Author Archives: Abbie Jury

About Abbie Jury

jury.co.nz Tikorangi The Jury Garden Taranaki NZ

Garden style

Sissinghurst of course – the inspiration for many, many gardens in NZ. Too many.

Truly, it is difficult to be original in the garden. Oh, there can be the odd touch of whimsy or indication of flair but generally it has all been done before. Somewhere. The skills lie in how you put the ideas together and manage it all. It is a bit optimistic, grandiose even, to consider that you can come up with some brilliant concept that nobody has thought of before. But that is all right. We are all in the same boat.

We had a small British gardening tour through last week. Not all garden tours are equal by any means and we particularly enjoyed this one. They were both knowledgeable and enthusiastic, giving us as much stimulation as we hope we gave to them. We have a huge debt to British gardening traditions in this country.

I have looked at Italian gardens but they are more about design, space and hard landscaping (and wealth) than gardening as we know it here. The plant interest is minimal. But should an Italian stonemason want to enter your life, do not turn him away. There is a history of magnificent stonework in that culture.

More about wealth, power and lifestyle than plants – the Alhambra in Spain

Southern Europe has a pretty difficult climate. If it is not hot and dry then it is cold and dry. So the historic gardens of Spain and Portugal that I have seen were also about wealth and power. Their hallmark is magnificent hard landscaping and good design but they too, are light on plants.

Japanese gardening is one that exists in something akin to a bubble all of its own. It is deeply steeped in symbolism, tradition and contemplation. I admit I have not been to Japan so I don’t know much about the modern gardening trends, but from afar it appears that the old traditions remain dominant. They seem to be relatively immune to the eclectic cobbling together of ideas from around the world that most of us do.

We have drawn upon Asia for the tropical gardens, so fashionable at the moment. I wrote about the hotel-style gardening in the middle of last year.

I understand our preoccupation with lawns and the high value placed on the dreaded “kerb appeal”, in real estate speak, have a debt to USA but those are questionable contributions to our gardening heritage here.

In fact, large parts of the world do not garden at a domestic level as we do. In some cases it is lack of physical space – or any outdoor, private space at all in heavily populated areas. In other cases, the conditions are just too hard. If your ground is set like concrete and it is alternately too hot and then too cold to be outside, the motivation must flag.

If you look at Britain, you can see a gardening ethos that is very close to our own. It is probably no accident that while their conditions are nowhere near as easy as ours, nevertheless it is a relatively mild climate. Being islands, the sea has a tempering effect and they lack the extremes of temperature and near absence of rain that many other countries experience. Many of the great and intrepid plant hunters originated from Britain and they have always put a high priority on plants – new plants, varied plants, plant combinations, entire collections of a single plant genus. Gardens are expected to have a high level of plant interest, not just grand design. Even what we would regard as the great gardens of last century (the likes of Great Dixter, Sissinghurst and Hidcote) are still essentially domestic gardens in their origin. These are less a statement of power and wealth and more an example of gardening obsession.

Meadow gardening and a return to a more natural style is evident in UK gardens, less so here.

So it is curious that we have only adopted a few key garden styles from that country – notably cottage gardening, mixed borders and the Sissinghurst garden rooms’ genre. We have been very slow on the uptake when it comes to what is now called the New Perennials Movement and just as slow on the dialogue they have been having in recent years about a return to a more naturalistic style of gardening. When I say slow on the uptake, I mean I have not seen anything at all in our gardening media and few of the colleagues I have talked to even know what these mean.

Yet I have heard it described by UK garden expert Carol Klein, as “the most influential garden movement in Britain in the last 15 years”. Mind you, the term New Perennials Movement, appears to be of recent usage only and it brings together the apparently disparate threads of naturalistic, meadow, grasses and prairie gardening that we noticed on our last visit there in 2009. Much of it was still seen as pretty avant garde then. Maybe it has bedded in better now.

In the meantime, “The New English Garden” by Tim Richardson, published by Frances Lincoln, is more than a coffee table book. The sumptuous photographs and presentation are complemented by an intelligent and discerning text. Perhaps the problem is that we New Zealanders are still visiting only the most famous gardens and the existence of a whole new style has so far bypassed us. We are heading back this June to have a closer look.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden Lore Friday Jan 31 ,2013

“By the time you have grown two thousand species you could believe that you had exhausted Nature’s imaginative variability; by the time you have grown five thousand you realise you never will.”
Geoffrey Charlesworth, The Opinionated Gardener (1988)
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Garden Lore: wheelbarrows
Quite possibly, you may not have pondered the origins of the wheelbarrow but when you think about it, it is a design of some genius – a single wheeled cart with great manoeuvrability which enables the pusher to move pretty heavy loads and to tip them out easily. Its origins go back in the mists of time. Chinese history often attributes its invention to Chuko Liang around AD 200, when records show it being used to transport military equipment and supplies. There is some evidence that it dates back even earlier and there is a school of thought that it may even go back as far as Ancient Greece around BC 400. It did not come into wide use in Europe until the Middle Ages but when it did, it must have made life a lot easier.

The position of the wheel varied from the middle to the front throughout history but has now settled on the latter. The whole principle of the single wheeled barrow is the even distribution of weight. After 2000 years, you would think we could get this right every time but that is far from true. There are too many barrows – particularly at the cheaper end of the market – which will tip over easily unless you load them perfectly, starting from their centre point of balance. If you are buying a new barrow, try placing something a little weighty right at the back and then at the side. A well designed barrow won’t tip.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

January bulbs for mid summer

Regular readers will know that we are very keen on bulbs here. As I surveyed the January ones, I figured that most bulbs are stars on their day. I guess because they are both seasonal and transient, they have to wow in their short time in the spotlight. A bulb in bloom can make you look in admiration, despite even the most unattractive location. We would not be without them.

The prized worsleya

Indubitably, the star this week is the unusual Empress of Brazil (Worsleya procera syn. rayneri) which does indeed hail from Brazil. It is an exotic showstopper. But the reason it is hardly ever seen is because it is rare in cultivation and requires a patient gardener. This particular specimen took 13 years from planting to bloom. There aren’t many gardeners willing to wait over a decade for a flower.

Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katherinae

The Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katherinae are also big and showy but much easier to source, being very popular with Auckland landscapers. We have reached the point where they seed down and are naturalising themselves beneath trees where they have become a real feature in the summer shade garden. Some of those blooms are getting close to the size of human heads. We have South Africa and Zimbabwe to thank for these beauties.

Auratum lilies

In sunnier spots and on the margins, it is the lilies that astound. I wrote about the aurelians two weeks ago but it is now the time for the auratums (sometimes known as the golden-rayed lily of Japan). These can be sourced from garden centres in winter. Just make sure you never let the bulbs dry out, even when they appear dormant. If you give them lots of TLC for the first few years, you can increase numbers from the small offshoots as well as raising seed.

Gloriosa superba

Gloriosa superba are often called climbing lilies, though they are only distant relatives at best. These are great plants for hot, dry conditions – the sort of spot many of us have under house eaves facing north. They flower for a long time in high summer and require absolutely no care at all beyond giving them something to cling to so they can climb rather than tumble.

Gladiolus

Gladioli! Dahlias! We often take both families for granted but summer gardens would be poorer for their absence. We don’t have many of the Dame Edna hybrid gladdies. While there is a certain charm in their exuberant vulgarity, we are less enamoured of the rust that afflicts the foliage, making them unattractive plants. This white gladiolus is not a species, as far as we know, but it is somewhat further back up the breeding chain from the modern hybrids. Dahlias I tend to lump in with perennials though technically they are tubers, so within the bulb group.

Crinum moorei

The crinums are coming into flower and C. moorei is another shade garden option though it needs to be in a position where its rather large foliage can be ignored during the times when it is scruffy. These plants stand chest height, the fragrant flowers close to nose level so there is nothing small and dainty about them.

Add in the crocosmia featured last week, the tigridias in Plant Collector today, summer flowering ornithogalum, the yellow zephyranthes (‘rain lilies’), even the early Cyclamen hederafolium coming into flower. While January is not in any way peak bulb season, those in bloom add a great deal to the summer garden.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Plant Collector: Tigridia pavonia

Tigridia pavonia – missing the scarlet red one we have which had no flowers open on the day

There is nothing rare, choice or difficult about these bulbs which can border on garden weeds, they are so easy. But in the right situation, they are a delight in the summer melee. Tigridias are from southern Mexico but probably on the road to naturalising anywhere hospitable. They set prodigious amounts of seed and can reach flowering size from seed in two years. Their common name is jockey caps and they belong to Iridaceae (iris) family. The flowers are relatively large – up to 15cm across – with 3 large outer petals and 3 inner small ones, but short-lived. Each bloom only lasts one day, opening in the morning and wilting away to oblivion by evening. However, each stem produces multiple blooms in succession. The pleated leaves are attractive in themselves and both flower and foliage sit around 60cm high. In case you are worried about weed potential, be reassured that they are easy to pull out if they pop up in the wrong place and you can control them by removing seed pods.

Tigridias want full sun and good drainage but also some summer rain when in growth. We find they combine well with larger growing summer plants like dahlias and lychnis in less formal areas of the garden.

Mark’s very late Uncle Les (he who bred such camellia classics as Jury’s Yellow, Anticipation and Debbie) spent some time trying to breed the freckles out of tigridias which always seemed a rather odd track to take, though the freckle-less blooms perhaps have a finer charm of some sort.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden Lore

“It is a greater act of faith to plant a bulb than to plant a tree.”

Clare Leighton, Four Hedges (1935)

Do we really believe that cabbage whites have large enough brains to be duped?

Garden Lore: Cabbage whites and brassicas
Brassicas are like ambrosia to the cabbage white butterfly. Or maybe heroin. For this reason, we prefer not to grow brassicas during the summer months when the cabbage whites are at their most active. I am a reluctant consumer of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower at the best of times. The latter two are passable in a winter soup flavoured with cheese (blue cheese is the classic, but any cheese helps). However, many of the increasingly popular Chinese greens also belong to the brassica family, and these are acceptable to me at any time of the year.

You can net the vegetables, but the netting needs to be raised clear so that the winged parent cannot land and lay eggs through the netting. If you want to spray, talk to your local garden centre about BT (which is a bacterial based treatment) or pyrethrum-based options. Pyrethrum is the active ingredient in flyspray and was originally extracted from a daisy. These days it is more likely to be synthetic but it remains a pretty safe control. Vigilant digital control (squashing with the fingers on a daily basis) can work in the early stages. We think it is a myth that egg shells on sticks will confuse the butterfly and they will fly away. White butterflies show no territorial instincts at all, that we have ever seen.

If you don’t like added protein to your cooked vegetables (while Mark does not mind the odd cooked caterpillar, most people find them very offputting), you can sprinkle lots of salt over the florets or leaves as you prepare them, then cover them with cold water for a few minutes while the caterpillars die. Rinse them thoroughly, inspect closely and cook with no added salt.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

About Abbie Jury

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