Author Archives: Abbie Jury

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About Abbie Jury

jury.co.nz Tikorangi The Jury Garden Taranaki NZ

A love-hate relationship with roses

There is something undeniably romantic about Rosa Cymbeline

There is something undeniably romantic about Rosa Cymbeline

I have a bit of an ambivalent attitude to roses. On the one hand, there are only two types of flowers I consistently cut and bring indoors – roses and auratum lilies. There is something wonderfully opulent about a vase full of fragrant roses. Most roses rank pretty high up the scale for flower power. In other words, in reasonable conditions, they give a high number of flowers over a good length of time, given the size of the plant. Roses have an air of romance and promise. Well, most roses do. We will ignore the naff patio standards and freaky types. Just as the complete garden has a productive kitchen garden, so should it have at least some roses – in our opinion at least.

On the other hand… well. Roses are grown for the lovely flowers. Very few bushes are things of beauty. They harbour more pests and diseases than any other plant I know. They are probably second only to lawns in being the cause of home gardeners pouring a whole range of nasties into the environment. I hate their thorns and resent splinters and gouges during pruning. I am always nervous of wounds since being told by a nurse how she had to special a patient who caught a thorn in her elbow and it subsequently turned extremely septic. Disposing of prunings is a problem because they have to be burned or go to landfill. They get black spot and have few leaves after about March. They positively lure aphids. Climbing roses are so rampant that it becomes a major battle to contain them. The year I spent an entire afternoon pruning and tying in one plant of Albertine was its last. I decided that the resulting reward was not worth that amount of effort. The list of negatives is extensive.

The bottom line is that, despite all their disadvantages, roses remain a big seller so clearly the general opinion is that they still justify their place in the garden because of their lovely blooms. And I haven’t taken all mine out and put them on the burning heap because I still love them. I have taken some out, though and another is destined to go soon. It has black spot and yellow leaves already.

The issue here is that we don’t spray our roses. Ever. I don’t spray anything and the husband is adamant that he won’t spray roses and I should just pull out the non performers. Despite having grown up as the Chemical Generation (would that be Gen C?), we have made a conscious decision to try and garden with a greatly reduced spraying regime. There are only a few key plants that get sprayed here. Picea albertiana conica is one – the red spiders will take it out otherwise. For the rest, if they can’t survive and thrive in hospitable conditions, planted well and fed regularly with compost, then they aren’t worth keeping.

In times gone by, the classic rose garden tended to be an area of scorched earth with no build up of leaf litter below which stopped diseases from wintering over. Plants were spaced well apart, usually only one of each variety and predominantly hybrid teas, so there was plenty of air movement which reduces problems with mildew. And it was easy to spray. It is a pretty dated look and really only applicable to a picking garden.

The modern rose garden is more likely to go one of two ways. Either the roses get bedded into what is essentially a cottage garden mixed border, filled with a froth of perennials, annuals and small shrubs. That is what I do, in the hope that as the roses defoliate through the season, the other plants will hide the shortcomings.

A modern take on the rose garden at La Rosaleda in New Plymouth (photo by Jane Dove Juneau)

A modern take on the rose garden at La Rosaleda in New Plymouth (photo by Jane Dove Juneau)

Alternatively, one can go the formal path, as at Coleen Peri’s garden, La Rosaleda, where she has planted a grid of matched Sharifa Asma standard roses with a solid groundcover of catmint or nepeta beneath. To carry this look off, you have to maintain your roses in the highest health or they will look unloved, uncared for and considerably more of an eyesore than my defoliated specimens in a mixed border.

What annoys me is that it has taken so long for rose breeders and rose nurseries to heed the call for disease resistant varieties. The Flower Carpets led the way and I have to say that while they are not picking roses and they lack some of the romance of old roses, let alone the fragrance, the white and coral variants of Flower Carpet are two of the very best performers in our garden. I am told the new amber variety is particularly good too. But aside from that series, the trialling and selection of roses based on the criterion of being able to grow them in the home garden without spraying appears to have moved at a snail’s pace. Maybe the clamour from the consumer has simply not been loud enough yet? There is a pretty quick turnaround on rose breeding, certainly compared to the slow process that comes with magnolias, camellias and similar woody trees and shrubs.

Two final comments: firstly, if you are not going to spray, you have to be thorough with pruning and feeding to promote health. We feed through regular applications of compost mulch. I do a textbook hard prune in winter and I constantly summer prune lightly to remove spent stems, weak growth and diseased areas. That repeated pruning encourages the rose to keep pushing out fresh leaf buds.

Secondly, we were told by an international rose breeder in Holland that perfume and longevity as a cut flower are incompatible. That is why many florists’ roses lack scent. They are bred for vase life. Nobody has ever confirmed that for us, but we assume he knew what he was talking about, it being his speciality.

I grow my roses in a mixed border situation - with the hope that the other plants will disguise the defects of the unsprayed rose bushes

I grow my roses in a mixed border situation - with the hope that the other plants will disguise the defects of the unsprayed rose bushes

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

In the Garden: December 2, 2011

A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.

Rhodohypoxis - one of the showiest late spring bulbs here

Rhodohypoxis - one of the showiest late spring bulbs here


Vireya rhododendrons can force dormant leaf buds from low down

Vireya rhododendrons can force dormant leaf buds from low down

It snowed in mid August. To say we were stunned would be an understatement – in the 130 years of family history here, there is no record of it ever snowing before. But it wasn’t the snow that did the damage, it was the killer frost the following morning. While we get occasional light frosts, the plants are not hardened off so a more extreme freeze can cause considerable damage. But after 3 months, some of the vireya rhododendrons which looked stone dead are forcing out fresh leaf buds from lower down the plant. They are a good reminder why it pays not to rip out plants too quickly. Clematis are also known to rally sometimes from apparent death caused by stem wilt. We will leave the vireyas to their own devices until the new growth is hardening off, at which time we will feed them and cut off all the dead wood. Vireyas have the ability to push out dormant leaf buds from quite old, woody stems but those where the bark has split in a vertical line to soil level will be a goner.

Other frost tender to subtropical material that got clobbered by the frost included the pawpaws, Michelia alba, bananas and Eupatorium sordidum. These all showed some burning and defoliation but are now covered in fresh spring growth.

Amongst the very late spring bulbs, the rhodohypoxis and tritonias are the showiest. The former are small, neat and pretty – the only danger is that they are very anonymous when dormant so hard to spot when digging in the garden or pulling out weeds. The tritonias are very orange and showy. Their downside is that, like some of the species gladioli, the flowers come out when the foliage is already starting to look scruffy.

Reminder to self: deadhead the yellow Primula helodoxa

Reminder to self: deadhead the yellow Primula helodoxa

Top tasks:

1) Stay on top of the weeding. The old saying is one year’s seeding leads to seven years’ weeding. We try hard to stop any weeds from getting to the seeding stage.
2) Deadhead the Primula helodoxa planted by the stream. They put on a wonderful display of sunshine yellow in mid spring but can seed too freely and one person’s ornamentals can become the neighbour’s weeds, especially where waterways are concerned.
3) Dig and divide my bed of Grandma’s violets. In fact these are probably a legacy of Mark’s great-grandma, but they are a little too enthusiastic about their reinstatement as a groundcover. Last year I tried to thin them but it was hard my arthriticky fingers. I think it will be easier to dig them all out this year, cultivate the bed and replant divisions.

Plant Collector – Rosa Roseraie de l’Hay

Rosa Roseraie de 'Hay

Rosa Roseraie de 'Hay

I think this is what is called an oldie but a goodie. It has been around since 1901 when it was bred in France and is still widely offered for sale. What is more, it has an Award of Merit from the prestigious UK Royal Horticulture Society. It is relatively large growing and tolerant of mistreatment, which is just as well because I planted it in the wrong place to start with and had to move it. In the two years it took me to find it a suitable forever home (as the Living Channel terms a permanent location), it just sat in our heap of old potting mix and it didn’t turn a hair.

The rugosas are a rose group from the coastal areas of China, Japan and Korea. They are renowned for being tough, hardy, tolerant of wide range of conditions (including salt laden winds) and high health. They don’t generally suffer from pests and diseases and stay looking good, even if you never spray. We even get the bonus of late autumn colour when the heavily ribbed and crinkled leaves turn golden yellow. The flowers are deliciously fragrant.

On the down side, they must be one of the prickliest of all the rose groups and they are not a good cut flower. It is hard to find the perfect plant. Rugosas are sometimes used for hedging and they will certainly provide a fierce burglar deterrent but you have to accept their winter dormancy when there are no leaves. Roseraie de l’Hay is sometimes optimistically described as purple or even red. Colour is subjective but I would call it indubitably deep cerise or crimson. If that is not a colour that appeals, the white equivalent which shares the same attributes, is the equally lovely and reliable Blanc Double de Coubert whose flowers are a bit like scented, crumpled tissue paper.

Roseraie can be translated as rose garden. The rose is named for the famed rose garden de l’Hay near Paris.

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

Grow It Yourself – capsicums

I have just been told He Who Grows the Veg here that he is not planting capsicums this year. He suggests I go and buy a plant or two if I feel I must have them. The problem is that capsicums need a long growing season in order to get a good harvest. That means a good four months of continual warmth. Even cold nights will set them back. You can hurry them along by planting them into black plastic or using a cloche but the resident veg gardener does not like them enough to lavish the same level of care that the rock melons get. Best guess is that most of the lovely big red, yellow and orange capsicums you see in the supermarket are grown in glasshouse conditions.

It is too late to start them from seed now, so if you want to grow them you will have to buy plants. Seed has to be started under cover in late August or early September. Capsicums are in the same family as tomatoes (solanum), but require more heat. They like similar conditions – full sun, plenty of warmth, friable soil full of humus and a position where they don’t dry out. Plant them about 50cm apart. Room for good air circulation can help reduce leaf diseases. You will get larger fruit if you thin the crop. Most capsicums start off green and can be picked at that stage. As they ripen, they can change through to yellows, reds and oranges. It is because these are riper that they taste sweeter and milder.

Paprika is, of course, ground mild capsicums – presumably at the point where they have ripened to red. Chilli and cayenne pepper are ground hot capsicums which we normally call chillis. Some chilli varieties are just hot selections of the same species as capsicums (C. annuum) while some are different species. They grow in the same way with the same heat requirements. If you like fresh chillis, they make a decorative container plant but you need to be reliable with summer watering.

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

Fruit by Mark Diacon

Presumably the average British gardener is either more intelligent or better educated than here. Which is to say that the Brits don’t feel the need to dumb down gardening books to the level of a novice 12 year old and pad them out with lots of super size glossy photos. What is more, they are even allowed an index. This is River Cottage Handbook No.9 – which means it is from the machine behind Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This modest handbook has a mass of good information on growing and caring for fruit trees. The problem is that it is for England which means hardy crops, a reversal of seasons and recommended varieties which are entirely different to here. Common crops here like feijoa, persimmon and citrus are not included at all. So it is not a complete reference for this country but it will tell you a lot of what you need to know about some mainstream crops and the technical information is underpinned by that charm of River Cottage, including a recipe for classic Eton Mess (mashed fresh berries and meringue pieces in sweetened cream).

Fruit by Mark Diacono (Bloomsbury; ISBN: 978 1 4088 0881 8) reviewed by Abbie Jury.