Author Archives: Abbie Jury

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About Abbie Jury

jury.co.nz Tikorangi The Jury Garden Taranaki NZ

Maintaining social status if not economic value – the rhododendron in Taranaki

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The generic pink rhododendron photo - in fact an unnamed seedling from our park


2009 may not go down in history as having the best ever display of rhododendrons in Taranaki because spring came somewhat early this year and festival dates are somewhat late. But it is rather a happy collision of different occurrences that sees us wearing a rhododendron crown in the first place. It is not that we grow them hugely better than everywhere else. We just happen to have Pukeiti here and that organisation and identity has given an enduring regional focus to the plant genus, along with our longstanding annual garden festival. In fact going back in history, that garden festival was first floated by Pukeiti and owned and run in the early years by the Taranaki Rhododendron Group.

Why rhododendrons? Just as tulips commanded prestige and price well beyond their actual worth in Holland in centuries past, rhododendrons were the high status and high prestige plant for the post World War 11 gardeners and we had a cluster of serious gardeners in Taranaki at the time.

Douglas Cook, the father of Pukeiti, bought land here primarily for rhododendrons because it was clear to him that these aristocrats from lower mountain slopes in Asia would never be an option for his first choice location near Gisborne, where he set up Eastwood Hill with its heavy focus on drought tolerant deciduous trees.

Around the same time, a number of Taranaki gardeners and plantspeople were creating their gardening masterpieces. These included Bernard and Rose Hollard near Kaponga, Russell and Mary Matthews on Mangorei Road (Tupare), Les Jury at Sunnybank on Tukapa Street, Harold Marchant and Les Taylor near Stratford, Jack Goodwin at Pukekura Park and Pukeiti – and Felix and Mimosa Jury in the garden here at Tikorangi. The rhododendron family featured large in their plans and individual collections were highly prized.

Historically, back in those mists of time around the late forties and fifties, Duncan and Davies were becoming the major force in commercial production and that happened in Taranaki partly because all plants were field grown in those days (in other words in the ground in real soil, rather than in containers and planter bags in modern nurseries). With its friable, volcanic soils, high sunshine and regular rainfall for 12 months, Taranaki just happened to have the best conditions in the country for field production. It needs also to be said that the charisma and dynamism of V.C. Davies was a major influence.

Times keep changing. These days the market value of a rhododendron plant has plummeted so far that you can go to any plant shop and buy one for around the same price as a perennial, a clipped bay tree, even a semi-clipped buxus or a large succulent. I can tell you, dear Reader, that there is a vast amount more skill and time required to get that rhododendron onto the shop floor than the other plants and that they are dreadfully underpriced, almost without exception. I am frankly astonished that rhododendrons have to some extent kept their elevated status in theory, even though reality has them relegated well down the plant equivalent of the social scale. It is a conundrum.

But then we still lay claim to the rhododendron in Taranaki even though the local nursery industry continues to dwindle away (we certainly can’t claim to be the Southern hemisphere power house of plant production these days!) and even though most home gardeners would rather plant a fruit tree than a rhodo. The rhododendron gives a focus, an icon, to our garden festival which sets it a little apart from others all round the country – except for Dunedin who shamelessly (though quite justifiably) continue to challenge our claim to having the Rhododendron Festival.

As our festival starts today, never underestimate the importance of this annual event on our regional garden calendar. It is the single event which keeps Taranaki right up at the top nationally in the garden scene. The 10 days of festival deliver more visitors into most of our open gardens than will be seen on the other 355 days of the year. It is the single event which makes it worthwhile to maintain gardens to the high standards we currently reach. Without festival, there would be no incentive to keep lifting gardening standards and setting the benchmarks.

The annual rhododendron advice (in brief)

1) If you have a plant with silver leaves, it has nasty sucking insects called thrips. You can’t turn silver leaves to green again and the new foliage will get affected unless you do something to alter conditions. You can spray with an insecticide, though we prefer to advise alternatives. Open up around the plant to increase air movement (thrips don’t like drafts) and feed and mulch the plant to encourage increased vigour. If it keeps getting infected, take it out and replace it with a healthier option. There are rhododendrons which are better suited to warmer climates and are more resistant to silver leaves.
2) If you have a plant which has not set flower buds, the most common cause is too much shade. Because they set flower buds on their new growth (which is coming now), open up and let more light in as soon as you can. The other cause may be incorrect pruning.
3) Rhododendrons are surface rooting – in other words they go outwards not downwards. A healthy plant has a big mass of fine, fibrous roots which resembles old fashioned carpet underfelt. Mulching is good practice to keep these roots cool and nourished. Never plant them in wet spots where water can pond. They will die very quickly.
4) Deadheading is to stop the plant putting all its energy into setting seed. You don’t actually have to deadhead unless the plant is a seed setter, though it does make them look better.
5) Feed now as the plant goes into growth, if you feel it needs it. Rhododendrons prefer soils on the acid side (which our volcanic soils are here).
6) Moving plants around your garden needs to take place in autumn and winter, not now. Hard pruning of rhodos takes place in late winter or very early spring, not now.

Flowering this week: Rhododendron Bernice

Rhododendron Bernice - very local in origin and name

Rhododendron Bernice - very local in origin and name

Over the past fifty years, the quest here has been to breed rhododendrons better suited to growing in warmer climates and not inclined to the nasty silver leaves caused by thrip (a common leaf sucking insect). In its time, Bernice was an advance in colour and size in the maddenii group of rhododendrons. Its parents are polyandrum (which gave some scent and increased flower size) and Royal Flush Townhill (which contributed the colour genes). It has flat trusses of bell-shaped flowers and can give the impression of a wall of bloom with almost no foliage showing. Over the decades, we have seen many varieties come and go but Bernice has stood the test of time and remains one of our top picks for a brilliant performer right on cue every year.

Pronounced Burniss, not Ber-neice, as I can say with authority because this, arguably the best performing rhododendron Felix Jury selected, was named for his wife’s best friend – Bernice Kelly. Mrs Kelly was an old Waitara identity whom I recall well as a down to earth character who physically made the concrete blocks for the cottage she and her husband built. These days there are pensioner cottages on the site, but the memory of Mrs Kelly lives on in the rhododendron named for her.

23 October, 2009 In the Garden This Week

  • Every vegetable gardener knows that Labour Weekend is a signal for the great plant out. Sensible gardeners in colder areas will be cautious but in most of coastal Taranaki it is now fine to put in the first sowings of corn and to plant out all the summer veg such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines, pumpkin and melons. Main crop potatatoes and kumara can go in, along with peas and carrots. This just may be the biggest weekend of the vegetable year. It is not critical that these vegetables all get planted this weekend but give priority to melons, kumaras and aubergines, if you like them, because they need long growing seasons.
  • Thin out earlier sowings of vegetable seed. One lesson we have learned from the micro-veg/mesclun fashion is that all these fresh, young thinnings are delicious in salads and stirfrys.
  • We are currently eating our fennel bulbs and yet again we are reminded of just how versatile and easy this vegetable is. Its aniseed taste is very mild when eaten raw (grated in salads or salsas) and all but disappears when roasted or sliced for stir fries. The fennel we are eating at the moment was planted at the end of February this year, but you can sow a crop now.
  • A reminder that it pays to keep an eye on self seeded annual flowers and to pull out inferior specimens before they get too far down the track. I particularly dislike the crosses we get between old fashioned blue pansies and yellow pansies – they show as a yukky blue and brown combination with no merit. If you don’t keep an eye on your self seeders, in time they will become dominated by the lowest common denominator. We saw it happen over a period of years in a planting of beautiful electric blue meconopsis poppies in Dunedin Botanic Gardens. With the red form in the same bed, over time they ended up with an awful lot of murky maroon colours and far too few pure blues.
  • Daffodil bulbs can be protected from the dreaded narcissi fly by removing foliage and piling on a layer of mulch. The flies lay their eggs in the top collar of the bulb and gain access down the foliage stems. Daffodils need 65 days of growth, which is a very precise figure. If you can recall back that far, as long as your daffodils were in growth by mid July, you can safely remove the foliage now and put them to bed for summer.
  • While the Great Vegetable Plant Out takes priority for most people (this is your summer and early autumn harvest you are planting), in the ornamental garden, it is getting perilously close to the last call for planting out woody trees and shrubs and any pruning and shaping. It is also the optimum time for feeding and for getting mulches onto garden beds. No wonder spring is such a busy time in the garden.
  • Writing of the Labour Weekend plantout, I relocated Mark, a good North Taranaki boy, to Dunedin for three years in our early life together. Corn is a very marginal crop there because the growing season is too short and he carefully started his corn plants in baby pots and planted them out at Labour Weekend, as one does. It snowed on the Tuesday and his poor little corn plants all died. We moved back north.

Pruning vireya rhododendrons: step-by-step guide with Abbie and Mark Jury

A step by step guide by Abbie and Mark Jury first published in the Taranaki Daily News and reproduced here with permission as a PDF.

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