Found it!

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The title and cover photo on the lower book does not do it justice at all – see the next photo. I would bet the publisher chose the cover photo, not the author.

When we moved into our home, it still contained Mark’s parents’ belongings. I knew I had seen a book which clearly inspired the garden here but it has taken me years to find it again. It wasn’t until I took apart all the bookshelves to dust each book individually and to try and get a more helpful categorisation by subject that it turned up again.

When Mark’s parents built their dream house here around 1950, neither had travelled overseas. The house draws largely on English style but with bigger windows. They started on the garden as soon as the house was built and I realised when we moved into the house that we could work out which books inspired these passionate gardeners across the world.

The Picture Book of Gardens by A.G.L. Hellyer is comprises full page photographs in black and white. The gardens are very much what I describe as English manor house style – spacious, but not grand historic gardens, beautifully tended and exceptionally flowery and pretty. The inscription inside the cover had me puzzled. Along with the date of publication, it placed this book as 1956, by which point the garden here was well on the way to being designed and executed. It is likely this book was more an affirmation that they were on track.

I think it was the earlier book, The Modern Garden by G. C. Taylor, B.Sc., that helped them refine their visions. First published in 1936, Felix and Mimosa’s copy was the fourth revision dated 1949 and is clearly extremely well thumbed. There I found the inspiration for our sunken garden.

Our sunken garden as it was last week. It is starker than it used to be but the growing conditions have changed dramatically as the huge rimu trees have explanded their root systems through the whole area. We could not keep the borders looking lush and flowery with all the root competition binding the soil and soaking up all the water.
The sunken garden in Mimosa’s day. Probably 1960s.
Our sunken garden is much deeper than is commonly seen – and oft mistaken as a former swimming pool. But I think it bears a debt to this photograph, albeit scaled down to a much smaller space.
Maybe with a touch of this if you look at Mimosa’s rose garden.

When the title says ‘The Modern Garden’, it clearly means modern in terms of post WW1 and the demise of enormous estate gardens that didn’t survive all the young gardeners heading off as canon fodder to the war. So, we are talking modern in terms of Vita Sackville-West of Sissinghurst, Gertrude Jekyll, Lawrence Johnston and other great English garden leaders of the era between the world wars.

I have no idea who G. C. Taylor, B.Sc. was but this remains a very practical book. The more than 350 photographs may be smallish and in black and white but they are thoughtfully recorded and well composed with captions full of helpful advice. The author might have been slightly surprised had he known that he guided, from afar, a garden with a clear debt to his 1940 advice and inspiration that has lasted down seven decades. It is quite simply, one of the best gardening books I have seen.

This is from 1961, about 10 years after Felix and Mimosa built the house. It is understandable that they were looking at English books for gardening inspiration. The had already built in a style that would not be out of place in either of the aforementioned gardening books.

There is very little in gardening that is new. Innovation lies more in reinterpreting the old than in coming up with a brilliant, original idea on one’s own. It has all been done before somewhere, sometime. Much of the advice in this book, especially when it comes to design, balance, and execution is still relevant today.

Both of Mark’s parents embraced the pretty, flowery look
Mimosa labelled this photograph ‘My little driveway’.

Bits and bobs on a winter’s day

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It has been a bitter cold week over the entire country, it seems. These matters are all relative; our daytime temperatures have barely made double digits so sitting in the 10°C to 12°C range with night temperatures about 10° lower. We have certainly complained at length about it. I have been most appreciative of the cheerful narcissi in flower. Yellow must be the most universally cheerful colour of all.

Narcissus cyclamineus hybrids raised from seed

We like the early flowering ones. They cheer up a winter’s day and they are done, dusted and starting to die back when the nasty narcissi flies start hatching out as spring warms up. If you think your narcissi are reducing in number or if they are all foliage and no flower, dig up a few and examine the bulbs. If they feel soft when you press them and if they have few or even no roots, then you have an infestation of narcissi fly.

Three archways of Podocarpus parlatorei

Zach has started the spring trimming round. First up were the Podocarpus parlatorei arches. It is a podocarp, as is our native totara, but this one is from Argentina. Mark had them as pillars but when Zach joined us in 2021, he started training them as arches. We own good, tall ladders in case you are wondering. Unfortunately it all has to be clipped by hand because the stems just bend with the electric hedgetrimmer but the end effect is to add some formality to the summer gardens, a defined axis.

Wavy hedges but in camellia plants, not the more common buxus. We had three visible frosts in a row on this week of cold temperatures.
Camellia microphylla is pretty enough in flower in autumn but it only has a short season

The arches terminate at what we refer to as the wave garden on account of the wavy hedges. Those undulating hedges are not an original idea; we have seen them used overseas and they are a hallmark of English designer, Tom Stuart Smith. However, they are usually done in buxus hedging. Our ones are in Camellia microphylla. This species camellia has a short but pretty enough flowering season in autumn so it has finished for the year. The advantage of using a camellia is that it doesn’t get buxus blight and can be left entirely to its own devices bar one trim after flowering and second tidy-up after its spring flush of fresh foliage.

Gloriosa in bloom during summer
Gloriosa tubers are more commonly the size of the two which are on the bottom

Look at these gloriosa tubers! The so-called climbing lily is not a lily but it is a good cut flower in summer. It is also making itself a great deal too comfortable so we are often thinning them. Zach dug out a bucket full and verily, we were astonished at their size. The smaller two at the front of this photo were what we would usually refer to as a good size, certainly not small. But they are utterly dwarfed by the big thumpers. Gloriosas are actually part of the colchicum family. The gloriosas grow from the tips, not from the centre V (which was last year’s growth point) so you need to make sure your tubers have at one intact tip, preferably two if you are buying it.

Helleborus foetidus deserves a more flattering name

Finally, I say I am not the world’s greatest fan of hellebores but really, I think I should limit that to the common Helleborus orientalis. I think they often perform better in colder climates whereas we can grow some lovelier plants in our generally temperate conditions (cymbidium orchids, amyone?). But look at this fine, self-sown specimen of Helleborus foetidus. And spare it a thought. I went to check the spelling and came across its Wikipedia entry:

Helleborus foetidus, known variously as stinking hellebore, dungwort, setterwort and bear’s foot, is a species of flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae, native to the mountainous regions of Central and Southern Europe and Asia Minor.

What did it ever do to deserve descriptors of stinking and dungwort. Dungwort? I have never actually noticed its aroma but I have often thought ‘now there is an under-sung, remarkably elegant plant’.

Stay warm if you are in Aotearoa this week. Stay cool if you are in the northern hemisphere, suffering from extreme heat, drought and rampant fires.

Is it spring yet?

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The early magnolias and bulbs are telling us that winter is waning and spring is starting. I noted last month that May and June were quiet months for bulbs. July is not, but it is mostly the daintier bulbs that are opening.

Leucojum vernum ‘Gravetye Giant’ has a very long season in bloom but is more useful than choice

Is this particularly early? Some of us ask that question; others boldly declare, based on ‘vibes’, that this is very early.  I thought it was early but it really isn’t. I have checked photo dates from my files and the snowdrops and narcissi are right on cue, as are Magnolias campbellii and ‘Vulcan’.

left to right: Galanthus nivalis ‘S Arnott’, Lecojum vernum (snowflake) and Galanthus elwesii

It is indeed peak snowdrop time which is but brief in our area which has only once ever had snow that we know of. I can tell you very specifically that it was on August 15, 2011, quite possibly between the hours of 6.00am and 7.00am. Out of all the snowdrops – and there are many, many different ones – we have ended up relying on just two different ones that perform well and actually increase in our warm temperate conditions. People in colder climates will have a much larger range that they can grow and they will have a longer season. We are confined to Galanthus nivalus ‘S. Arnott’ and Galantus elwesii and we really only get a couple of weeks out of them. The snowflake or Leucojum vernum ‘Gravetye Giant’ flowers over a couple of months.

‘Twilight’ as a set of 3 in the centre, ‘Peeping Tom’ on the right

What we lack in range on the snowdrops, we make up for with the daffies. We grow a wide range of dwarf narcissi, both named varieties and cyclamineus seedlings,  and the season is just starting. ‘Peeping Tom’ is in full swing. It has an interesting name – maybe it was peeping out as snow melted? Or maybe somebody felt obliged to name it Tom but didn’t wish to? No matter, it is a bold and reliable performer and it certainly doesn’t skulk around quietly. So too is Felix Jury’s ‘Twilight’ a mainstay performer for us. It is sterile so it puts its energies into flowering for a long time and increasing its bulbs rather than setting seed. Next month will see an explosion in the narcissus varieties in bloom and ‘Twilight’ will continue to bloom alongside them.

L to r: Mark’s reflexa hybrid, red L. bulbifera, L aloides quadricolor and the common old L. aloides var aloides.
Mark’s Lachenalia reflexa hybrid which has proven to be a good early performer

The other group starting its season is the lachenalias. The more desirable pink, blue and lilac ones will come later but these early ones are very cheerful and some have a long season in flower.

Cyclamen coum
A winter flowering scilla. It will have a species name but I don’t know what it is and, to be honest, don’t care enough to go searching through back catalogues of ours and online.
Cyclamen coum and scilla

Cyclamen coum flies the flag for this plant family all winter and we have enough to set seed freely. It is smaller growing than the earlier C. hederifolium, and the dominant form we have is more cerise pink. The blue is an early season scilla, charmingly referred to as meadow squill, but I have no idea which one. We will have had a species name on it at some point. I wouldn’t get too excited about it. It is a pretty blue but has too high a foliage to flower ratio and is more suited to meadow planting than rockery. Not choice.

Overall, there is nothing much out of the ordinary but for mid-winter, the earliest bulbs are a very cheerful sight. July is the early harbinger of the peak bulb season of spring. I should give an honourable mention to Oxalis purpurea alba (still!), Oxalis versicolor and the simple blue anemone seedlings that have gently seeded down as survivors from a packet of De Caen mix I planted maybe 25 years ago.

The gentle charm of snowdrops in a meadow situation

In the ‘you need to be here to really appreciate it’ category, July opens up our season of bulb hillsides down in the park. We don’t have actual acres of snowdrops yet but we do have extensive plantings and they are in flower now. The meadow narcissi are also opening their flowers. We rely on the stronger dwarf forms – particularly Narcissus ‘Twilight’ and cyclamineus seedlings which Mark raised to get high enough numbers to have an impact. Meadow bulbs bring charm through being an unexpected surprise and that is a little visual treat in early spring each year.

Dainty Narcissus cyclamineus competing well with bluebells and grass in the park
Lachenalia bulbifera at the base of an old tree amidst a grassy area that gets mown. Around bare tree trunks is often a good place to start planting bulbs for a meadow of sorts.

Not all Magnolia doltsopas are equal

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‘Tis the season for Magnolia doltsopa to bloom. It being midwinter, this immediately means it is a plant for milder climates and it has been a popular plant purchase in our area for many years. It used to be known as Michelia doltsopa but michelias have been swallowed up into the bigger family of magnolia now.

M. doltsopa, on the main street of Whaitara
The Whaitara doltsopa is growing behind a hedge so I had to peek in from the gateway to confirm from its bottom branches that it is in fact doltsopa, probably ‘Silver Cloud’.

As I scan the roadsides looking for deciduous magnolias opening their early season blooms, it surprises me how often the immediate take from the car window is to wonder what is the white deciduous magnolia flowering now. In fact, on second look, I realise it is the allegedly evergreen M. doltsopa. Often the lowest leaves on the tree are hanging on for grim death while all the exposed branches further up have abandoned the effort. The fresh foliage will start to show over the next few weeks and what is happening is that the tree is opening its flowers and dropping its leaves at the same time. Semi-deciduous rather than fully deciduous in that it drops an almost full set of leaves for a very short space of time.

I watch this doltsopa in Fitzroy each year. I am not sure it is a good advertisment for the species.

I have not put a lot of thought to M. doltsopa over the years, I admit. It is an evergreen species that comes from the eastern Himalayas (low altitude, I assume) and north eastern India. Being a species, in the wild it will spread by seed and those seedlings can be variable. There was an importation of doltsopa to Taranaki, the area where we live, at some stage in the late 1950s, maybe early 60s. We don’t know if they came in as seed or as small plants but Felix received one or two and the magnificent specimen in our park dates back to there. There are a few others of that importation around the province, mostly in private gardens of the day.

Not for the faint-hearted gardener. All those white blooms are from one plant on a single trunk of Magnolia doltsopa in our park.
Our form of doltsopa, loosely referred to as ‘Rusty’, has very good flowers in size, form, abundance and fragrance.

Of the ones I have seen, I think we got the best form. It is H U G E, so big that we never propagated it to sell because there aren’t many people who have the space of a small town section or more to give to one plant. Cambridge nurseryman, Peter Cave, sold a few under the name of ‘Rusty’ on account of its significant feature of furry indumentum that is not seen on most of the other forms of the same species. ‘Rusty’ never defoliates, has very large flowers and the desired fragrance.

The Rayner form of doltsopa

I photographed a different doltsopa seedling from the same batch imported 60 years ago in a friend’s garden, though this is not the original plant. It is referred to as the Rayner form, on account of the original plant being in the Rayner’s garden of the day  in central Taranaki. It is big, it keeps a full set of leaves but the flowers are not as large as our one and it lacks the appealing indumentum.

Our specimen of ‘Silver Cloud’. The flower is a good size but rather too floppy in form. Again this is a lower branch. The higher branches are partially defoliated.

I think most of the defoliated plants I see around are a named clone, ‘Silver Cloud’, selected by the once important nursery, Duncan and Davies, for slightly easier propagation properties and its large flower. I thought it was meant to be smaller growing too but then I photographed this one (below) in the same garden as the Rayner form and I am not sure I would call that smaller growing.

M. doltsopa ‘Silver Cloud’ in Glyn Church’s garden is not exactly smaller growing but at least it is not as badly defoliated as many of the others I have seen.

Back in earlier days, before ‘Silver Cloud’ was widely available, doltsopa seedlings were being sold. By seedlings, I mean plants raised from seed so showing variation whereas every ‘Silver Cloud’ in existence should share the same plant genes as the one original plant because they are propagated by layering or budding, not raised from seed. We know about the next generation of doltsopa seedlings being raised and sold because Hawera nurseryman and friend of Mark’s dad Felix, Roly Barry was collecting seed here from both ‘Rusty’ and ‘Silver Cloud’ which were then planted side by side to increase seed production by cross pollination.

Mark’s Fairy Magnolia White® is half doltsopa – probably the good half.

Mark’s hybrid which is named Fairy Magnolia White® is half doltsopa. When it came to describing it, Mark has always referred to it as ‘a garden-friendly doltsopa type’. I usually try and avoid shameless self-promotion even thought this is my own site, but after surveying all the doltsopas I pass around and about, I will say that I think Mark’s ‘Fairy White’ is a superior garden plant all round. It never defoliates, it prunes well, it flowers prolifically amongst healthy foliage and its flowers are not only well-formed and very pretty, they are also very fragrant. I would plant it ahead of ‘Silver Cloud’ any day.

Fairy Magnolia White® does not defoliate and can be clipped or pruned to keep it a more manageable size.

A day late but Mānawatia a Matariki

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A magical midwinter day with the sun highlighting the furry buds on Magnolia Iolanthe

Mark and I bumped into an old colleague at the garden centre this week. Admittedly, there was a cold southerly wind blowing but we were a little surprised when he commented that he thought we were having a particularly cold winter this year.

July 12, 2026 Our maunga, the mountain, Mount Taranaki

We did not contradict him but it is an indication of how fickle and unreliable humans are when it comes to assessing weather. We had a long and very mild autumn season stretching past the shortest day. The snows came late on the mountain again, as they did last year.

July 9, 2025

I had thought that I had never seen the snow come so late and then Facebook Memories brought up a post from July 9 last year and it had no snow. So it actually came earlier this year, albeit by a few days only.

The pink Magnolia campbellii this morning

Today is a perfect midwinter day – bright sun in a cloudless sky and no wind at all. I headed out with my camera this morning to record what is in bloom already here. While the pink Magnolia campbellii is flowering right on cue, I feel that it is early for the main showing of the snowdrops and the first narcissi.

Narcissus Twilight
Those little white dots, which you may not see on a phone screen, are part of our meadow plantings of snowdrops. Taken early this morning before they unfurled their petals to the sun.

Matariki this year was from July 8 to July 11 with the public holiday on the 10th so I am only one day late to wish you Mānawatia a Matariki, happy Māori New Year.  The dates are determined by the rising of the constellation known here as Matariki, or the Pleiades in astronomy circles. It is only in recent years that the majority of the non-Māori population  in our country has realised the significance of this time but we have embraced this truly indigenous celebration as part of our total culture. In that short time, it has become a special time with a unique character that transcends just the addition of a new statutory holiday.

For me, it is the start of a new year in the garden. And as this world lurches from crisis to crisis at an escalating rate, the start of a new year is a time for hope. We certainly need to reminded of hope and simple beauty in life these days.

Cymbidium orchids are already blooming

The National Library says of Matariki:

“The 3 major principles that guide Matariki are:

  • remembrance — honouring those who have died since the last rising of Matariki
  • celebrating the present — gathering together with family and friends
  • looking to the future — looking forward to the promise of a new year.”
Snowy white blooms on Camellia yuhsienensis