Author Archives: Abbie Jury

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About Abbie Jury

jury.co.nz Tikorangi The Jury Garden Taranaki NZ

And part 3 of Taranaki Regional Gardens. Date of original publication uncertain but around 2005

Cut to the quick, we were, dear Reader by the accusation in last Saturday’s paper that we were being negative and acting out of vested interests. That came from the Wellington consultant in charge of the Regional Gardens Project. After several weeks of intensive work analysing and discussing the proposals, a group of us tabled a common sense alternative plan with the Council. Well, we thought it was based on common sense and lots of experience. Alas the project group appeared to have made up its mind already that we were being negative, unhelpful and driven by self interest.

So what did we propose? Mindful of the fact that every owner of a large garden knows that gardens and property are bottomless pits which will absorb all the money you throw in and more, we urged caution. These are ratepayer dollars we are talking about and we will all end up contributing.

The Regional Council took over Hollard Gardens near Kaponga and Tupare in New Plymouth. We urged Council to understand that while these gardens are publicly owned, they are domestic gardens which are very different to public parks. By their very nature, domestic gardens start life as family gardens created with the skill, vision and the personal money of their owners. They are individual, personal and intimate. That is what makes them so different to public parks and gardens. The challenge for Council is to retain that individuality when they are in the public domain and to avoid the tendency to treat them like public parks and contract out management and centralise services. Such a move, we cautioned, would turn these two gardens into mini urban parks, except that one is in a relatively remote location and the other has a very steep terrain.

Both Hollards and Tupare have suffered for years from chronic underfunding and understaffing. Despite that, Hollards has retained its premier position and is independently rated as a Garden of National Significance. Tupare has not fared anywhere near as well and is a shadow of its former glory under the Matthews’ family management. We advocated learning from what has worked. Hollards has a resident garden manager who loves the garden, was trained in part by the Hollards themselves and who has kept standard high.

Give Tupare the same, we suggested. A resident garden manager who can give the garden the love and skill it needs.

Keep the gardens autonomous, we urged. Of course it makes sense to centralise marketing and administration, but the day to day management of the gardens is best done by a skilled head gardener. That way the personal nature and the individuality is retained.

Staff the gardens adequately. Spend more money on staff and less on management and operations. Hollards needs three gardening staff (it is very labour intensive) while Tupare, after an initial huge injection of funds and labour to get it right again, should be able to be maintained by two fulltime gardeners. Have people working in the gardens to talk to visitors rather than relying on storytelling devices like storyboards and handouts. These gardens must be better than any other garden all year round – showpiece gardens – so make sure they have sufficient skilled people to achieve this.

Start an apprenticeship scheme in the gardens to train quality gardeners and put Taranaki on the map. There is a growing demand for trained gardeners and a desperate shortage. Give Taranaki people another career choice and enhance the future of the gardens.

Get the gardens right and prove a demand exists before spending megabucks on capital works. Council took over gardens to manage and this should be done well first. In recognition that Tupare has the potential to become a heritage house and garden, place a moratorium on further structural alterations to the house and the original landscaping. Keep up the maintenance but stop pouring money into the buildings and facilities and concentrate on the garden.

Record the special values of each property and set in place a really simple low cost or no cost monitoring strategy to ensure that a wayward and determined head gardener can not wreak havoc on the place. Cut out other unnecessary layers of management.

When we tabled to Council last week, we noted that around $250 000 had been spent already on consultant reports but not one extra hour of labour or one extra plant had gone into the gardens. In fact more up to date figures show that it is now over $297 000 spent so far and still climbing. (Maybe it was negative to point that out?)

Get back to basics. Learn from what has worked. The gardens are individual. Keep them that way. One size does not fit all. Steer away from the institutional model and keep it simple.

We advocated for some discussion on potential cost recovery on the gardens (charging entry, in simple terms). As the plans stand, most of the money flow is one way – out from Council coffers. Sure council parks are always free, but we tried to stress that these gardens are not the same as council parks. These domestic gardens are considerably more expensive to run than a council park on a per square metre basis. At least talk about charging issues with the gardens and weigh up the options.

I am a little ashamed to admit that we failed in our presentation to grasp the importance of The Vision. We had thought that valuing the heritage of Tupare and Hollards, making them fine assets for both locals and tourists, setting the standard in open gardens and leading the way in putting Taranaki on the map as a garden visitor destination was a justifiable vision. But of course if you are going to spend nearly $300 000 (and still rising), clearly you want a Grand Vision – with a grand budget of several million dollars to match. And apparently you can’t have strategy without vision. We criticised the plans on the table for discussion at the moment as being long on vision and short on reality. Our alternatives, I fear, are actually long on strategy but apparently narrow in vision. C’est la vie.

And we applauded the resolve of the Council to make these two gardens excellent and to resolve past difficulties in managing them well.

If that, dear Reader, and much more detail, smacks of self interest and negativity to you, then we stand guilty as charged.

Tried and True – Camellia Mimosa Jury

The floral perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury

The floral perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury

We have a familial connection here – this camellia was bred by Mark’s father, Felix, and named for his mother – but that is not why it is a tried and true plant. It is the perfection of the bloom which is its appeal, along with a much higher degree of weather hardiness than most pale, formal camellias. The regular arrangement of the petals, in similar lay-out to a water lily with no central stamens visible, is what makes it fall under the classification of formal (these rules are written down, I tell you). The soft pink colouring is particularly pretty. When the blooms are spent, they fall to the ground rather than hanging on as brown mush – a characteristic which is called self grooming.

Mimosa Jury has been around for some years now – there are established specimens locally in New Plymouth in St Mary’s Cathedral grounds. Left to its own devices, as has been the original plant behind our house, it grows tall and columnar, making an excellent hedger or accent plant. It also makes a brilliant clipped specimen. The neighbours have a perfect big lollipop Mimosa Jury as a feature. They have kept it tightly clipped and pinched out so that it is a solid ball of healthy foliage which will hold the perfect blooms out to display. In our opinion, this camellia is probably the best that Felix named and it is no wonder that it has stayed so popular over a period of years. Other formal camellias have bigger blooms but usually sustain much more weather damage and do not have as many flowers over a period of many months.

Tikorangi notes: June 25, 2010

Latest posts:
1) The formal perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury – the cultivar bred by Felix Jury which we rate as his very best.
2) Mark’s Monarch Rescue Centre and other garden tasks for the week.
3) While we certainly don’t have gardening conditions that resemble its native habitat of sand dunes, Aloe thraskii shows a tolerance of wide range of condtions.
4) Outdoor Classroom this week is a step by step guide to pruning hydrangeas. Macrophylla hydrangeas.

Daphne bholua

TIKORANGI NOTES
When Daphne bholua, the Himalayan daphne, first became available here, it seemed liked the best thing since sliced bread and we gathered every form we could find. While it remains a valued plant in our garden, it has not proved to be such an all-round wonder plant as we had hoped. After a few years, it can look pretty scruffy and its habit of being slightly semi-deciduous doesn’t help because it doesn’t drop its spent leaves early enough. Added to that, it sets seed so freely that it pops up throughout the garden to the extent that one can see some element of noxious weed about its ways. And it suckers all round the parent plant. But of all the daphnes, it must have the loveliest scent and a single plant can waft that fragrance metres away. And when that happens on calm days in the depths of winter, all is forgiven.

In the Garden: June 25, 2010

The Monarch Rescue Centre

The Monarch Rescue Centre

  • Mark’s monarch rescue mission has resulted in a branch of about 100 suspended chrysalises which resembles a shish kebab. It moves around warm positions in the house but alas the successful emergence of healthy butterflies is at an all-time low. I don’t think even Mark is sufficiently obsessed to set up a long term rehabilitation and care centre for disabled and deformed butterflies, though he admits he has certainly thought about it.
  • You can still plant broad beans in the garden, along with garlic and shallots but generally, veg gardeners are now looking forward and preparing for spring plantings. If you have a favoured position, you can get the first sowing of carrot seed in but make sure you cover the row with a board or narrow strip of nova roof in order to keep heavy rain from compacting the finely tilled soil and washing the fine seed away.
  • • Potatoes will be coming into the garden centres. You need sheltered, frost free positions that get maximum warmth for really early crops, which tends to mean coastal area only. But anybody can be preparing now by chitting the taties – putting them in a single layer in a darkened location to encourage sprouting. Not all potatoes are the same and if you keep track of the different varieties, it is fun to buy a pick and mix selection to compare later. We are disappointed to find hollow centres in most of our large Agria this year (an otherwise splendid potato) which did not occur in any of the other varieties in the same location.
  • The great winter pruning operation should be starting. Deciduous trees, shrubs and climbers are generally winter pruned. Some, like rampant climbing roses and wisterias, need pruning to keep them under control. Some, like hydrangeas, apple trees, forsythia and many clematis or roses are pruned to maximise flowering and to keep a tidier plant. Some are only pruned occasionally as required, to remove twin trunks in a deciduous tree for example. In a small garden it is probably just as easy to work your way around the garden. In a big garden, it may be easier to work by genus – wisterias today, fruit trees or roses next week.
  • Winter is also the time to do a clean up spray on deciduous plants. Lime sulphur will clean up lichens and mosses and is widely used, as is copper at winter strength.
  • We are somewhat proudly still eating fresh green beans and corn on the cob harvested most days from the late plantings. The corn has lost its autumn sweetness but it is still fresh corn. The bean plants defoliated at the first hint of frost but the beans are still reasonably tender and good. They are a triumph of successional planting through spring and summer. Mark and dogs are almost getting a possum a night from the avocado trees. Apparently these critters love them just as much as humans. Even the dogs have developed a taste for avocado snacks.

Flowering this week: Aloe thraskii

Aloe thraskii - quite happy in our marginal conditions

Aloe thraskii - quite happy in our marginal conditions

One of the tree aloes from southern Africa, A. thraskii is putting up its heads of yellow flowers now. I am not a fan of spiky plants in our garden but I am willing to make an exception for some of the handsome aloes. Thraskii is sometimes referred to as the dune aloe (it grows naturally in coastal dune areas) or the palm aloe (on the grounds, perhaps, that if you were nearly blind and galloping past on a runaway horse you may think it resembled a palm?). What is special about thraskii for our purposes is that despite its hot, coastal origins, it is pretty tolerant of higher rainfalls and even the odd light frost. Planting it in free draining soils is even more important if you are growing it in higher rainfall conditions. We have undertaken some reorganisation of the area around our thraskii, which is now about 15 years old and over 2 metres high and I have issued an edict that I would like it moved. Fortunately, aloes can be moved relatively easily but I do notice that nobody has sprung into action yet. This could be because each leaf is thick, heavy and edged in saw-tooth prickles and could make a suitable weapon for guerrilla fighters. Maybe we will just let it flower first. Its yellow tubular blooms hanging from the flower spikes coming from the centre of its top knot are not as spectacular as some of the other aloes, but they are still pleasing on a dreary winter’s day.