Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Petal Pushers – the Jury Michelias

 

Mark Jury standing on a carpet of fallen scented petals, surveying one of his early shelter belts planted with michelia hybrids

Mark Jury standing on a carpet of fallen scented petals, surveying an early shelter belts planted with michelia hybrids

All michelias are magnolias but not all magnolias are michelias. We have always known them as very close relatives to magnolias but they sat in a group of their own. Now there has been some international reassignment after DNA testing and they have become magnolias, which has led to some confusing name changes. In common usage, they are still often referred to michelias and we are a bit betwixt and between on names.

Until very recent times, there weren’t many different michelias in New Zealand. Doltsopa (the best known cultivar being named ‘Silver Cloud’) and figo (common name of port wine magnolia) have been here for a while. It was an early cross between these two by the late Oswald Blumhardt that gave us ‘Mixed Up Miss’ and ‘Bubbles’.

Interest started to grow when yunnanensis was brought in some twenty years ago. It has spawned a gazillion named selections because it sets seed readily, but just to confuse you, it is now correctly referred to as Magnolia laevifolia. There are a few other species which are not widely available, including maudiae, and some obscure ones that are of interest to collectors only. But our borders closed to new introductions so there are a number of recent discoveries in Asia that we don’t have here. Yes, new plants are still being discovered in this world of ours but we can only look at them from afar with our bio-security rules.

Fairy Magnolia White

Fairy Magnolia White

Mark started hybridising them here back in the 1990s. He figured there was room to improve on them as garden plants. Figo’s flowers are a bit insignificant and the foliage tends to go yellow in full sun. ‘Silver Cloud’ has a wonderful fragrance but the flowers are very floppy and lack good form. It also grows too large for many town gardens and it can defoliate – dropping all its leaves – after flowering. Laevifola (yunnanensis) can defoliate too, in spring conditions which are wet and cold. These are evergreen plants so defoliation is not a great look. ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Mixed Up Miss’ look great as juvenile plants but are pretty ordinary when they get bigger and older. Mark could see possibilities.

September and October are exciting months for us as the michelias bloom. We live and breathe michelias and magnolias at this time of the year. There are six hundred new michelia seedlings ready to flower this spring alone, part of a long term breeding programme. Out of the thousands he has raised, only three have been named and released so far.

Fairy Magnolia Blush

Fairy Magnolia Blush

There is a long way to go yet but some directions are emerging. Despite the vast majority of michelias being basically white, he has reached reds, purples and deep pinks and is working on deepening the pale yellows to get stronger colour. Along the way there are an awful lot of murky colour combinations that get the chop. There is a big range of flower form, foliage and growth habits. Perfume can be an issue when two of the most fragrant species spawn offspring with no scent at all. Bringing together all the different elements to get a new plant is an absorbing and time consuming occupation.

Along the way we have also learned that michelias are very tolerant of cutting and clipping and sprout again from bare wood. The row of lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush at our entrance has been clipped and shaped over ten years now and we can keep it to the size we want by trimming just twice a year. They make excellent hedges and some of our roadside shelter belts are a feast of flower and fragrance at this time.

The sustainable wood lot

The sustainable wood lot

Regrowth

Regrowth

An unexpected bonus has been the sustainable woodlot. Because we heat our large house entirely with wood, we burn through a prodigious amount every winter. Mark had been thinking along the lines of establishing a sustainable woodlot for the future that we could harvest on a rotational basis. I even sourced a book on the very topic. But lo, he realised a few years ago that his reject michelia seedlings already filled that very niche, doing dual duty as winter feed for our very small herd of beefies that we keep to eat the paddock grass. I say very small herd – there are only four at the moment. Cut off close to the base, the plants soon shoot away again with long straight whips that could be used as poles or left to grow for firewood. Mark drags the branches into an adjacent paddock where the cattle enthusiastically eat the foliage. He then gathers the remaining trunks to cut up for next season’s firewood. It seems a good multi-purpose use of a plant breeding programme.

Fairy Magnolia Cream

Fairy Magnolia Cream

Mark’s three michelia selections to date are sold under the Fairy Magnolia brand and are widely available in New Zealand garden centres and in some overseas countries. Blush is a soft pink, Cream is very fragrant and grows in a similar, compact manner to Blush. White is a larger grower and the first in the season to flower. Mark has always seen it as a garden-friendly alternative to “Silver Cloud” with good fragrance and beautiful flower form.

First published in the September issue of NZ Gardener and reprinted here with their permission.

Lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush at our entranceway. The smaller michelia to the left is an unnamed figo hybrid with masses of creamy yellow flowers.

Lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush at our entranceway. The smaller michelia to the left is an unnamed figo hybrid with masses of creamy yellow flowers.

Pink and yellow. Together.

Bright yellow kowhai and cerise campanulata cherry at Auckland Botanic

Bright yellow kowhai and cerise campanulata cherry at Auckland Botanic

Two of the three plants on my most-disliked list are pink and yellow combinations. The first was a nasty spirea we saw in the UK several years ago. It was clearly a recent release as it was everywhere – a murky pink flower with yellow foliage. The second was a variegated oleander spotted in Spain, sporting the same colour combination but the foliage was a yellow variegation which may add yet another layer to the colour crime. The third is Rhododendron ‘President Roosevelt’ which also sports similarly freakish, variegated yellow foliage but it is more red-toned than murky pink. We are not fans of variegated foliage here, as a general rule.

Pink and yellow in Beth Chatto's garden

Pink and yellow in Beth Chatto’s garden

In that magical garden that Beth Chatto has created, I did notice on our last visit that she quite often combined pink and yellow in combinations that would worry me in my own garden. So when I saw a bright campanulata cherry in full bloom at Auckland Botanic Gardens last week with a strong yellow kowhai planted in front, my reaction was to do a double-take. It is just not a colour combination that pleases me. As an aside, I did notice that the feeding tui much preferred the campanulata to the kowhai – which is to say that there were none in the kowhai but a whole mob coming and going in the campanulata. I take this as proof that tui lack political correctness and fail to appreciate that they are letting the side down by preferring the import to the native plant.

Pastel hued tulips at Eden Gardens

Pastel hued tulips at Eden Gardens

Pink vireya but with pastel yellow tulips

Pink vireya but with pastel yellow tulips

Because I was already thinking about that pink and yellow combo, the plantings at Eden Gardens immediately grabbed my attention. And there, the pink and yellow pleased me and I am sure that is because they were pastel and the pinks were clean hues. It is the combination of either cerise pinks, purplish pinks or muted Paris pink with bright yellow that worries me most, I decided. It is not that it should be avoided at all costs (unless it is yellow variegated foliage with murky pink flowers!), but that it fails more often than it works. A pale yellow is much easier to combine. Bright golden yellow needs more care – unless it is a narcissus. Vibrant orange needs even more caution.
Magnolia Felix Jury with colour-toned tulips at Eden Gardens

Magnolia Felix Jury with colour-toned tulips at Eden Gardens


It was Peak Tulip at Eden Gardens. I have planted some tulips this year, but nothing on the scale of Eden. It is the inner conservationist conservative in me. My instincts are too frugal to be willing to buy in fresh bulbs each year, treating them like annuals to be discarded after blooming. I don’t even plant annuals. I expect my tulips to earn their keep and return each year, gently multiplying. This is, apparently, too optimistic for tulips, although I planted them deep in the soil with hope. I enquired at Eden Gardens and was told they start again with fresh bulbs each season which is why they were so showy. Away from pink and yellow, the colour-toned planting beneath Magnolia Felix Jury as one enters the garden was restrained and impeccable though it lacked the zing that can be achieved with more adventurous colour combinations.
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Pretty hellebores

IMG_3914Sunday was wet and gloomy so I picked hellebores to photograph indoors. And what a wonderful subject for photography they are. All I did was collect one representative bloom from a number of plants. This was more illustrative in intention than artistic endeavour.

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Too often the reality of the hellebore plant can look like this

Too often the reality of the hellebore plant can look like this

These are all H. orientalis or orientalis hybrids, a mix of plants in the garden and some selections Mark has raised. We have been talking about them recently because our main 30 metre hellebore border is in dire need of major work. It has passed over from being a pretty, low maintenance area to being patchy and underperforming with too few blooms and too many of those are murky colours. We plan to gut it, replace some of the soil and replant with strong, new plants – each standing in its own space rather than aiming for the uninterrupted carpet look. This is because we have noticed that the plants we have thriving in other areas are in well cultivated soil, each on its own and not competing with its neighbours for space. We will fill the gaps between bulbs – Cyclamen hederafolium, narcissi and bluebells all combine well with hellebores.

IMG_3896Mark has been raising hellebores in the nursery, in preparation for the upgrade. And he is interested in whether he can get better performing selections for our conditions. Generally, hellebores like a colder climate and the best ones we have seen are in areas with much more winter chill. The very dark flowered ones with bluish tones – referred to as slate – are not exactly booming here. Similarly, the doubles that we, and every other keen gardener at the time, rushed to purchase don’t seem to get much larger and showier than they were when we bought them over a decade ago. Mark’s seedlings may perform better though the wonderfully large pink with petaloids is probably blown up by nursery conditions. In the garden, the flowers may scale down.

The merits of longer stems

The merits of longer stems

What he is most keen on is getting strong stems which hold the flowers above the foliage. So far, that seems to be one of the most desirable features of the recent releases out of the UK – Anna’s Red and Anna’s Pink. They display their blooms well. Because the reality is that when you pick hellebores and display them face up, they are hugely charming as seen in photos. But more often, they are nodding downwards and barely visible in the garden. You could of course follow the lead of a hellebore enthusiast we once met who had a mirror on a long pole so he could view the flowers without bending. Or you could glue mirrors to your shoes – but take care, gentlemen, never to wear such footwear to town lest the reason for the mirrors be misconstrued.
IMG_3909We have worked out that the desirable dark colours display far better as garden plants with the contrast of white flowers alongside. We will also banish all the murky ones to the compost heap. While clean pastel pink and green can be a charming combination, in hellebores these often lean to muted shades which are frankly of no merit. We also want plants that will fade gracefully and not to that dirty greenish brown which does not lift the soul.

We would like the hellebore border to shine again with the gentle charm that this plant family offers.

Earlier posts about hellebores include:
Hellebore Anna’s Red
The autumn trim (removing all the old foliage)
Helleborus x sternii – one of the few green flowers Mark is happy to accommodate here.
The double hellebores.
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Full o’ beans

IMG_3803The bean mountain started modestly enough. It was just the surplus from the summer crops that Mark didn’t want to waste a few years ago. Dried beans had not featured large in our diet. Homemade hummus yes, but always with bought chickpeas. At least I started with dried peas and not the instant tinned version. Beyond that, we had never really moved on from the trendy mixed bean salads of the late 1970s. But the beans started to mount up at a faster rate than we were eating them.

At the same time, we made a conscious decision to reduce our meat intake. That started as one vegetarian meal a week, growing to be alternate evening meals of meat and vegetarian. Soon we found that the vegetable content dominated and meat-centred meals became rare. We are not vegetarian by any manner of means – I still use meat flavourings – but the meat content has become minor and often entirely absent. This change in eating habits has been driven both by environmental concerns and also evidence that as we age, a vegetable-centred diet is a great deal healthier. Bring on the beans!

Our beans have zero food miles and a very low environmental impact when it comes to production. I have nothing to do with the growing of them. That is entirely Mark’s domain. Fortunately he does the cleaning too. Sometimes I catch him sitting on a stool in the shed podding the dried beans while he listens to music. The compressor blows the detritus away from the beans in the 2015 take on winnowing. Having time for such simple activities is surely a sign of quality of life.

Borlottis are both decorative and excellent croppers

Borlottis are both decorative and excellent croppers

The one key element to increasing our bean consumption has been the discovery that soaking beans for a long time improves digestibility considerably. Our normal pattern is to soak for three days, changing the water twice daily. We took to adding the whey from yoghurt, acting on advice read from a moderately reputable source. It was only recently that I did a net search and found that whey is simply an acid and that vinegar or lemon juice can also be used. It is all about breaking down the troublesome oligosaccharides – complex sugars that the body can have trouble digesting.

I had NO IDEA that soaking beans was such a controversial topic until I did that net search. The internet is full of experts – hot soaks, cold soaks, soaking too long, not soaking at all, adding whey and/or other acids, adding baking soda, soaking on the bench or in the fridge, distilled water, rain water, soft water, added kombu. You can find whatever opinion you want. Alas, the one site I have failed to find again is the one I failed to bookmark – a scientific explanation in simple language, minus the woowoo and snake oil, explaining why soaking in several changes of water works.

All I will say is that we have found long soaking works for us. It also means that the cooking time is very short.

Variations on Phaseolus vulgaris with a little cross contamination

Variations on Phaseolus vulgaris with a little cross contamination

We have fava beans (broad beans), white beans, brown beans, an abundance of Borlotti beans and peas. For flavour, we favour the fava but without the addition of Chianti and body parts. They are also the most bother because each bean has to be individually de-husked. Generally, I cook them lightly (after the long soak) and then peel while warm. You get a feel for the timing and it is much easier if you get this right. Undercooked and the bean doesn’t pop out, overcooked and it breaks up. I am still trying to perfect the snack fava beans I tried in Malaysia – cooked then baked in the oven with a light spray of oil and a few flavourings. Bar snack style. I have reached the “these are quite nice” stage but not the “yum, these are delicious” goal. More often I use the fava beans for baked falafel.

There are a gazillion recipes out there but the other two standbys that I will mention are hummus and bean bread. Hummus does not have to be chick peas. Any bean will do. White bean hummus is probably my favourite. These beans can be a little bland in other dishes but are creamy and as tasty as any in hummus. Cornbread has become a favourite here, especially to accompany soup in winter, but required buying tins of creamed corn. Creamed beans, I found, are a perfectly acceptable substitute. I just whizz the cooked beans in the food processor with a little of the cooking liquid.

This is the blue pea but Mark is unconvinced by either crop yield or flavour so will keep to more traditional green varieties this season

This is the blue pea but Mark is unconvinced by either crop yield or flavour so will keep to more traditional green varieties this season

Peas are somewhat less versatile and a quick look on the internet tells me that most dried pea recipes are of the pea and ham soup genre or Indian curries. That said, apparently hummus from dried peas is just as successful as from beans but with a different taste. Once the soup season has finished, I will try that.

Botanically speaking, most beans are phaseolus and the largest number of beans grown by the home gardener are Phaseolus vulgaris. They are just variants within the same species although runner beans are P. coccineus. Soy beans are Glycine max (not such a productive crop here) and broad beans are Vica faba. Mark is planning to up the lima bean crop this year – these are P. lunatus. When beans become a staple in your diet, it is nice to have a variety of different types.

Lachenalias part one: the early bloomers

Left to right: Lachenalia aloides quadricolor, bulbifera, reflexa hybrid, aloides

Left to right: Lachenalia aloides quadricolor, bulbifera, reflexa hybrid, aloides

Pity the early-blooming lachenalias for none of them are blue. And the blues and mauves are the sought after members of this plant family. But as winter draws to a close, it is the cheerful red, orange and yellow combinations that light up a grey day. It is all in how you use them.
Nothing subtle about aloides but great in semi-wild areas

Nothing subtle about aloides but great in semi-wild areas

I had not been a fan of the most common form of Lachenalia aloides. It lacks refinement and reminds me of cheap, fake flowers. But when I relocated surplus bulbs out to an open area near our entrance, I changed my mind. They are a bright splash of colour around an old tree trunk which makes me smile. The addition of the undervalued muscari (grape hyacinths) that remind me of my childhood adds a splash of pure blue, making the colour seem even brighter, along with an early flowering scilla. We have a particularly strong growing form in New Zealand which you can still occasionally find under its completely incorrect name of Lachenalia ‘Pearsonii’. It is just a strong-growing, tall strain of aloides with its distinctive orange and red colouring.
Same species, aloides. Quadricolor to the right.

Same species, aloides. Quadricolor to the right.

L. aloides is a variable species and one of our early bloomers is another form – L. aloides quadricolor. It has a little more subtlety than its more vibrant, stronger sibling. The individual flowers are little smaller and finer, although still on a strong stem. Quadricolour refers to the four colours – red, yellow, green and interesting maroon or burgundy tips. There is a complexity to these flowers which counters the somewhat garish effect that can be evident in the more common form.

L. aloides tricolor flowers later for us and is smaller in size and basically green with red tips. The most desirable of this set is probably L. aloides var. vanzyliae but it is the one we are struggling to get growing well. I will keep an eye out for flowers as the season progresses because it is an unusual white with pale blue at the base and bright green tips and it is just as lovely as it sounds. When I find it again – and I have it in about three places – I will lift the bulbs because I think this one will be best kept to a pot.

Lachenalia bulbifera

Lachenalia bulbifera

Red L. bulbifera is the first of the season to come into flower for us. It is easy to grow and sets a multitude of little bulbs, though not to the extent that we have classified it as invasive or dangerous. It is another one that I like planted around the trunk of an old tree giving a bright spot of colour in the distance and drawing one over for a closer look.
Mark's reflexa hybrid is stronger growing than the straight species

Mark’s reflexa hybrid is stronger growing than the straight species

The yellow is Mark’s L. reflexa hybrid. Because we struggle with the dreaded narcissi fly, he was casting round for alternative yellows to daffodils for naturalising. While not quite a pure yellow (the tips can have a red tinge), it is a strong and reliable grower and gives the yellow carpet effect though we have yet to get a major drift established in grass conditions.

Lachenalias are South African bulbs, mostly from the Cape Province. Some are very easy to grow, others less so. Naturally the very choice varieties are the ones that are less amenable but that is always the way. Some are desert plants and we struggle with those, but the ones that grow in areas of winter rainfall are generally easy and reliable in our conditions. A few, like L. glaucina, are particularly frost tender. Lachenalias last very well as a cut flower and will out-bloom most other late winter and spring bulbs in the garden. L. bulbifera is already in bloom by the beginning of July while the white L. contaminata flowers through November. A family of easy-care bulbs which gives us a full five months of blooming across the colour spectrum – what is not to like?
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