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.
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 dalenihas 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.
Written for and first published in the International Magnolia Society journal. In the time since writing the text and publication, we are now able to release details of the three new deciduous magnolia hybrids being released internationally.
The Jury magnolia reputation rests on just twelve deciduous magnolias so far. Soon there will be fifteen and it may end up at seventeen in total. Despite originating on a farm in far-flung New Zealand, some of those plants have had a significant impact in the international magnolia world.
Felix in his garden, 1985. Photo credit: Fiona Clark
Felix Jury was a farmer who decided he would rather garden. He handed over the family farm to his second son as soon as he could and devoted his time and energy to building a large garden. He started by buying plants, importing new material from around the world. It was the failure of many of these to thrive in our warm temperate conditions that started him on the hybridising path. He was a self-taught amateur; like many of his contemporaries of the day, he became proficient at raising seed, striking cuttings, budding and grafting across a wide range of genus but it was always on a small scale, hobby basis. For an amateur, some of his plants have stood the test of time across the world. Phormium ‘Yellow Wave’ is still being produced internationally in surprisingly large numbers and Camellias ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Waterlily’ have remained household names in the camellia world. He never received a cent in payment for any of these plants. Over time, it is his magnolias that have firmly cemented his name in international gardening.
Mark Jury was Felix’s youngest son. By the time Mark and I returned to the family property in 1980 with Mark planning to set up a plant nursery, his father had scaled down his adventures with plants and quietly retired to the garden. It was a privilege for both father and son to have seventeen years working closely together in remarkable harmony. Felix was able to transfer all his knowledge and experience to Mark who was keen to continue the garden development and to take the plant breeding to the next level. Unlike his father, Mark needed to generate an income. Also self-taught, Mark started the nursery, literally building up from one wheelbarrow to a successful boutique business doing mail-order, wholesale and on-site retail.
Felix didn’t raise large numbers of magnolias from his controlled crosses. They would probably number no more than fifty and over a few years only in the 1960s. Of these, eight ended up being named and released commercially. Technically, there were nine but we will return to the irritating matter of the ninth later. He would have named more but Mark vetoed that. From an early stage, Mark took the view that fewer and more stringent selections were better than more when it comes to a genus with the potential to be long-term trees in the landscape.
Magnolia ‘Atlas’
Magnolia ‘Iolanthe’
Of those eight, Mark has felt that probably only six should have been named. He singles out sister seedlings ‘Milky Way’ and ‘Athene’ as two that could have been narrowed down to one. For a long time, he said the same thing of ‘Iolanthe’ and ‘Atlas’ but has had to change his tune. While we regard ‘Iolanthe’ as a flagship magnolia, arguably one of the best two Felix bred in New Zealand conditions, it has never performed as well overseas and is certainly not rated as highly elsewhere. ‘Atlas’ has a larger bloom and is a prettier pink but its flowering season is short – by our standards – and we don’t often see it in its full glory because the petals are too soft and get badly weather-marked. But ‘Atlas’ appears to be hardier in overseas climates and a better performer elsewhere than it is here.
Magnolia ‘Milky Way’
and ‘Athene’. Even we have trouble telling them apart at times, particularly in photo close-ups. We can usually tell by looking at the tree and time of flowering or side by side comparisons, but we have to think about it every time.
In those days, the range of magnolias available commercially was small. Felix’s initial goal was to see if he could create hybrids that would flower on young plants and stay a garden-friendly size. It was generally accepted that when a magnolia was planted, it was realistic to expect a delay of between about seven and fifteen years to get the first blooms. He also liked the cup and saucer flower form and he wanted more colour. Of his named hybrids, six of the eight had a chance hybrid in their parentage. It was the cross he received from Hillier’s Nursery as a seedling of M. campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’. Mark has always referred to it as his father’s secret weapon. When it flowered, it was clear it was not ‘Lanarth’ but a hybrid, presumed to be with M. sargentiana robusta. He duly named it for his favourite son so it is known as Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’.
Felix’s breeder parent – M. ‘Mark Jury’ – is always distinctive with its very large blooms and pronounced recurved petals
Felix’s two greatest achievements were in creating large-flowered hybrids that bloomed on young plants and in introducing the breakthrough to red shades with his cultivar ‘Vulcan’.
Possibly under-appreciated are the additional factors of heavy textured petals, solid flower form and the setting of flower buds down the stems so blooms open in sequence, rather than just tip buds that all open at once for a mass display that may only last a fortnight. Our springtime is characterised by unsettled weather; Mark refers to the magnolia storms. One overnight storm can destroy the display of softer booms like M. sprengeri var. ‘Diva’ or wipe out the tip bud display of ‘Sweetheart’ (a ‘Caerhays Belle’ seedling).
Magnolia ‘Vulcan’ at its early season best
The performance of ‘Vulcan’ around the world has been well documented and ranges from brilliant to undeniably disappointing.
I will say that ‘Vulcan’ was the only plant we have ever put on the market which we could track its flowering by the phone calls we received year on year. Being a long, thin country in the southern latitudes, magnolias open first in the warmer north and then in sequence heading down the country. The phone would start ringing in early June from the north and continue through August from more southern areas. That is a stand-out plant.
Whatever its flaws, ‘Vulcan’ opened the door to the plethora of red hybrids now available internationally and it remains a key foundation plant in the development of new hybrids.
Mark, picking seedling blooms to compare back in 2013
Like father, like daughter. I recently found this photo of our second child holding her father’s blooms from twenty years earlier – likely the first blooms from some of Mark’s earliest crosses
Mark started hybridising magnolias in the 1980s, picking up where his father had left off and using the same genetic base. He has raised many more controlled crosses than his father ever did. We have never counted how many but it will be well into the thousands. Of those, only four have been named and released and there is another tranche of three which are being built up for release internationally. That makes seven Mark Jury magnolias and all are distinctly different.
Ill health has cut short Mark’s breeding programme and we are now assessing the final batches of his breeding efforts. He has already decided that he has done as much as he can with the reds so he has ruled out the next generations of those and we are now looking at his yellows. We are hopeful that we will get maybe two final selections so he may end up with nine named magnolias in total.
Magnolia ‘Felix Jury
He has always been particularly proud of the cultivar he named for his father, Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’. He reached the goal Felix had set – a tree that will not get excessively large but with very large, colourful blooms from an early age. It has always delighted us that Felix was still alive to see it bloom. In our climate, the colour can vary from rich pink through to deep red, at its best. Over the years, we have learned that the colour in magnolias can bleach out, particularly in colder climates, and we get exceptionally rich colour in New Zealand. Presumably this is related to the very clear light that we have, along with the soils and mild climate (never very hot and never particularly cold). ‘Felix Jury’ keeps its size and form in different climates and even when the colour is lighter in shade, it is an acceptable pink, albeit not the stronger shades we see here.
Magnolia ‘Black Tulip’
Both Mark’s ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’ are showing up in the breeding of countless cultivars across the magnolia world and are clearly having long-term influence. ‘Black Tulip’ sets seed readily and it seems every man, woman and their dog have raised seedlings, judging by the photos we have seen. None appear to be an improvement on the parent to our eyes and not many have taken it in a different direction. But its impact on the development of new hybrids is clear to see. Mark has raised hundreds of his own ‘Black Tulip’ hybrids so we see many, many lookalikes but few stand-outs.
Mark’s best red, ‘Ruby Tuesday’
We have high hopes of the last red he has selected which is one of the three new ones to be released. He bypassed ‘Black Tulip’ and went back to his father’s ‘Vulcan’ as one of the parents. We don’t rush selections based on flower alone; this one goes back 20 years but its shade of red stood out from the start and the original plant has never had an off-season. It has lost the muddy purple undertones of ‘Vulcan’ and keeps its rich shade of red right through the exceptionally long flowering season. It starts a little later than ‘Vulcan’ so is less vulnerable to late frosts and the late season blooms are as good as the first ones. We describe it as a ‘Vulcan’ upgrade. It has kept the best features but eliminated the undesirable characteristics. Only time will tell if this is true in other climates but keep an eye out for this ruby red selection in the coming years.
Mark turned his attention to the yellows. The magnolia world is awash with yellow hybrids, so many that it is hard to pick out the ones that are superior. Mark’s dream was of a big, pure yellow flower in the cup and saucer form of M.campbellii but on a tree that opens its flowers before its foliage appears, and in a garden-friendly size. A yellow ‘Iolanthe’ or ‘Felix Jury’, so to speak.
Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ – the only yellow Mark has named so far
His ‘Honey Tulip’ was a step on the way. It was a break away from the pointed buds, narrow petals and small flowers that come from the dominant M.acuminata parentage. It isn’t the butter yellow he wanted but it met the brief of solid flower structure and thick texture, flowered before leaf-break and stayed small enough for most gardens. Importantly, the colour does not fade out as the season progresses.
The next generations have taken it further. He has the strong, clear yellow he wanted, the large flower size, the flower form, the slightly earlier blooming season to beat leaf-break and the garden friendly habit of growth. He just doesn’t have them all on the same plant.
If we could just take the best aspect of each of the seedlings and get them all onto one plant, that would be good.
The goal of a big, pure yellow, cup and saucer magnolia is achievable but Mark has run out of time and energy. It will take another generation of plant breeder to reach it. That said, there are probably a couple of good yellows that are significant steps along the way that we should get out of the last batch of seedlings. One, in particular, is a very pretty lemon-yellow (so not the strong colour he wanted but still yellow) with the desired flower size and form and it is blooming from an early age although the flowers coincide with leaf-break. It is hard to reach perfection.
Sunset shades and caramel shades but none good enough to select yet
There are a few striking sunset mixes of strong colour on goblet shaped blooms but none of them look good enough to select. Plant selection is always made on a variety of criteria but Mark’s personal preference for solid colour is strong. Every magnolia he has named is one colour inside and out because that is what he likes. I had to twist his arm to even look at the sunset mixes; he does not think pink and yellow is a pleasing combination. He is also dismissive of what he calls ‘novelty blooms’. I marked one seedling that had distinctive, caramel-coloured blooms. Viewed close-up, they are interesting but I had to concede he was right. On the tree, they will just look like they have been hit by frost.
Always, we are selecting for plants that will look good over time in the landscape. Looking interesting as a cut flower in a vase is not enough, given the magnolia is a landscape tree with long term potential.
I mentioned the irritating ninth Felix Jury hybrid at the start. It is Magnolia ‘Eleanor May’ and I wouldn’t even reference it except I saw a photo lauding its merits in the UK this year. I don’t have a photo of it in my files which indicates the low esteem we hold it in. While it is a seedling from Felix’s breeding programme, we don’t claim it as a Jury hybrid. It is a full sister to ‘Iolanthe’ and a rejected seedling. Felix provided material of it to the nursery Duncan and Davies to use as a good root stock. From there, the nursery sent out a few failed grafts of ‘Iolanthe’ to garden centres by mistake. One plant was purchased by a customer who was observant enough to pick the difference when it flowered. He then took it upon himself to name it for his wife which may have been legal but was certainly lacking in courtesy. As far as we are concerned, it is inferior to ‘Iolanthe’, had already been rejected in selection and was an escapee by mistake. Besides, when we question releasing two of the same cross – ‘Iolanthe’ and ‘Atlas’ – why would we want to claim a third of the same cross? We have a property filled with sister seedlings which we would hate to see unleashed onto an over-crowded magnolia market.
Starting with predominantly white genus, Mark has reached into the pinks, purples, peach tones and lemon as well as bicolours.
Mark’s more recent work with hardier members of the michelia group is another story. The first three selections are on the international market under the Fairy Magnolia® branding. They are in white, cream and soft pink and the next two on the way are in shades of peach and blackberry ripple. We are now onto the final round of selections which are into the bicolours and purple.
Getting there – definitely lemon but not yellow enough
The dark pinks and purples have been more rewarding than the yellows
Again, he has come up short on a strong yellow that is good enough to select and, regretfully, the really pretty apricot ones have not made the grade. But we know that those colours are within reach without sacrificing hardiness. Mark wryly describes his work on michelias as ‘RFI’. That is Room for Improvement. It will take another breeder to get there but there is plenty of promise and scope to take them further.
Labelled ‘FM Baby’ in my files, this new selection is being released as Fairy Magnolia® ‘Petite Peach’
Felix Jury magnolias
Apollo(probably liliiflora nigra hybrid x campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’)
Written for and first published in the Royal Horticultural Society yearbook of the Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group 2025.
Over our years of experience with the michelia group of the magnolia family – en masse, so to speak – we have learned that we can treat them as we treat camellias when it comes to clipping and pruning in our climate. I italicise those last words because I hesitate to advise gardeners in more extreme conditions.
In a world where hardier michelia species are generally white or maybe cream, this is an example of Mark’s breeding programme getting more colour options into the future.
We have a very soft climate. We are never very hot and never very cold, regular rain falls all year round but our sunshine hours are high and we are on friable volcanic soils. If that sounds like gardening paradise, it probably is, as long as you can cope with the wind we get here on the west coast of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.
We also have an abundance of michelias to work with, as a result of my husband, Mark Jury’s breeding programme with the genus down the past 30 years. We have never kept track of the numbers raised here but it will be in the thousands. From those, three have been released under the Fairy Magnolia™ branding; there are two more in the pipeline for release shortly and we are in the process of selecting maybe another three. That leaves many, many seedlings that have been rejected along the way, including entire crosses that he has decided are not worth pursuing. Most get cut out but some we have utilised as screen hedging and shelter belts. There is no shortage of raw material here.
I often claim that we don’t do a lot of heavy clipping and shaping; I have seen Italian gardens and compared to them we are minor players indeed. We do a lot of pruning because our garden is mature and is strong on trees and shrubs which take management down the decades. When it comes to detailed clipping and shaping, it is mostly on camellias and michelias.
Fairy Magnolia® ‘Blush’ soon after planting, circa 2005
And in 2012
We started with Fairy Magnolia® ‘Blush’, planted twenty years ago in front of our brick wall. These were original stock plants grown in large containers in the nursery so they went into the ground with big root systems. We gave them a season to get established and then started shaping to lollipops. They have grown a little larger over the years but not hugely so. Every spring, as flowering finishes, we clip them hard, removing somewhere between 30% and 50% of their foliage.
Pruning in 2013. We remove more these days to keep them to size.
More or less frozen in time by 2020. The untrimmed section on the plant in the foreground is to allow the blackbird babies in a nest time to fledge and fly. We try to avoid ornithological infanticide – a hazard of early spring pruning.
We clip for future blooms so we only clip once a year, as they finish flowering. By the end of summer, they can be a bit woolly in appearance but if we cut again then, we would be removing many of the flower buds. If you want a sharp form all year round, don’t start with plants you want to flower well, at least not michelias or camellias. We use secateurs to trim. Hedgeclippers may be faster but they cut all the external leaves, the edges of which then go an unsightly brown. There is only a day’s work in clipping this row and cleaning up.
We have two smaller umbrella shapes which will now be well over 20 years old. The variety is to be released internationally this year under the name of Fairy Magnolia® Petite Peach. The photo above shows how much growth we are removing each year to keep the plants to a set size.
Fairy Magnolia® ‘Petite Peach’
If you want to create standardised lollipops, be patient. Let the plants become well established and growing strongly before you start serious shaping. You need a strong central leader to hold up the weighty head. Too often, I have seen plants in garden centres that have been *trained* to standards with a spindly trunk and all side growths removed, so it is entirely dependent on the strong stake holding it upright. You will have a higher success rate if you start with a plant which has a central leader as well as multiple side growths which you can trim but not remove entirely until later. Reduce particularly strong branches which are competing with the central leader but those side growths give the plant more strength and vigour. The leader doesn’t have to be dead straight to start with. What looks like a kink in a stem that is one to two centimetres across will have disappeared by the time it is five to ten centimetres in diameter. Don’t stake unless you have to. Long term, you want the plant to stand straight on its own and plants that are staked from the start come to depend on the stake rather than developing their own strength in the roots and stem. Once the plant has reached the height you want, then you can start serious shaping and when the central leader is strong, you remove all side growths below the top knot.
The side-on view shows the width we are keeping these plants – Fairy Magnolia® ‘White’
They were somewhat large plants on our very small tractor when we moved them from the open ground in 2015
Our pleached rows of Fairy Magnolia® ‘White’ have taken patience. Pleaching is basically a hedge on stilts. These came in as large plants we dug out from the field where they were growing in 2015. They have looked good and flowered well in the intervening decade but it took until last spring’s pruning for me to look at them and sigh with satisfaction. At last we had that two dimensional plane sitting above the camellia hedge below that we had envisioned from the start.
We have two matched lengths either side of a central court garden, trimmed flat down the length
Again we trim hard once a year, as flowering finishes, using secateurs and loppers to remove probably 40% of the foliage to freeze them in size and to create the form we want. They are bigger plants and surrounded by gardens, so trimming them is more challenging and slower than the aforementioned lollipops. Good ladders help. We bought both an orchard ladder and a platform ladder and I see our gardener, Zach, has both of these out when it comes time to trim the pleached rows.
A tall hedge of michelia seedlings straight after trimming in October (above) and nine weeks later below, showing how quickly the new growth fills the gaps. The untrimmed tuft on top in the photo above is because of a bird’s nest. When we trim and prune in spring, we are mindful that it is nesting season and work around any we find.
We also use michelias as tall screening hedges kept to about three metres and these, too, get trimmed after flowering. They can look a little sparse when first done but it is only a matter of six weeks before the flush of new growth fills in the spaces.
The same hedge as planted in 2017 – seedlings cut hard back to allow them to grow afresh.
About once every five years, these plants need to be picked over more thoroughly, to take out dead wood in the middle where branches have not resprouted. It saves them from getting woody and ugly over the longer term.
Magnolia laevifolia ‘Velvet and Cream’ was cut back hard to bare wood in 2023 but was bushy and flowering again the next season.
I only include this photo because it still makes me laugh. We used to trim with hedge clippers. When I found these making a handy platform for a bird’s nest in the M. laevifolia. Mark’s comment was, “Oh. So that is where I lost them.”
Well established plants that are growing strongly can be trimmed back to bare wood, as can camellias and rhododendrons. It is a last resort when a plant has got away on us but we have done it successfully, notably on M. laevifolia. The plants may take another year or two to flower again but they will reshoot from bare wood.
Michelias can be pollarded and respond by putting up straight shoots.
Unexpectedly, michelias also have potential as a coppiced crop, or what we refer to as a sustainable wood-lot, much as hazel is used in the UK. We found this out by chance when we were running low on winter feed for our very small number of beef cattle – more a group of cattle than a herd. Mark started trimming michelia branches as stock food (do NOT try this with rhododendrons which will kill animals) and they were perfectly happy eating the foliage. The plants which were cut to the ground, allowing us to use the trunks for firewood, responded by reshooting from the base with very straight stems.
Another of Mark’s oretty seedlings
In our climate, michelias can set prodigious amounts of seed. In fact, setting too much seed is one of our most common reasons for rejecting a cultivar as unsuitable for commercial release. They are not as prolific in harder climates but if you can find one that sets seed, raising the seed is not difficult and the results are reasonably quick, by woody tree and shrub standards. You will get seedling variation; if you want a hedge of identical plants you need to buy or propagate by cutting or grafting to get them all the same. We like the seedling variation which makes for a more interesting, though less formal, flowering hedge. If you are using seed from the same source, the variations are more likely to be subtle, not radically different. It is likely that Magnolia laevifolia will be the most common seed setter in the UK and Europe. It clips well but can be slow to get established. If you can find a hybrid that sets seed, it generally brings a degree of hybrid vigour.
Fairy Magnolia® Cream is strongly scented
With most michelias, there is the added bonus of scent. In our humid climate, camellias are ravaged by camellia petal blight and we no longer get the mass displays on the reticulatas and japonicas. To some extent, the michelia group have filled the gap and they are rewardingly free of pests and diseases.
A note on nomenclature: Michelias have been reclassified as magnolias so all species are now listed as magnolia. The Jury hybrids are sold under the trademarked name of Fairy Magnolia®. For purposes of clarity, we continue to refer to them as michelias in common usage, to differentiate them from both deciduous magnolias and other species of evergreen magnolias, particularly M. grandiflora.
We have a matched pair of Fairy Magnolia® ‘Cream’ at our gateway which we prune to restrict each year. The photo below shows it growing as a roadside plant with no pruning. We can’t allow our gateway plants to get to that size in the space they are in so we are pruning to freeze them in size.
It is an instant garden approach and sometimes that quick result approach is the very best way to reward effort and encourage further learning.
The magnolia in winter
I have various photos of the modest little Anglican Church of St John the Baptist in my local town of Waitara. Until now, all have involved either the splendid Magnolia campbellii which brings me great delight every winter or the golden delight of their Ginkgo biloba. But look! Now they are supporting a community garden and the Waitara Foodbank, Pataka Kai. For overseas readers, kai is the Māori word for food while pataka is a place of food storage or pantry.
The ginkgo in autumn
Just as with Pataka Kai’s free cooking classes, there is a strong element of learning and sharing in their community garden project. This is not just about crisis intervention for those who cannot afford food; it is equally about building community and sharing skills to equip people with confidence and knowledge, now and into the future.
I have no affiliation to any church but their act of making land available for a community garden is Christian outreach at the most local, grassroots level and that is to be lauded. The Magnolia campbellii remains untouched and is on the other side of the church. Where the garden is now, used to just be tidy, mown grass that contributed nothing obvious to the wellbeing of the congregation, the wider community or the environment.
The transient delight of a bed of poppies amongst the roses at Waiongana Gardens
The annual Taranaki garden festival is now well behind us but we did get out to a few gardens. The bed of self-sown pink poppies in Waiongana Gardens was a particular delight in its charming simplicity, even knowing that it will have been an ephemeral affair.
Waiongana’s distinctive log walls
Their log walls are pretty unique and likely to stay that way when you consider the logistics of creating them, needing the raw material, the equipment to cut the logs and then the machinery to move them into place. Who needs insect hotels when you can edge your large property with au naturelle log walls providing habitats and acting as an attractive boundary?
There is a whole lot more to Riverlea, but look at their outdoor seating
Riverlea is a stand-out garden for a number of aspects. I could highlight several but I would single out the placement of garden seating. Mark has always been adamant that gardens should, as he says, ‘make sense’. There needs to be an underpinning logic. He is not big on contrivances. So garden seating should be where you use it, not a single painted chair placed in the middle of a border as a dreaded focal point. Same with gazebos, summer houses – or *pavilions* as the aspirational call them these days. These should have a useful purpose and location, by very definition. Being an ornament or a statement of opulence is not enough, at least in our books. At Riverlea, every space to pause and sit a while, either alone or with friends, impressed with its placement and its welcoming feel. It makes a garden feel occupied, enjoyed and appreciated, personalised.
The devastation wrought by the storms at the beginning of November, particularly in Southland, brought up the thorny issue of trees and power lines. Again. The power was out in some areas for weeks and the photos of fallen trees showed some extreme scenes. We went through Cyclone Dovi a few years ago. That was bad enough but the Southland storms were way worse. Trees and power lines are not a good combination.
I have every sympathy with linesmen who go out in all sorts of extreme conditions to try and restore essential services. I can understand why the lines and power companies do not like trees and would like clearways around every power line.
If we must have clearways around power lines, all but the conifer would have to go from our little historic church in Tikorangi,
Draw back a little and that is the Tikorangi church on the left and the school on the right. Some of those trees at the school would have to be felled if every tree that could potentially fall on the power lines had to go.
But what would clearways look like? It is one thing to expect trees to be kept out of the lines so that wind won’t blow the branches around and cause damage and power outages. It is quite another if every tree that could potentially fall upon a line were it to be uprooted had to be removed or have the top taken out of it as a precaution.
Clearways for power lines would mean the removal of the Norfolk Island pines on the right in the near future.
Climate change is here. It seems that what it will look like in our country includes extreme storms with increasing frequency. Trees, especially very large, mature trees, are a critical part of attempting to counter climate change. It takes decades for trees to reach maturity. Historically, we have many power lines which were placed where it was most convenient or the cheapest option and now they are in the wrong places, really. I don’t know what the answer is. How do we balance the environmental benefits of large trees with the need to keep electricity supply?
Sometimes life can deliver unexpected delights and so it was with a delivery of a magnificent book sent to us by the UK-based botanical artist, Barbara Oozeerally. There are several pages of paintings of Jury magnolias in a large format book full of exquisite magnolia paintings. It is a book to be treasured. When I wrote to thank her, it transpired that she is a long-time subscriber to this site and her love for magnolias goes beyond painting them. She has a collection of nearly 50 different magnolias in her own garden. If you don’t have space for 50 magnolias in your garden, I can recommend her book to experience the genus vicariously, all year round.
Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’ , as painted by Barbara Oozeerally
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 