Truly, I have never given much thought to plectranthus. They are just one of those filler plants that can occupy a difficult waste space and put on a good show in flower but need a tight hand to control their spread. Not unlike abutilon and brugmansia, perhaps.
And then there is this one. I have no idea where it came from although I must have planted it in the borders. Maybe it was in an unlabelled pot in the old nursery and, as a juvenile plant, I mistook it for a salvia? That seems the most likely scenario. It is really pretty and, considering the family it comes from, well behaved. It is also a woody shrub.
Most plectranthus are herbaceous perennials that can spread far and wide. There are about 85 species, mostly from tropical and southern Africa and all in the sage family. Presumably frost controls their spread in colder climates but here it is human hands that keep them contained. Mark tells me there is a large patch in our stand of native bush on our property across the road that we need to eradicate. I don’t go over there much so I haven’t seen it but he described it as now taking about the space of our house beneath the stand of tawa trees. That is not the place for it; we can control it in a garden situation but we try and keep that bush restricted to natives, eliminating exotic interlopers.
Quite a good colour but no woody stems on this one so it is not the same as the one I want more of.
I had assumed that the plant in the borders must have crept in from another part of the garden so I set off to look at the others we have. Nope, it is different. It is a more intense colour and definitely woody as opposed to a spreading perennial. I see it has a layer on it so I will remove that and it should also propagate easily from cutting. I want more of it in the borders as a splash of autumn colour.
The one in the centre is my good, woody one that I want more of. Most of the others were a little washed out in comparison and not the right growth habit. On the left is what we knew as P. argentatum but is now a coleus, not a plectranthus at all.
In looking up plectranthus, I see the silver one we have with pastel flowers and which we knew as Plectranthus argentatus is in fact an Australian native and is part of a whole group of plectranthus that have now been transferred to the coleus family, so it is now known as Coleus argentatus. It is always interesting to learn something new.
The odd red abutilon is acceptable.
i have a soft spot for the pure yellow or clean orange shades.
I mentioned abutilons and brugmansia as similar fillers, except they spread by seed. I can’t get excited about abutilons but they fill a space. They cross readily and I only want clean colours so I pull out any murky colour mixes, keeping only the good reds and pure yellows or oranges. I did see a beautiful, big, bushy one in an open garden last year that was laden with bell flowers in the prettiest shade of lilac. It was a showstopper but the owner, one of the best plantsmen in our area, told me it was also the most difficult abutilon he had ever come across to strike from cutting. It won’t grow true from seed, assuming it even sets seed.
We have brugmansias in semi-double white, peachy pink, apricot and a rooted cutting of a pure yellow waiting to be planted out
Brugmansias are also a great autumn feature. They are very brittle and can get extremely tall but the flowers are best observed from below or from some distance. The few we have are generally in shade so they stretch for the light rather than spreading sideways. They are not what one could call a tidy plant but at this time of the year, they can be striking.
How do you tell a brugmansia, common name angel’s trumpets, from its close relative the datura, known as devil’s trumpets? Brugmansias have pendulous flowers that hang down while daturas face upwards or outwards. Both are highly poisonous but it seems only datura has psychoactive properties as well, known to kill suicidal youth who don’t factor in the toxicity in their search for a free hallucinogenic experience. Interestingly, brugmansias are now rated as extinct in the wild; it is only their use as a garden plant that has ensured their survival.
Some plants need a closer eye kept on them than others. If you have spreading plectranthus, never turn your back on it because, in our climate, it will get away and smother whatever it comes across.
It is not ‘sumer’ that is icumen in here, but very much autumn that has announced its arrival.
It seems a lifetime since I studied English literature at university. I guess it is almost a lifetime ago and I have long since lost my ability to read texts such as Chaucer’s tales and ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ in their original Middle English. But how have I reached this age without ever knowing about the farting billy goat in ‘Sumer is icumen in’? (see below) I only found it this morning when I looked up the lyrics. It is perhaps a sign of times that were more bawdy than vulgar.
‘Icumen in’ does not translate to ‘is coming in’. It means it is here and nothing makes that seem more real than the end of daylight saving. I used to find the onset of autumn somewhat depressing, describing myself as a summer bunny. But now that I garden, it heralds the start of a new season with all the freshness of new season flowers.
Nerine sarniensis season! This is one of Mark’s hybrids – the long stems mean it would probably be better grown as a cut flower than a garden plant. The weight of the head can drag the stems down but we don’t do cut flowers so we just persevere with it in the garden.
In our climate, it also heralds the time when we can get back to planting, digging and dividing and renovating parts of the garden that are crying out for more drastic action. We still have up to two months of the growing season left here; the ground doesn’t get cold enough to stop plant growth until June. Indeed, for those people who live in areas with hotter, dry summers, autumn planting is often a much better option than spring planting because the plants can settle in and get their roots out before the stress of summer conditions sets in. Spring planting is the better option for those who live with harsher climates where the ground can freeze or is waterlogged and very cold in winter but most of our country can happily plant away in autumn, safe in the knowledge that that the plants will over-winter and leap into new growth in springtime.
Autumn is the second season for the rockery. While there is always something of interest flowering 52 weeks of the year, autumn and early spring are when it bursts with colour and variety. Nerines feature large, particularly the sarniensis hybrids.
Most of our nerines are hybrids from both Felix and Mark’s efforts. We once named and sold a few but nowadays they mostly just exist in our garden. Every year, my camera fails to capture the truly startling shade of highlighter pink in this clump.
Felix started with a few named ones from Exbury. This is ‘Inchmery Elizabeth’ and has proven to be such a pretty and reliable performer down the decades.
I found this one snapped off, which may have been due to slug chomping on the stem or it may have been Ralph the dog who is no respecter of gardens but ploughs in when pursuing a fly, bee or wasp. What I think is interesting is the shade of purple it is fading to; presumably there are enough blue genes in there to indicate it is only a matter of time and determination by somebody to get to true purple and blue hybrids in the future.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Elfin Rose’
Autumn is sasanqua camellia season. This is sweet little ‘Elfin Rose’, which we cloud prune. Sasanquas don’t have to be white, as per the long-running fashion in this country.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Sparkling Burgundy’
The flower on ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ is not so very different to ‘Elfin Rose’ but the habit of growth is. This plant is decades old, maybe 50 years or so. We lifted it and thinned the canopy to turn it into a graceful, open small tree rather than a bushy shrub.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Crimson King’
Sasanqua camellias have softer flower forms and laxer growth than the more common japonica and hybrid camellias that flower in winter and spring but they don’t get petal camellia and we have grown to appreciate their relaxed informality of flower form. Alas that is a wasp feeding on the flower above but they are equally a source of food for the more desirable bees. Exposed stamens and pollen are the key to feeding bees.
The lyrics to ‘Summer is icumen in’, courtesy of Wikipedia. Composed, it seems, to be sung as a round. Spot the farting billy goat (and the politer alternative).
Middle English Sumer is icumen in Lhude sing cuccu Groweþ sed and bloweþ med and springþ þe wde nu Sing cuccu
Awe bleteþ after lomb lhouþ after calue cu Bulluc sterteþ bucke uerteþ murie sing cuccu
Cuccu cuccu Wel singes þu cuccu ne swik þu nauer nu
Sing cuccu nu • Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu • Sing cuccu nu
Modern English Summer[a] has arrived, Loudly sing, cuckoo! The seed is growing And the meadow is blooming, And the wood is coming into leaf now, Sing, cuckoo!
The ewe is bleating after her lamb, The cow is lowing after her calf; The bullock is prancing, The billy-goat farting, [or “The stag cavorting”] Sing merrily, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo, You sing well, cuckoo, Never stop now.
In a world that seems to be growing more chaotic, unstable, downright dangerous and even vicious by the day, let there be flowers.
I know I am not alone in limiting my time following the news and on social media. Never in my life did I think I would be taking life guidance from RuPaul but his advice to ‘look at the darkness but don’t stare’ are words that I repeat to myself every day. It is one thing to be aware of what is happening but it can be overwhelming if I spend too much time following it closely.
The bright cheer of the dwarf helianthus makes me smile. This is a named cultivar but I have forgotten where I recorded the name.
Instead, I give you the gentle predictability of the change of season from summer to autumn here with photos from yesterday. I have used the shorter version of the helianthus in the borders but the tall leggy form – likely closer to the species or as it is found in the wild – seemed to fit better in the controlled abandon of the Court Garden. No more. We are in danger of losing it because it is not as capable of coping with competition as I thought. As soon as this remaining clump has finished flowering, I will relocate it to the more cultivated environment of the borders where it will be given its own space to thrive.
The Jerusalem artichoke is also a member of the helianthus family but it does not justify its place as an ornamental plant. Not enough flowers, I am afraid, but an abundance of tubers which I dare not eat. While tasty, no matter how hard I try, I can not find ways to prepare it that improve its digestibility without the unfortunate side effects. Its name as fartichoke is fully justified.
The heleniums are in the twilight of their season but remain eyecatching. These have one of the longer flowering seasons of the summer perennials and fully justify their prime position in the borders.
Cyclamen hederafolium are coming into their autumn peak and what a delight they are. We have many of them, many many in fact because we encourage them to seed down in their pretty pink and white charm. I am not a fan of the bigger cyclamen hybrids but the species are a source of great delight throughout the garden.
The rockery is hitting its stride with its autumn display. The colchicums are a fleeting delight but one we would not be without. The nerines are just starting, mostly red so far but plenty about to open in other colours. I live in hope that the Lycoris aurea will stage a reappearance. I planted a pot of flowering bulbs out in the rockery years ago but I can’t remember where and it has never flowered since. It may have gently withered away to nothing or it may still be masquerading as a random clump of nerines which I just haven’t noticed aren’t flowering. Perhaps our hot, dry summer will have triggered it to flower. Or maybe not.
We have two dwarf crabapples in the rockery, standing little more than 1.2metres high after about 50 years. Their flowering is insignificant and their form and foliage unremarkable but they justify their place with their ornamental fruit in autumn.
Moraea polystachya, an autumn form of the peacock iris, seeds around enthusiastically but harmlessly and rewards us by popping up randomly – on the edge of the drive in this photo – and having one of the longest seasons in flower of any of the autumn bulbs because it keeps opening a generous succession of buds.
The belladonnas are bold, a bit scruffy and have bulbs and foliage that are too large to make them obliging garden plants. But they are a welcome addition in wilder areas, in this case on the site of the old woodshed we removed this summer before it fell over of its own own accord. We don’t know anything about the grinding wheels except that Felix must have gathered them up fifty years ago and there are three in graduated sizes.
The first cymdidium orchid is opening. This somewhat understated one is always the first of the season and is a top performer in its spot, arching over the old stone millwheel which has been repurposed a bird bath.
Finally, camellia season has started. Camellia sasanqua ‘Crimson King’ is always one of the first to open. Even with climate change, there is a reassuring predictability in the cyclic nature of the seasons.
May there always be flowers. I can stare at them as long as I like without fear of being overwhelmed by a sense of despair, anxiety and helplessness. In the flowers and the seasons lie promise and joy and we need a whole lot more of that at this time.
It can take a long time for a new plant from Mark’s breeding programme to reach the point of sale on the market. We have long since moved on to looking at more recent plants but it is a thrill when the time comes to seeing the plants finally released commercially into the wider world.
Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™
It was different when we had the nursery and we would release new plants onto the domestic market. There could be a quick turnaround on those. Nowadays, we focus internationally and that is a very different ball game. It has become increasingly difficult and eyewateringly expensive to get new plants into other countries, through quarantine, trialled and then built up commercially for release. Aside from controlling the initial selection and supply of plant material for propagation, everything is done by our Australian-based agents these days – Anthony Tesselaar Plants – and for this we are truly grateful because it is a plant mission.
Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™
This year heralds the start of a new round of plant releases – three new deciduous magnolias and the next evergreen in the Fairy Magnolia® series – but not simultaneously.
First up, there will be a limited release this year in Aotearoa New Zealand of the three deciduous magnolias, 2026 for Australia and then or soon after for Europe. Don’t even ask about USA – a work in progress there but likely to be longer.
Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™
Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ will the last of the Jury red magnolias to be named and released. It all started with Felix’s ‘Vulcan’, a breakthrough that has well and truly stood the test of time. Mark followed up with ‘Black Tulip’, ‘Burgundy Star’ and ‘Felix Jury’ – the latter varying in colour from deep red to rosy pink, depending on growing conditions. ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’ in particular have become influential in international magnolia breeding. I see many photos of plants that have one or other of them in their parentage. I may be biased but I don’t see many that are an improvement on their parent.
Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ – the original plant is a stand out in our park but small enough to fit in most domestic gardens.
It seems fitting that we end the Jury reds with Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ because we regard it as a significant upgrade on ‘Vulcan’. It has all the desirable characteristics of ‘Vulcan’ – rich colour, smaller tree, flowering from a young age and very floriferous. But better. It loses the less desirable aspects of ‘Vulcan’. It blooms a little later in the season which is better for colder climates; it has a long flowering season and the later season flowers are as good as the earlier ones (which is not always the case with magnolias). But best of all, it has lost the purple undertones that were the main problem with ‘Vulcan’ – especially as the season progressed when the brilliant early blooms could give way to smaller flowers which tended to be rather murky and paler in colour. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ stays the same clear red from start to finish. We describe it as ‘garden friendly’ which means it is a suitable size for smaller, domestic gardens – still a tree but a smaller specimen. We are very proud of it.
Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™
Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ and yes, I do think it is pretty fabulous
Second up is Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™, the only white magnolia Mark has named. His initial code name has stuck – it is named primarily for me with a nod to Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley and I feel in excellent company there. It has a huge white bloom with just a touch of pink at the petal base and we do like big flowers on our magnolias here. So, in flower size, it sits alongside Felix’s ‘Atlas’ and Mark’s ‘Felix Jury’. I was amused to be sent a photograph of it flowering in a European nursery – in Germany, from memory – of a bare stick about 1.5 metres high adorned with several excessively large white blooms. It looked impressive but is even more impressive on the original plant. It is a larger growing tree and we worried for a while that it may be too large but growth rates and size are heavily determined by climate and most magnolias around the world are grown in harder conditions than we ever get here so it is unlikely to reach the same stature that we see.
Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™
The habit of growth on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ is tall but slender
We have really struggled with naming the third one. In the end, I crowd-sourced a name on the social media platform, Bluesky. Out of hundreds of suggestions, we came up with a short list of of nine good names and I think we have settled on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™. Our problem came with trying to nail down the colour. Depending on light conditions, it is somewhere between rich pink and purple. I lined up petals alongside Magnolia campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’, one of the purplest of the species and the petals of the hybrid were darker but it doesn’t always look that way on the tree. It is not blue enough to be able to say it is purple, lilac or lavender, not brown enough to be puce, but possibly too many blue hues to be rich pink. Hence ‘Dawn Light’™. Whatever the colour, it is lovely and has been a consistent performer in a prominent position here year on year. It is another taller, upright grower – rather than spreading – but is not likely to be as tall in different climates.
This is why we had such trouble naming Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ – it can look purple or pink, depending on the light
I once lined up petals to try and determine the colour. That is Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ at the top, ‘Dawn Light’ below but it can still look too pink on the tree. Mark quipped that he wanted to call it Purple Haze – to go with Ruby Tuesday, you understand. Showing our era, I wondered whether ‘Ab Fab’ should therefore be named A Whiter Shade of Pale.
These three cultivars have been under our watchful eye for years and we are confident on their merits. Magnolias are a long term plant. You don’t want to be casting a plant out after 5 or 10 years because something better comes along. We think these three will stand the test of time.
Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ and some very fine plants about to go on sale from Warners Nurseries in Victoria, Australia
Australia is as difficult to get through border control as Aotearoa NZ is so it has taken a long time for Mark’s Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ to be released there, even though it has been sold in this country, in Europe and the UK for some time. But at last it is ready for release in Australia this year.
Fairy Magnolia ‘Petite Peach’™
However, Australia gets the first chance at Fairy Magnolia ‘Petite Peach’™ which will be released this year (2026 in NZ and 2026/27 in Europe). Sharp-eyed garden visitors may have spotted the two clipped, smaller pompoms at our gate. ‘Petite Peach’ has been well trialled down the years here. It is much more compact than the three Fairy Magnolias® already released, with smaller foliage and a mass of smaller blooms in peach shades. It is what we would describe as a ‘good garden plant’ – reliable, consistent, extremely healthy, able to fit into gardens of any size and pretty, rather than spectacular.
The two plants in the foreground are Petite Peach, over 20 years old now and clipped once a year. The front plant hadn’t been fully clipped on account of Mama Blackbird and her babies in the middle of the top knot.
Meantime, we are into the final year or maybe two of assessing what is likely to be the last tranche of Jury hybrids from this generation of the Jury family. It is likely there will be a couple more deciduous magnolias but yellow this time, and maybe another three or four different colours in the ‘Fairy Magnolia’® series. But don’t hold your breath. These will be years off being released internationally. Plant breeding with the magnolia genus is definitely a long term project.
Postscript: For the magnolia aficionados who are going to ask about the breeding, these are largely from crossing hybrids but if you take it back to the originating species it works out to the following:
Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ M.soulangeana x ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta} x {M. liliiflora hybrid x ‘Lanarth’}. Which translates to 3/8 ‘Lanarth’, around 3/8 different forms of liliiflora with some sargentiana robusta and a few unknown genes to make the full quota.
Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ (M. soulangeanax ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}) x M. x ‘Lennei alba’ (liliiflora genes again with some denudata) x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}. Which makes the dominant genes liliiflora followed by ‘Lanarth’ and sargentiana robusta.
Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ (M. soulangeana X ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M.sargentiana robusta} x ‘Lanarth. So the dominant genes in this one are ‘Lanarth’ with lesser amounts of M. sargentiana robusta and M. liliiflora.
In layperson’s terms, Mark has continued using his father’s lucky break with the hybrid seedling he was sent which he named Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’ (back in the 1950s), crossing with the downstream Jury hybrids both he and Felix created, plus ‘Lanarth’.
The Court Garden has barely turned a hair – or lost a leaf – in our unusually dry summer
It is unusually dry here. In fact our province of Taranaki went into official drought declaration some weeks ago. I was woken yesterday morning by the sound of rain and my instant response was relief but it stopped and I see it was only about half a millimetre so that did absolutely nothing.
Continuing dry weather has affected the floral display in the borders
People who live in habitually dry areas may scoff at what we declare as drought but it is all relative. For many years, I have been cheerfully declaring that we get around 150 cm of rain a year (1500mm or about sixty inches) fairly evenly distributed across the year. We might complain about the dryness if we get several weeks without rain in summer but we are generally confident that the rains will arrive in time. Our prevailing westerly weather patterns tend to mean that we get moisture-laden air coming in from the ocean. High sunshine hours and relatively high rainfall is the norm. Currently, we are about 60% down on our normal rainfall in the first months of this year.
Fortunately, we source our water from our own, private bore so we are not in danger of running out. The water delivery businesses must be booming with urgent calls from those rural folk who rely on rain water tanks or surface water sources. Stream and river levels are uniformly low.
The autumn bulbs are not bothered. They received just enough summer rain earlier to trigger them into growth. This is dainty little Leucojum autumnale. Its teeny tiny flowers are not much larger than a finger nail but it increases well.
When it comes to gardening, because we live in a climate with consistent rainfall, we have no irrigation system and we can only reach a few, small areas with a hose. Extended dry periods are a good test for us. When the hydrangeas planted in shade start to wilt, we know we are very dry.
We are not unduly worried yet. The rains should come. It is frustrating though, for people who garden every day. It feels as though much is on hold, waiting for rain. We can’t plant anything much or dig and divide. But at least Zach and I got onto a messy border immediately behind the house. There is a water tap close by so we could do more.
A generally unremarkable border
One might describe it as an historic but unremarkable border, most of the permanent trees and shrubs having been planted by Mark’s father, probably back in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years, it has received little intensive care or love, confined to weeding, removing dead plants, a bit of pruning and filling bare spaces but little else. The swathe of auratum lilies were crying out for some love.
The border goes from sun to full shade. This is Zach’s orchid construction at the shady end.
I haven’t counted the plant varieties but there must be at least 50 or 60 different ones in a curved area measuring up to three metres across and twenty five metres long. We pruned almost all the trees, shrubs, cycads and the like – a tidy-up really. The work came on the under plantings – the lower growing perennials and bulbs.
My mantra is that when there is a diverse top tier planting of trees and shrubs (like, one of each specimen), bottom tier plantings need to be simpler to give some cohesion. Our idea of simple may not be the same as many gardeners, let alone designers, but what Zach and I did was to consolidate the different ground level plantings into bigger blocks, rather than drifts or random placement. We removed some entirely (yellow tigridias and every last bit of green mondo grass), reduced some (it is very nice of Geranium madarense to seed down and naturalise but we only need four full-sized ones to make a statement next spring and a few younger ones for the year following – not 40), divided hostas and farfugiums and consolidated other plants into blocks.
Farfugium japonicum ‘Crispatum’ features strongly. I am going with the RHS name of this plant but a net search sees it listed under assorted variants including ligularia (first word), tussilagineum (second word) and Cristata or Crispata (third word) in every possible combination of those three words plus the three words of its RHS-accepted name.
Farfugium japonicum ‘Argenteum’ is showier but also much slower to increase. Fortunately, we used to sell it commercially so we had a jump start on having sufficient plants for impact in shady areas.
All plants that were lifted were plunged into buckets of water, replanted into holes enriched with compost, thoroughly watered and mulched. If we don’t get enough rain in the next week or two, we can easily reach them with the hose.
Just a reminder not to lay mulch when the ground is bone dry. It will act as a barrier to moisture entering the soil. Mulch needs to be laid to protect existing moisture levels in the ground before it dries out.
May the autumn rains arrive soon.
The rockery is so dry it is pretty much dust. There is no sign of life in the soils but the autumn bulbs are barely turning a hair at the conditions.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 