A dead tree, an alive Australian plant and too much miscanthus

Leave a reply
The grey coloured tangle of branches was the dead malus

We had our preferred arborist back this week. The dead malus in the entrance was not huge and access was easy but it looked like one of those jobs that would take us at least a couple of days but that he could complete by morning tea time. I was pretty much right on that. By 10.30, it was down, firewood cut to easy sizes and small stuff all fed through the mulcher.

A mere three hours later. Sometimes getting in the professionals is worth it.

The arborist described it as being like a bird’s nest. It was an extraordinary tangle of fine branches. I wondered how much of a gap it would leave but, in the event, not much, really. The prunus that stood beside it is looking more glorious in its autumn raiment.  It sent me down a rabbit hole, looking for earlier photographs of the area.

The entranceway back in 1986

Oh look. Here we have it looking remarkably romantic in April 1986. It was still being grazed by sheep and Felix still had his hens. And, looking carefully, it appears that the cherry trees and likely the crabapple were planted around this time so that particular tree lasted for close to 40 years.

The three diagonals heading upwards to the left are flower spikes
Same clump flowering in 2018. It has grown.

The Doryanthes palmeri has put up three flower spikes! I use the exclamation mark because this particular plant, commonly known as the Queensland spear lily, has only flowered once for us, back in 2018.  It was pretty remarkable, with the flowering lasting a good five months. In the years since, the clump has grown substantially and the entire Court Garden area has been developed and planted. Like the cardiocrinum lily, each rosette only flowers once after many years but it then sets offshoots which will also take many years but then flower spectacularly. They are surely the sturdiest flower stem of any plant we grow but not for the faint-hearted or small gardens. Our clump is now around five metres across.

Zach and I have been reviewing the adjacent Court Garden. It is time for some significant thinning and a major cull on the Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’. I see I wrote three years ago: 

What amazes me is that this plethora of Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ all descend from just one small plant that Mark bought originally. It was still just one plant, albeit a large clump, when I first lifted it and started dividing it in 2017. We have just kept dividing since. In those six intervening years, that one original plant has now yielded several hundred sizeable clumps.

The miscanthus is falling apart after just three years – a sign that it needs more attention than we are willing to give it on an ongoing basis

Just three years ago, every miscanthus in that garden was dug out and carted away (to Pukeiti Gardens, no less). Zach had smaller clumps ready to go straight back in, divided from one of the plants. Three years on, they need lifting and dividing again. Already. This is not light work, the clumps are huge and falling apart.

At its best, shining in the lower angle of the winter sun
Too demanding of attention – this plant will collapse apart with rain.

It is a good looking and obligingly easy grass. As far as I am concerned, its best season is around the winter solstice when the sun comes in at its lowest angle, lighting up the pale flowerheads like moving lanterns. That is a magical sight. But we don’t need 25 to 30  clumps of it in the Court Garden to shine like lanterns in low winter light, all needing lifting and dividing every three years.   I think we can make do with a third of that number. It is not worth the effort required to keep it looking good in larger numbers.

Our native red tussock – Chionochloa rubra – is just a fantastic plant, given room to festoon

It might be time for me to update The Grass Report. The brief conclusion will be that if you have the space – at least two metres across in all directions – the low maintenance, looks-good-all-year-round, shining star of the grassy garden here is our native red tussock – Chionochloa rubra. I wouldn’t be without it.

April bulbs in bloom

2 Replies
Plenty of cyclamen flowering in shades of pink and pure white

Unlike earlier months, the April bulbs here have been a narrow range of different varieties, although certainly not in terms of numbers. The rockery in particular is a carpet of Cyclamen hederifolium but, as that became full, we have gently encouraged its spread to anywhere it wants to grow. It is very much the easiest and most adaptable of the cyclamen we grow.

Nerines and Moraea polystachya together

I wrote about both the Nerine sarniensis and the Moraea poystachya last month as they hit their peak. Both are heading towards the end of their season now but a six week season is a long time for a bulb.

The autumn snowdrops are always a surprise but at last I looked them up and I am pretty sure that these are Galanthus reginae-olgae, Queen Olga’s snowdrop. In the likelihood that few readers, if any, even know who this Olga was, I can advise that she was Olga Constantinovna of Russia who was also Queen of Greece at the time when a Greek botanist identified this species native to the area.

Now to commit the name Galanthus reginae-olgae to memory….

Mark often cites this snowdrop as an example of how even the most charming of bulbs is most charming when it flowers in the season when we expect it. Snowdrops, he feels, belong in late winter to earliest spring – harbingers of season change – and most of them do flower then and we are delighted to see them. It is why, as a plant breeder, he wants plants to flower at their allotted time of the year, not to appear as a novelty at the ‘wrong’ time.

I digress, but when a new species of camellia, known first as C. changii but then renamed to the less helpful but correct in plant nomenclature C. azalea, became available, his interest in acquiring it for breeding was decidedly lacklustre. Its main flowering is in summer whereas pretty much every other camellia flowers in autumn (for sasanquas and some species), winter or early spring. A summer flowering camellia still strikes him as fundamentally on the fringes of the natural order; after all, he argues, we have an abundance of other summer flowering plants and we don’t need a range of camellias flowering at the same time.

Schizostylis oo hesperantha. Or river lily, apparently.

A somewhat unsung but easy autumn rhizome is what we know of as a schizostylis but I see it is more correctly named as Hesperantha coccinea. I am not sure which name is easier to remember but maybe its common name of ‘river lily’ could be helpful, even though it is an iris, native to southern Africa and Zimbabwe. I see photographs on line of it growing in big clumps, but its foliage is unremarkable. I divide it up and dot it through the cottage gardens we refer to as the Iolanthe garden to add an extra bit of autumn colour and interest. It seems to be more favoured in the UK where it has a history in the cut flower industry and various named cultivars selected and even awarded by the RHS. Perhaps we are not so much into autumn bulbs in these southerly climes.

I made the mistake of planting O. eckloniana in a rockery pocket and have been weeding it out ever since. It is mighty handsome in a pot, though.

The other main group of bulbs just hitting their stride are the ornamental oxalis. Set aside your prejudices about oxalis – there are a few that are real pests and downright weeds but there are also some that are extremely ornamental – pretty as. But they are not all equal. Some have good looks but a fleeting season in bloom (here’s looking at you O. fabaefolia and flavas pink and white). Some are downright dangerous with thousands of teeny tiny bulbs that if you liberate in your garden, you will never get rid of unless you replace the soil entirely. Some are not strong enough to survive well in garden conditions and need to be nursed along in pots. But some are excellent in the garden and not a problem at all.

Oxalis purpurea alba. We find the pink flowered forms of this species invasive but this lovely white form is reasonably strong growing but not weedy and it is easy to remove entirely if required.
I would give the same verdict on O. luteola – long flowering season and garden friendly.

When our Zach was doing his apprenticeship here, he was required to curate a collection of plants and he chose oxalis. He has a collection of over 30 ornamental species now, most retrieved from the garden where I had planted them (and regretted some). They are variable in terms of garden merit but it is hard to beat O. purpurea alba and O. luteola as garden plants. Call them by their common name of wood sorrel if it makes you feel better.

Just a small sampling of the more than 30 varieties we have in the oxalis collection. There is a wide range of leaf type, flower size and colour.

And so to May this coming Friday. The new month will open with Nerine bowdenii, the last of the nerines to flower for us each season and the easiest to grow and bloom. I see its first flower has opened.

Autumn dig and divide

Leave a reply
The borders need some intensive attention but, I admit, we were doing the easier areas first. There is so much detail in the borders that it is harder to manage access to some areas. The Iris sibirica will all be lifted shortly for thinning and dividing and Zach tells me that was one of the first jobs he did when he started here in 2021. So, it seems we can get five years out of them before they need a total revamp.

Zach and I are busy, a-diggin’ and a-dividin’. The advice is often to do this in springtime when the plants are in growth and that is probably true for gardeners with heavy soils and colder winters. We prefer to do it in autumn, even if it means getting hoses and buckets out in dry spells. Our winters are short and we will have at least six weeks and maybe longer before growth stops for winter. Autumnal conditions can extend as far as the winter solstice.

In contrast to our long, mild autumn, springtime is usually wet and we are slower than some areas for soils to warm up. It is fine to dig and divide at that time but, by doing it now, plants have a jump start. Besides, we have a lot to do. Many summer flowering perennials are demanding plants when it comes to care.

The aster with a name that defies all but the most particular type of memory, at its very best. Alas, it does not stay looking its very best for long enough,
And the same aster riddled with mildew and falling apart even though it was only a year since it was last dug and divided to address these very issues

Zach started on the asters in the Wave Garden. While a variety of mid-sized asters carry the twin borders through autumn, we had just used a compact blue aster in two of the bays of the Wave Garden. In its first couple of years, I loved it and so did the butterflies. It is a clump-forming Michaelmas daisy. I fell out of love with it when it started to get the white haze of mildew in summer but even more so when we realised it needed to be lifted and divided pretty much every single year to keep it as a carpet of blue. By the second year it falls apart. Nice it may be, but it is not nice enough to warrant that amount of individual attention.

The same view stripped out and replanted, but not in asters. It should be fully furnished again by mid spring

This blue aster has a name but I have to look it up every time because who can remember Aster novi-belgii ‘Professor Anton Kippenberg’? Even worse was when I discovered that the plant has now been reclassified and is no long an aster but… wait for it… is now Symphyotrichum novi-belgii ‘Professor Anton Kippenberg’. Too much, I say, too much. It has gorn forever from the Wave Garden, replaced by a compact blue salvia we had elsewhere and blue bearded iris.

Gardening for us is in part constantly refining areas, acting on what has worked and what is less satisfactory. And we have done a lot of learning since I planted the summer gardens, because large plantings of summer perennials are new territories for us. We fully lifted, dug, and replanted 4 of the 12 outside bays in the Wave Garden, replanting with fresh compost and mulch.

In a moment of woolly thinking, I labelled this photo ‘Anna’s Pink’ which is clearly wrong because Anna is red and Penny is pink but now I am not sure which it is. But it is from the Frostkiss series and it is very good, as are the others I have.

Zach moved on to the Court Garden and I moved into other plantings. In one border, I lifted all the hellebores and consigned them to the compost heap. We have fairly large plantings of hellebores and I wouldn’t be without H. argutifolius, H. x sternii and H. foetidus in particular,  but I wouldn’t give you anything for most of the more common H. orientalis in our conditions. We have tried really hard with them, Mark has done controlled crosses and we have admired their merits in places with cold winters but I truly think they are over-rated in milder climates. Out they go. The only ones that I will give prime garden space to are the marvellous ‘Frostkiss’ series bred by Rodney Davey. ‘Anna’s Red’ and ‘Penny’s Pink’ were the first ones to be released here but there are more later ones and I aim to buy the lot now because they are so good. Lovely foliage, plenty of flowers held above the foliage and they all seem to be sterile so not producing endless seed to be weeded out. I dug my plants – I see I have  7 different varieties already – divided them and consolidated them into one border where they have prime position with spring bulbs. I expect them to take a year or two to re-establish well but my hopes are high.

Anigozanthus can sit and sulk for a while but digging, dividing and replanting in a sunnier position paid dividends, 18 months later.

Some plants take a while to re-establish. I had all but given up on this anigozanthus (kangaroo paw) after dividing it and replanting it in full sun two or maybe three years ago. I have lost plants from this family before. But it took a year to rest, do very little and review its options before stunning this year with the best show it has ever put on.

Last year – the flaxes have just had a bit of tidying up in the past 7 years
Completely lifted, divided up and replanted with just a few smaller divisions last week – hopefully to last another 7 years, largely untouched.

Zach is doing a major lift and divide in the Court Garden and I am grateful he is doing it because most of the plants are large. I planted this garden in 2019, starting with a blank canvas and reasonably large divisions (not small nursery plants in pots). In the time since, it has had very little attention bar a major cull and replant on the Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ in 2022. Zach isn’t lifting everything but he is lifting quite a bit and we are reviewing the plantings metre by metre. It seems that about six years is how long that sort of planting of strong growing, large perennials can last looking good. An intensive three weeks of work every six years along with a bit of ongoing care and weeding is not exactly a high maintenance demand.

Long may this autumn last. We still have plenty to get done.

May 2019, the southern end of the Court Garden
Just 18 months later in November 2020. The growth rate was rewarding.
Late last year so another five years on – the dominant plants have changed a bit but the overall impression is pretty stable and little major work has been done.

March bulbs in autumn

3 Replies

Autumn can be a magical season here. It is not guaranteed but, more often than not, we get warm, sunny, calm days with cool night temperatures. And dry. Ours is not a climate noted for extended dry periods but when it does happen, it is in autumn. These are perfect conditions for the autumn bulbs.

We say of our reasonably expansive 1950s rockery that it peaks in two seasons – autumn and again in early spring. We are entering the autumn peak but it is perhaps more in quantity than range of different bulbs.

We don’t accept many groups these days, but the Pukeiti members’ visit came from a special request, even though their visit was a few weeks too early to catch what we would describe as the autumn season.

We had the Pukeiti members visit three weeks’ ago and, as I commented to them, when it comes to bulbs, what they are looking at here is over 70 years of building up the volume. Mark, like his father Felix before him, started with just the bare minimum – one if it was an expensive bulb, maybe 3 or 4 if it was cheap enough and available to buy. Otherwise it would just be gifts of interesting bulbs from other gardeners. Over the years, we have lost a fair number of bulb varieties that did not like our conditions, but those that survived and increased have often thrived.

Cyclamen hederifolium, happily naturalised and seeding around but in a non-threatening way

The rockery is a carpet of Cyclamen hederifolium, in shades of pink and white. Sometimes referred to as the ivy-leaf cyclamen, it is native to the Mediterranean area and one of the most amenable and easy to grow species. These days, we mostly let them seed down in situ and from time to time, I will lift clumps of tubers when they get too congested.  We have also had success naturalising them on bulb hillsides in meadow conditions but we need to get the summer cut on the grass done at the right time so we can see the flowers. Somewhat to Mark’s surprise, just scattering seed proved as effective as planting tubers but it does take a few years for them to get enough size to be visible.

The nerines have just their peak. We do a good line on nerines – well, a rockery filled with them really and we have managed to keep the colours separate. Most are hybrids based on Nerine sarniensis, Felix started with a few good ones, although we don’t know how he came by the Inchmery nerines from Exbury. From there, he and then Mark started trying out controlled crosses to build the range we have today. They are the absolute stars in the autumn rockery, underpinned by the carpet of cyclamen.

Belladonnas are somewhat under-rated as an autumn bulb – too vigorous in growth habit and too much foliage for the rest of the year, but they certainly put on a great show in bloom with absolutely no care or attention.

Most of the big bulbs of summer have finished, but I will eat my past words on the short flowering season of belladonnas. I have never tracked them before but seven weeks in full bloom and still going is not a short season at all, by bulb standards. We just take them for granted, really, and fail to recognise what a hard working family they are.

Moraea poystachya in blue, choosing where it prefers to live. It particularly likes cracks in concrete.

The moraea family is a large one of many different species, the most common being M. villosa and M. aristata – the spring flowering peacock iris. Some are invasive and some are not worth having, but in autumn each year, Moraea polystachya delights us with its blue iris flowers. It sets plenty of flowers down the stem, unlike many bulbs that set just one bloom per stem. It seeds down but not badly enough for us to decide it is invasive and dangerous. It is just gently spreading and generally delights us,

Having different species of colchicum means the flowering season is extended by several weeks.

Beyond that, the second species of colchicums are in full bloom now (either C. autumnale or C speciosum – one flowers earlier and one flowers now and one day, I will find out which blooms first). So too are the true autumn crocus in bloom. There are a fair swag of different species of autumn crocus (NOT including colchicums and sternbergia which are often inaccurately referred to as autumn crocus even though they have no connection to crocus at all). The one we have most success with is blue, almost certainly from the C. serotinus group, maybe salzmanii.

The controversial pure while Lilium formasanum close out the lily season in March. They are controversial because of their seeding ways and indeed are banned from commercial sale but not prohibited in the garden. They do need deadheading, though.

Other bulbs during March that came and went included Haemanthus coccineus, Brunsvigia josephinae and the controversial Lilium formasanum (syn. weedy, also banned from sale). 

Sometimes this run of settled autumn weather can last until the shortest day. After a particularly indifferent summer, we have our fingers crossed.

Sartorial elegance meets Peter Rabbit. In the garden of course.

9 Replies

“Back in December 2005, Monty Don, the British horticulturalist and human Peter Rabbit, wrote a delightful little essay for The Guardian on how to dress as a gardener.” (Derek Guy, ‘Why We Dig Gardening Style’ Mr Porter, Fashion)

Writing my almost overdue post about March bulbs flowering now felt like getting blood from a stone and, as a writer and gardener with deadlines that are all self-imposed, I was delighted to be diverted in an unexpected quarter. Monty Don as a human Peter Rabbit, you say. Tell me more.

The alt text to the photo (the bit on the black background that is probably too small to read) says: ‘Monty Don wearing a weathered French chore coat, blue shirt, and weathered French work pants. He is holding a tool in the garden.’

The writer is a US – based master of sartorial elegance and expertise, Derek Guy. This is not a subject of great interest to me in the greater scheme of things but Derek Guy had come to my notice through Bluesky. Social media gets a bad rap these days when, at its best, it can open us up to new ways of looking at things. Having dabbled in and out of Guy’s posts, I have learned things I never knew about quality men’s tailoring and why the Spanish king – I think it is the one from Spain – always looks so beautifully attired while our PM, try as he might, is more like a sack of potatoes in a blue suit jacket without even a hint of Peter Rabbit’s charm.  Social media makes my world bigger, as I say.

I was amused by this reply to the original post

Having perused these witty dissertations from both Guy and the Monty Don himself, I am forced to admit that we let the side down badly here. Mark manages the ‘rumpled corduroy trousers’ as long as I can continue to source this item of clothing. They are much scarcer than they were 50 years ago when I first had to shop for them, replaced, I guess, by the unpleasantly named ‘sweatpants’. But there our flirtation with classier garden-wear ends.

You can tell that Mr Guy is more focused on the clothes than the activity of gardening. His alt text reads: ‘Ashley Edwards wearing a blue sweater, gray neck warmer and gray beanie. He is sitting in the garden.’

I have noticed that English gardeners often adopt a higher standard of dress code. I think that is due to tradition and to the recognition of gardening as a higher level skill and a profession. We have to look to earlier generations where there was some crossover to those who gardened in the far-flung colonies.

Felix’s garden attire did not change much down the decades beyond the colour of the shirt. Notice the hat. This will have been taken in the mid 1950s

Mark’s dad, Felix, always wore a tweed Trilby hat outdoors and his winter gardening attire included a wool tweed jacket. He always wore shirts – olive green for the garden – and woolen trousers. Very brown and green he was, more leprechaun than Peter Rabbit.

Mark and Felix looking at the original plant of Magnolia Vulcan in the early to mid 1980s. Notice Felix is still in a Trilby hat and woolen trousers. We put his final Trilby in the coffin with him when he died. But notice also, Mark in his rumpled brown corduroy trousers. Should he die before me, I may dress him in a pair of brown cords for his final journey.

Fortunately, women have escaped the scrutiny of both Guy and Don. There is a certain genre of English lady gardeners, photographed tending their gardens while clad in pastoral themed, artful ‘peasant style’ dresses. In my mind, I associate them with growing the dahlias that are so in vogue these days but that may just have been a photo I saw which made me wonder if these charmingly attired women ever did any digging or kneeling in their gardens.  

My rule of thumb is that if the clothing is old, comfortable, has pockets, is easily washed and dried and is suited to the weather, it can be considered gardening clothing. Upon occasion, I ask myself, “Would I be embarrassed if an unexpected visitor turned up and saw me wearing this?” If the answer is yes, it is usually a sign that it is time to consign that item to the dustbin of landfill.  That is as far as sartorial garden attire goes here. But I do feel a little pang that we have failed dismally to establish any reputation at all for our garden clothes.

The third Guy illustration’s alt text reads ‘Alfie Nickerson in a bright yellow zip-up jacket and blue shorts, along with beaten brown Blundstones. They are carrying flowers and a dog.’ I had to google Alfie Nickerson and I, for one, welcome the new generation of gardeners with their modern style.

I sign off without photo but can offer the alt text: ‘Abbie Jury is wearing a bottle green, stretch cotton, sleeveless dress with deep pockets from the defunct label of Ezibuy and battered woollen Allbird lace-up shoes in beige.’