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.

Magnolia Athene in our park this week

Latest posts:
1) The yellow Camellia chrysantha – looking rather more spectacular in the photo than on the bush. Plant Collector.
2) Trees for small gardens – Abbie’s column.
3) In praise of Bok Choy (aka Pak Choi) (this weeks GIY).
4) Tikorangi Diary with effusive praise for Magnolia Iolanthe and a plaintive complaint about people who can not read the important notes on our website explaining repeatedly that we do not mailorder or courier plants.

Magnolia Iolanthe in all her magnificence this week

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 16 September, 2011

While much of the country is in the grip of rugby world cup fever (save us should the All Blacks fail to deliver the silverware. Elections have been lost on less and the country may plunge into deep depression), it is magnolia time here. I read a colleague advocating planting magnolias at the bottom of a slope so you can look down on them but I disagree. I love looking up through them from below and I prefer my magnolias displayed against a blue sky rather than framed by other greenery. With some of our trees around 60 years old now, they have considerable stature. In fact the original plant of Iolanthe has a diameter of about 10 metres – that is a lot of Iolanthe on show. The other mid season magnolias – Athene, Lotus, Milky Way, Atlas and the like- are all opening and the coming week will be one of the highlights of our gardening year.

The first flowers opening on Magnolia Felix Jury this morning

After a bitter cold couple of days last week and a frost which has done a relatively alarming amount of damage, this week it seems as if spring has arrived with the start of August. The sky is blue, there is enough warmth in the sun to see our Lloyd make his appearance in shorts (neither Mark nor I are that hardy) and the magnolias are opening.

We advertise that the garden is open from the start of August, but if you want to see the magnolias at their best, keep watching here (or follow us on facebook.com/thejurygarden). We are picking that the first flush of magnolias will peak in about a fortnight. We usually get two peak flowerings here – the early ones which are heavily dominated by the best reds and then a few weeks later, the mid season varieties in early September. Vulcan is currently flowering, Black Tulip is just opening and we have the first few flowers on Felix Jury which just keeps on getting better every year.

In plant sales this week, we look at Black Tulip and at camellia hedging options. We were both amused and quietly chuffed to learn from a garden article in The Telegraph that Mark’s Magnolia Black Tulip had been presented to the Queen last year. Henceforth, we shall refer to it as a magnolia fit for a queen. It was quite a gratifying Telegraph article really, with high praise for Mark’s new Fairy Magnolia Blush which is just becoming available in the UK.

New Zealand Woman's Weekly on magnolias - Burgundy Star, Black Tulip and Fairy Magnolia Blush in the photos

I think I have only bought the NZ Woman’s Weekly twice in my life – both times because I knew gardening stories of interest to us were included. It bills itself as “NZ’s No.1 Royal Mag” and I just think I am not amongst their target demographic. But it is very popular so the colourful double page spread on magnolias this week, written by Denise Cleverley, was gratifying to see, given that it focuses quite heavily on our Jury magnolias.

Schefflera septulosa - distinctly worse for the frost

An abnormally heavy frost this week has left us ruefully contemplating the damage. In colder climates, plants are better acclimatised to lower temperatures but here it tends to be so mild that they are not hardened off and extreme events can cause a lot of damage. How much is damage which the plants will outgrow and how much is loss by death will become clearer soon. It is not so bad in the garden where there is a lot of protection afforded by the trees but under the shade cloth in the nursery and out in the open, it is a bit of a sorry sight. Schefflera septulosa does not normally sport the brown velvet look. I think Mark ranks it as the second worst frost he has ever seen here – a ground frost of around -5.5 degrees.

Mark has been experimenting in his glasshouse with passive heating. He hopes to apply this on a larger scale in the near future (I think this means a much larger glasshouse in a new location) partly because he is determined to grow more tropical fruit including his beloved pineapples. He has moved in some largish containers of water and has built a compost heap from dung and straw in the glasshouse. Fortunately it no longer smells and it does appear it is working to raise the temperature and to prevent it losing all the heat overnight. I am just looking forward optimistically to future harvests.

The white sapote - now a winter fruit staple here

However, we don’t need a glasshouse for the white sapote or casimiroa edulis which we can grow in a protected position outdoors and which rewards us with a very good crop of ripe fruit in mid winter. They have the texture of a ripe rock melon and taste a little like vanilla custard – delicious.

The weekly blurb on plant sales highlights Hippeastrum aulicum this week (I felt the need of something bright and cheerful on the coldest day of the year) and one of my most favourite camellias – dainty little C. minutiflora.

And on a very cheerful note, yesterday I was offered a new garden writing contract. Not with our local paper, the Taranaki Daily News, which is determined to press on without me but that is fine because the new contract offers a much better platform. Until it is signed and sealed, I won’t say with whom but it feels good to be back in the mode of thinking about regular contributions and deadlines. It will be three pieces a week which will then appear as a regular feature on our website.

Reliable early blooming on Narcissus Peeping Tom

The first bloom on Burgundy Star - but not true to colour (blame my Olympus camera which does not like reds)

In plant sales this week, we feature the small and the large flowers of a Taranaki mid winter. Narcissus Peeping Tom is one of the larger dwarf types and a proven performer in the garden. Because it flowers so early in the season, it seems to escape the ravages of the dreaded narcissus or bulb fly which can cause damage later. The fly lays its egg (apparently usually only one per plant) in the crown of the foliage and the larvae hatches and wriggles down to enter and feed on the bulb from inside out. Besides, it is very cheering to have daffodils flowering in the depths of winter. We have pots of Peeping Tom (four or five big bulbs to the pot) for $10. The first flower of the season is opening on Burgundy Star – another of our red magnolias and one of the deepest coloured (notwithstanding the poor colour in the photograph). This one grows tall but very narrow – a pillar shape (called fastigiate) so it is ideal as a driveway tree or a specimen tree in a small area where it can give a bit of height but not take up much space. Plants are priced from $40 to $55 and most of them have plenty of flower buds to open this season.

Plant sales are to personal customers only – we do not courier plants (but we can hold them in the nursery for collection later). We prefer customers to come on Fridays and Saturdays. If that does not suit, please contact us to arrange a different day and time. I try to keep the plant list up to date on line if you wish to check what else we have available.