening and other new plants open every day. The trilliums are a triumph for us here. We are not natural trillium territory (bar two days this winter, we lack the winter chill they prefer) and have to choose planting situations carefully.

Showing off: the trilliums

Each flower may be only three petals but when you get the deep red ones blooming with the light passing through, the effort is well worth it. The erythroniums are in full flower. If we don’t get torrential rain, we may get two or even three weeks of pleasure from these short-lived, dainty delights. The countdown to our annual garden festival at the end of October is on so the pressure is mounting.

In a rash moment, I agreed to present at the Waikato Home and Garden Show next Friday and Saturday. My main presentation is entitled “What Makes a Good Garden” (Friday at 12.30 and Saturday at 2.30) and I am also doing a presentation on our annual festival (styled the Powerco Taranaki Garden Spectacular this year but we will say no more about that, formerly known as the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival) at 6.30 on Friday and 4.30 on Saturday.

Looking a little like a froth of pink candy floss this week - our magnificent Iolanthe (again)

Latest posts: Friday 23 September, 2011

1) Tropaeolum tricolorum, a distinctly refined member of the nasturtium family in Plant Collector this week.
2) Yates Vegetable Garden – yet another NZ gardening book in that folksy-wolksy vein that NZ publishers think is all we can cope with these days.
3) Managing bulb meadows and drifts – Abbie’s column
4) GIY Peas A little introduction to growing peas in warmer climates.
5) Even we can lower our sights – the first of our clearance specials. First up a splendid hedging line of Camellia Jury’s Yellow.

No apologies for continuing to lead with Magnolia Iolanthe this week. In a season which will not rank as memorable for magnolias, Iolanthe has not wavered or faltered and is simply beautiful. The first flowers on Serene are just opening – she is always the last of the season to flower for us. The magnolias will be drawing to a close in a matter of weeks, but the rhododendrons are coming into their own. The camellias battle on, badly affected by petal blight but doing their best. Mark uses the blower vac on them to blast away the blighted blooms which otherwise refuse to fall. It is such a disappointment, is camellia petal blight, but there is no point in railing against something we can not alter.

The depths of winter, but Magnolia Vulcan is opening

Plenty of magnolia plants laden with fat buds

With the first flowers already open on Magnolia Vulcan, (and indeed on what remains on campbellii down in our park after a falling Lombardy poplar took out a substantial portion of it last year), it seems timely to comment that many, maybe even most, of the magnolia plants we have for sale this year are big chunky specimens adorned with large, fat furry buds ready to burst into bloom. We have some large grade specimen plants in big easy lift bags for instant effect in the garden, as well as the more usual grades. Our children used to call the furry coverings on the buds sleeping bags for mice. They are usually sloughed off in their entirety as the bloom opens and the kids would gather them up from below the trees to use – probably back in the days when little Sylvanian families were all the rage as toys.

Plant purchases have to be collected from the nursery. Despite repeated requests, I am afraid we do not courier plants (if it was easy, we would, but it is not). However, we have plenty of space out the back so are quite happy to hold pre-paid orders until you can find somebody coming this way to collect on your behalf. We are now open for plant sales on Fridays and Saturdays each week. Most of what we have available is listed under Plant Sales on this site, though there are always extra bits and pieces.

Magnolias Black Tulip and Felix Jury on a blue sky spring morning in Taranaki, Monday August 23, 2010

We tend to take our blue as blue skies for granted here, especially in mid winter or early spring as it is now. New Zealanders also tend to take red magnolias for granted, not realising that the sheer intensity of colour we can get here is unsurpassed elsewhere and that most of the breeding of red magnolias has taken place in this country – in fact much of the work was done in this very garden here – Jury Magnolias charts the journey.

Click on the Magnolia diary logo above to see all diary entries

Magnolia alba - hardly spectacular flowers but an intoxicating fragance

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.

Michelia alba, in the centre rear of the photo, has lush foliage but is growing at an alarming rate in our garden

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.

Summer flowers on Iolanthe

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.