Summer Gold

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A field of sunflowers down the road from us caught my attention as the blooms opened. I speak of ‘down the road’ in rural terms. A couple of kilometres and a couple of roads and corners in-between but on my main route to town. When I stopped to photograph it on a grey day as the rain stopped, it was imbued with soft light and appeared almost mystical.

Italian sunflowers as opposed to local ones but really, they all came from the Americas to start with

I can only remember seeing three different fields of sunflowers. The first was in Italy, on the road from Sermoneta to the famed garden of Ninfa. It was industrial farming – commercial production for either seed or oil but that whole setting of a phalanx of sunflowers in the dry, arid landscape seemed imbued with the charm and romanticism that is steeped in the very ground and most things above in that pocket of rural Italy.

Heliotropism in action near Sermoneta, south of Rome

It was also the first time I saw en masse the characteristic of heliotropism – the habit of both foliage and young flowers following the sun during the day. I was amused by the following sentence in the Wikipedia article: ‘Sunflowers move back to their original position between the hours of 3am and 6am, and the leaves follow about an hour later.” That is very specific information. Apparently that movement stops when the flowers age and they settle to face the rising sun in the east.

Sunflowers in Huirangi, ‘across the bridge’
Across this bridge

The second sunflower meadow was, as we say, ‘just across the bridge’ from us in Huirangi. We can cut across the historic swing bridge and be there in minutes. Our eldest daughter, grandson and I first went about 3 summers ago and were pretty impressed by the appeal of the place as a destination. An Instagram event, daughter declared. A very popular Instagram location at that with hay bales, strategically based old tractor or two, provision to select and cut your own sunflowers and I am pretty sure there was icecream. It was clear that others were as delighted as we were at being in the midst of fields of sunflowers.

Their Facebook page tells me that their season is later this year and that they are opening next weekend and the following two weekends, through til March 1.

Tikorangi sunflowers

The third sunflower meadow down our road is different. It does not seem to be either for commercial harvest or as a visitor destination. It appears to be part of a regenerative agriculture system. The sunflowers are of a squatter physique – lower growing and sturdier – and  interplanted with a white flowering brassica and probably other selected plants as well. I didn’t feel I could scale the fence to check out the pasture composition but did spot the yarrow and blue chicory in the adjacent paddock pasture so it would seem more herbal ley than monoculture.

Tikorangi sunflower meadow, seemingly part of a regenerative approach to farming

We live in an intensive dairy farming area, one which grows grass all year round in our milder climate which means stock graze outside all the time. It is often described as a ‘green desert’ because the main focus is on encouraging maximum grass growth, aided by nitrogen-heavy fertilisers. The contrast from that to herbal ley and sunflower plantings could not be more extreme and I am sure the meadow contributes a huge amount more to a sustainable ecosystem rich in biodiversity and feeding beneficial insects and microbes.

In solidarity with Ukraine

The common sunflower is Helianthus annuus – helios being Greek for sun and annuus meaning it is an annual. Curiously, given that all helianthus are native to north, central and just a few to south America, the annual sunflower is now the national flower for Ukraine. I am guessing it is a commercial staple for that country, which is a grain bowl of Europe.

Like many families, we grew sunflowers with the children when they were young and into competitive school gardening. To this day I remember the sunflowers one of them was growing, towering over 2 metres tall, only to fall in an overnight storm. Disappointment seared on my motherly brain.

Helianthus, I believe, and more garden friendly than the big annual sunflowers
Not helianthus at all. The orange flowers on the left are heleniums while the yellow stars are Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’.

Nowadays, I grow a few of the different, smaller, perennial species in the summer gardens. There are around 70 different species of helianthus, or sunflowers, including Jerusalem artichoke. I have a mental block when it comes to remembering the differences between helianthus, heliopsis and helianthemum (and that is without going to helichrysums, heliotropes and other plants starting with heli). Similarly, I have trouble each summer remembering the differences between some of the helianthus, echinaceas, rudbeckia, heliopsis and ratibida and which is which in the summer gardens. But I am pretty sure these are helianthus with either species or cultivar names that I have even less chance of remembering when I struggle to remember they are helianthus.

Helianthus from an earlier March season. The lower one I think is the species whose name I have recorded somewhere – I just can’t remember where – while the upper photo is a selected dwarf form which has a cultivar name that is recorded in the same place as the missing species name.

Summer gold, indeed.

Here is a photo I prepared earlier that may show why I struggle to remember which is which and that is without adding yellow echinaceas to the mix – left to right is Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstonne’ , helenium, Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’, the only helianthus in the line up and Ratibida pinnata

Bold Bulbs of January

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While I think of early spring and autumn as Peak Bulb Blooming Time here, January must take the crown of Big Show-off Bulb Time. With big bulbs as well as a big display, notably the lilies and scadoxus.

Mark’s Aurelian hybrids in yellow and apricot orange.

Beat the drum to announce lily time. The month starts with the yellow and apricot-orange Aurelians, for which I give full credit to Mark. We have never made them available on the market so any Aurelians you buy won’t look quite look ours and probably will have fewer flowers to the stem. They are truly lovely in their 2 to 3 week season. Nicely scented too.

Auratum hybrids – all outward facing

As the Aurelians pass their peak, the auratums hit their stride and they are an astounding sight in full sun and in the open woodland areas of the Avenue Gardens. We have a few, as I say in a major understatement. Some date back to Felix who dabbled with lilies in the 1960s and 70s, and even further to Les Jury (his older brother) selecting for deep red shades amongst others, but particularly for outward-facing flowers. Upward-facing lilies are probably better for florists but they also gather dust and leaves and suffer more from pollen staining so they are not as good as garden plants. We select for plants that perform as garden plants.

A 30 metre border of auratum lilies plus a whole lot more in other areas. Did I mention we have a few?

Back in our mailorder days, we named and sold a few of Felix’s selections but the more recent hybrids from Mark have never been put into commercial production. Pure and simple, he raised many plant from controlled crosses for our garden (by which is meant he chose the parents and manually pollinated rather than harvesting wild pollinated seed). He was after outward-facing blooms, big flowers, strong stems and a range of colours from white through pinks to what passes for red in the auratum family. He succeeded in this endeavour and every year, the auratums are a sensory joy with both looks and heady fragrance.

We have a few Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katharinae too.

The Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katharinae continue to thrill and delight us with their sheer scale here. I am not sure I have much else to say that I have not said before. This particular patch is one of our unique features. It is more usual for these bulbs to be nurtured as single specimens in a pot. While they have naturalised here, their spread is not on such a scale as to be described ‘invasive’; they are easy to control but we are fine with them gently popping up in nearby areas. As a general rule, we favour complex scenes of mixed plants rather than mass plantings, so much the better if they are choice plants finding their own happy place.

Gently spreading in the woodland
Gloriosa superba in a dry border that never gets watered and the only moisture is runoff from the concrete beside

It is also gloriosa time. While they are commonly referred to as climbing lilies, the lily connection is but distant and the colchicums are much closer relatives. Gloriosas are highly prized by many until they multiply to the point where they become a bit of a weed. We are at that point. They are a handy plant to have in super dry conditions like the narrow, hot, dry border at the front of our house where little else thrives. I am not convinced about them in other areas and am trying to restrict their spread. Also, I feel they ramble as much as climb. I wouldn’t mind if they would climb neighbours to hold themselves up but they are more inclined to sprawl and need staked areas to keep them more upright.

Crinum moorei var rates as a choice bulb for its foliage alone, even before the white flowers appear
It may be C. moorei (non variegated) or it may be one of the other species. Nowhere near as choice but pretty enough in casual woodland

The stars of our crinums are the many bulbs we have of Crinum moorei variegated but they are only just starting to put up their pure white flower spikes this week so they can wait til February’s instalment. We have other crinums flowering soft pink. I have never unravelled the different species; Mark tells me we have two different species, one of which is the common form of moorei (non-variegated) and one of which is a different species that he has forgotten the name of and I never knew so its identity may remain forever a mystery. These all-green foliaged plants are rangy in foliage, utilitarian but useful bulbs for shady areas and pretty in bloom.

Crocosmias – pretty but most are on the rampant side
Tigridias – we have them with and without spots in white, red, yellow and a variety of pink hues

In the showy/utilitarian/potentially weedy category, we are flowering tigridias (jockey caps), crocosmia and zephyranthes. Tigridias hail from central America, Tigridia pavonia which is the common garden species  is from that area around Mexico and Columbia. Crocosmia are a grasslands bulb from southern Africa.

Zephyranthes or habranthus? I was going to say at least we can call them rain lilies but they are not even lilies because they belong to the amaryllis family instead.

The zephyranthes are from the Americas, oft referred to as ‘rain lilies’ because flowering is triggered by rain. Zephyranthes or habranthus, you may ask. As I did. I have no idea now. We have always called them zephyranthes but ten years ago when I wrote this piece they appear to have been reclassified as habranthus. Now, a decade on, it appears that habranthus have been swept up – along with sprekelias – and moved back to zephyranthes.  This is all based on botanical analysis and DNA and who am I to challenge that? I can continue with zephyranthes which is easier for this old brain to remember because we used to have a family dog named Zephyr. These are plants for the casual, sunny areas of the garden – more wildflower than tidy bedding plant.

A casual planting of a smaller flowered auratum and tigridias beside the drive in the Iolanthe Garden

As if the disappointing summer is not bad enough, I see we already have the first flowers opening on Cyclamen hederafolium and even the autumn snowdrop. Sigh.

Special thoughts to those in the north and on the east coast who have been hit hard by extreme weather in the past week. We see you, we hear you, we feel for you even as we know that is about as useful as Trump’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ or, in the rural vernacular, as useful as tits on a bull. May the weather settle soon that you can start the process of recovery.

Crocosmia – possible ‘Star of the East’. Unlike the others we grow, this has exceptionally large flowers, is VERY slow to increase and never in any danger of becoming a weed or wildflower. This is why it is allowed in the rockery.

Worsleya mania

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Well goodness gracious me.

It seems that our highly prized Worsleya procera is more highly valued than we thought. I mention it most summers because it is lovely, really lovely, in bloom, usually late January to early February for us. It is unusual and even more so to manage it as a garden plant, which we do. In cultivation, it is commonly kept to a container and grown in controlled conditions. That is unless you happen to live on a granite cliff beside a waterfall in Brazil, that being its natural habitat.

How beautiful is the worsleya in flower?

I knew it wasn’t common and that is because it is very slow to produce offsets (new baby bulbs), that while it can be grown from seed, it is not usually self-fertile and you need two different clones to get viable seed. Then it is likely to take 15 years or more from seed to get a bloom. So it is not what is known in the trade as a ‘good commercial plant’. I doubt that it is available for sale in this country.

I discovered recently that it is highly prized in Australia. It popped up on a Facebook page for aficionados of unusual bulbs in that country. Canberra daughter is developing an interest in unusual bulbs and she tells me the worsleya is a hot fashion item. She stunned me with a photo of a single bulb, close to flowering size, that she photographed at Sydney Botanic Gardens.

It is a good plant but the price is next level

$980. Australian dollars. For a single bulb. That is $1141.74 New Zealand dollars on the day I write this. You could have knocked me over with a feather, even allowing for the bulb being blooming size. Small bulbs are available in Australia at $A90 for a one year old and $A180 for a three year old. They may flower in a decade’s time if you take care of them.

That is an astonishing price, to me at least.

Tulip mania is the term coined for the time from 1634 to 1637 when a peculiar event happened in the Netherlands and a single tulip bulb of a desired clone could be valued as highly as ‘four fat oxen’.

Similarly, but a great deal more recently, a single bulb of a special snowdrop (Galanthus) sold in the UK in 2022 for £1,850 ($4317.09 NZ at today’s exchange rate).

The worsleya has yet to reach these heady levels but we do not have a snowdrop with a bright yellow ovary in our garden. Nor do we have a seventeenth century tulip called ‘Viceroy’. But we do have about a dozen worsleyas, of which maybe four are flowering size. Maybe the rest will bloom before we shuffle off the mortal coils in a decade or two.

I am not sure that Mark ever paid above $15 for a single bulb of any plant and he probably had to have a cup of tea and a wee lie-down to recover from that extravagance. With inflation, we might pay $30 or $35 if it was something we really wanted and we were reasonably confident it would grow and flower here, in our conditions.

We lead a life that is rich in Scadoxus katherinae if not so rich in dollars. But I think we could flood the market if we dug them all up to sell.

I was shocked enough to be told that somebody our Zach witnessed was paying around $40 per bulb for single potted specimens of Scadoxus multiforus ssp katherinae which were not yet flowering size. We have a very large amount of it here and it is easy to grow, to increase and to naturalise. The same can not be said of the Worsleya procera so maybe its sale price matches its rarity.

Meri Kirihimete from Aotearoa.

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Or Merry Christmas from New Zealand. Although, as one who favours ‘seasons greetings’ for those of us who are not affiliated to any church, maybe it is time I worked on committing  “ngā mihi o te wā” to memory.

The flowers are what is often referred to as the New Zealand Christmas tree (on account of it blooming around Christmas), known here as the pōhutukawa (botanically Metrosideros excelsa).

Given its natural distribution is roughly a west-east line from where we are in North Taranaki across to Gisborne, I sometimes wonder how people in more southerly climes feel about it being the designated national Christmas tree. It is a remarkable tree with its capacity to grow in perilous positions on windswept coastlines. Being an archipelago of fairly small islands set midst vast oceans, we have pretty wild coastal areas. Our nearest small town of Waitara is right on the coast and there are two trees that dominate that urban setting, two trees that will not just survive, but thrive in that exposed situation. One is the pōhutukawa, the other is the Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla).

I set out to find a good specimen of the pōhutukawa in Waitara to photograph. I don’t want to burst sentimental bubbles, but this is a variable species. Not all pōhutukawa are equal when it comes to blooming. They all seem to grow well enough but quite a few flower more brown than red, some have but a sparse display of blooms and some don’t seem to flower at all. Also, maybe I had better whisper that its season in bloom is but short. I had to pass a lot of trees on the waterfront and on streets to find this one that stood out for its floral display.

In its urban context in the town of Waitara. A street planted with pōhutukawa, one of many such streets, where this specimen stood out as blooming particularly well.

I am sure I have noted before that many, if not most, pōhutukawa that are sold are seedlings. They will be variable and looking at the make up of the ones in this area, the majority will vary to the less showy side. If you are going to plant a single specimen, buy a named form because it should have been selected for its good flowering and propagated from cutting so will stay true. If you are going to plant many, find a good seed source because the percentage of better forms in the seedlings will be higher.

Go well. Stay safe. And may 2026 bring at least some of what you hope for.

Bulbs of December. In time for Christmas.

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While the rhodohypoxis and Sinningia (syn Gesneria) cardinalis flower on in abundance, it is time to turn to the bulbs that have made their annual appearance in this month of December.

Sprawling might be the best description of Albuca nelsonii in flower

We have always grown the large Albuca nelsonii and its green and white bells have often featured in any Christmas floral staging I do because it cuts well. I included it when I planted the Court Garden and I worried about its somewhat unwieldy habits. Staking those tall, curvy flower spikes was… challenging, shall I say? All that changed when I looked up the albucas in an attempt to get a species name on its half-sized cousin with very similar flowers. I found a reliable site that described the characteristic of the plant that the flower spikes naturally become pendulous to prostrate. Why fight nature? I now allow them do as they wish.

Apparently useful for warding off sorcerers when mixed with one of the red hot poker species

Randomly, I also found the information that an “infusion made from Albuca nelsonii bulbs and tubers of Kniphofia species, known as icacane, is taken as an emetic as protection against sorcery.” Just in case you need that handy hint.

Albuca batteniana, I believe. If you look carefully, you will see a few tufts of orange that appear as the flowers open but disappears soon after.

Often mistaken for A. nelsonii is its half-sized cousin. As far as I can make out, this is Albuca batteniana. The little orange tuft – actually the calyx that holds the petals – that appears at the top of the flower spike when it first starts opening is a distinctive characteristic. The flowers, bulbs and foliage are very similar to A. nelsonii and it is a better-behaved garden specimen in that somewhat suburban, tidy manner. Its flower spikes do not lie down on the job; they stay obediently erect. It is a good garden plant which I have used in the twin borders but it doesn’t make me smile as the more exbuberant and wayward big A. nelsonii does.

Dainty but prolific Cyanella capensis

These days, the abundant blue mist that shrouds the rockery is not the bothersome geissorhiza, about which I have written often. It has taken years for me to encourage the dainty Cyanella capensis with its tiny blue flowers across a long blooming season. Only now am I thinking I may be getting too much of it. At least its bulbs are large and easy to remove. I just have to be a bit more vigilant on deadheading it because it is spreading by seed, not bulb.

Arisaema tortuosum holds its head above the foliage, unlike many of the arisaemas. It also spreads too enthusiastically if the seed heads are not removed.

I have missed the arisaemas in previous months’ bulb articles. We have a reasonable range of arisaemas, some of which are much more choice than others. But it is really only the easy and common A. tortuosum that makes me think of them as the meerkats of the plant world. I deadhead them thoroughly and weed out strays because I do not want the alert meerkats of plant world all over the place but in their allotted space, they are an annual delight. And quite bizarre.

There is not much subtlety in Gladiolus daleni

Gladiolus – there are a few that I appreciate, mostly species. And a few that I tolerate. The overbred, overblown hybrids of Dame Edna fame have never appealed but I accommodate the ones that date back to Mark’s mum. As she died back in 1986, I feel a begrudging respect for those that have survived down the years and they seem to fit in okay to the exuberant and largely uncurated floral abundance of the Iolanthe garden. Gladiolus daleni has been in flower for a few weeks now but the star this week is the gorgeous red Gladiolus papilio X ‘Ruby’. One of the problems with gladiolus, though, is that they open their flowers in succession so no matter how attractive the freshly unfurled buds are, they share their stem with ones that have withered, browned and died. It seems a design flaw to me.

A legacy from Mark’s mother
The four gladioli on the left are all survivors from Mimosa Jury, top right is the amazing burgundy of papilio x ‘Ruby’ and beside it the usual species form of Gladiolus papilio. Lower right is daleni which is clearly a breeder parent of the one on its left which is larger and more coral coloured with a less obvious yellow flare.

The topic of gladiolus reminds me of this passage I wrote in a book review some years ago. I am still quite proud of it. 

By the way, Penguin (Publishers) , it is time you dispensed with the auto spellchecker. The author of this book winning prizes for exhibiting her Gladys rivals a previous author counselling readers to throw out their Algarve. The author may have been using the colloquial term of gladdies, but even that is inappropriate for the text on page 164 and 165 where poor Gladys has her name taken in vain repeatedly. Gladiolus stands for one, gladioli for more than one. Gladdie is the vernacular, not the common name. Gladys is somebody’s grandmother.

What we call a Christmas lily here is Lilium regale

The first of the Christmas lilies is in bloom and the buds are fattening on the golden Aurelian lilies. But I think we will leave the lilies for January when the auratums star.

There are of course, other December bulbs in flower. That is a Phaedranassa cinerea above (great name!). From Ecuador, no less. I can’t think we grow many plants from Ecuador. And what we still call Urecolina peruviana (from Peru, presumably) but may be more accurately called Stenomesson miniatum blooms on. One day I might sort out which bulbs we have are South American as opposed to the majority that are from South Africa.

Stay safe and our thoughts go to Australians in this week. Mass shootings are so rare in this part of the world that it shakes our nations to the core when they happen.