Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Tikorangi News

Tikorangi-Butter-paper

Welcome to the first edition of Tikorangi News which your council has undertaken to write in response to complaints from a few local residents that they don’t know what is happening in their district. At New Lympouth District Council, we take our duty to consult local residents very seriously and we hope this newsletter will fill the gap. We would like to thank the guardians of the old Tikorangi Dairy Factory for making their butter wrapper available to use as letterhead, reminding us of the semi rural nature of the area. regular_smile

• We at Council are deeply aware that traffic is a major issue for many Tikorangi residents but we have AWESOME news. We have brokered an arrangement between companies, their subcontractors and Tikorangi School. Starting next week, the trucks will be calling in to the school where the students will be painting happy faces on all the vehicles. We are confident that smiley faces will bring a smile to all Tikorangi residents as the trucks pass by. Drivers have also been instructed to give a cheery wave as they pass. regular_smile

• Graymooth Petroleum have told us that they are very, very sorry that their drilling rig on Kowhai B allegedly broke their consented noise levels on one occasion and they promise they are doing all they can to remedy this situation. We are confident that this is the case because they even returned our wet bus ticket to us. The good news is that they have nearly finished this well and may shortly be moving their rig to the Stratford area which means it will no longer be our concern. sad_smile

• Tikorangi residents will be as thrilled as Council is that the Len Lye Centre has been given the green light. It is only because of Toad Energy’s wonderful generosity that this project is going ahead. In recognition of the special relationship between Toad and Tikorangi, residents will be guaranteed free entry to the new centre when it opens for a period of five years. regular_smile
• A few residents have suggested that Greymooth are not abiding by their declared number of light vehicles on their Kowhai B site. We are pleased to report that Greymooth have assured us that they are abiding by all conditions of their consent. We suggest that busybody residents who have counted up to 17 light vehicles parked in the two carparks at the same time should perhaps find something better to do with their time and get a real job. There are only six light vehicles a day travelling to the Kowhai B site. Similarly, Toad have assured us that they too are keeping strictly to the terms of their consent and there are only 8 light vehicles and 3 heavy vehicles driving on to their Mangahewa C site in any 24 hour period during drilling activities.

• regular_smile The next edition of the Tikorangi News will be called the Todger News after your council successfully negotiated a sponsorship deal with both Toad Energy and Greymooth Petroleum. This is good news because it means the special needs of Tikorangi will no longer be a drain on the other ratepayers of the district.

• Residents are reminded that they are best to contact the company concerned in the first instance when they have worries. This cuts out the middle man and companies can let us know what queries they have logged. We recently requested the logs from both Toad and Greymooth and were thrilled at the positive entries.
“Thanks so much for our awesome new road. Now we can speed down it at 120km an hour” said one Tikorangi East Road resident (Good news, Otaraoa Rd people. Roadworks will be starting in your area soon!)
“ Thanks guys for the generous gift of a hamper. My wife and I loved it. Now we no longer notice the sound of your generators and drilling rig at night.”
“Don’t take any notice of the carpers and moaners, guys. These few greenies are probably the same types who spend their time buggerising around on Facebook and besmirching the reputation of NLDC. We think you’re great. I will be back at work next week, by the way.”
It was wonderful to read so many positive comments and to know that the companies are taking such good care of you all.

• On a more serious note, Council is reducing the affected party zone for new sites to those people whose residences are 20 metres or less from the site. This brings it in line with the notional boundary ruling in the District Scheme where noise levels are monitored at a distance of 20 metres from the nearest neighbouring houses. Effects from this change should be less than minor and no parties will be adversely affected. The rural character of the area will not be changed by this minor amendment.

• Big thanks go to both companies and their active programme of retro fitting double glazing in houses where the owners do not even have affected party status. This is a wonderfully generous move on their part and one which they are under no obligation to make. regular_smile

• cry_smile We are acting on concerns raised by an elected councillor at a recent Council meeting regarding malcontents in Tikorangi “besmirching the reputation of the Council”. He suggested a public education programme might be required. Council categorically rejects any insinuation that this may be a case of shooting the messenger and is investigating models of re-education programmes pioneered in the Soviet gulags, the Chinese re-education through labour programmes and the Vietnamese voluntary relocation strategies of the 1970s. We are confident that any troublemaking dissidents in Tikorangi can and will be dealt with promptly and efficiently and will no longer be able to embarrass your council and to sully the reputation of Taranaki.

• Finally, in response to community concerns, we at New Lympouth District Council can assure Tikorangi residents that as far as disruption as a result of the petrochemical industry is concerned, we will leave no stone unturned in our quest to find where the buck stops. We think it may be with central government but we are mindful it may even be international – maybe WTO or OPEC.

• Kia kaha Tikorangi! And remember, you drive a car so you can’t complain. regular_smile

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Allotments and community gardens

The New Brighton community gardens

I concluded last week’s column on the lost gardens of Christchurch with the vibrant New Brighton Community Gardens.

I always follow allotments with interest when I visit the UK and I believe they are found in some Northern European countries too. They have been around for a long time. Apparently when people live in densely populated areas with little personal space, there are some for whom the urge to grow plants, usually vegetables, remains so strong that they will walk or drive to another space to satisfy that need.

Allotments with a million pound view at Gerrans in Cornwall

Traditionally our sections or plots of land in this country have been so generous that there was no need for allotments on public land. The quarter acre per family is quite sufficient for most. But of course the quarter acre section is on the way out, in our major cities at least. These days people are more likely to find themselves on an area half that size or less and much of the land will be taken up by the larger footprint of many modern houses.

Community gardens appear to find more favour with local authorities. The word “community” has a better ring to it than the individualism which is a part of the allotment, although in the UK many allotment areas operate somewhere in between. While they retain individual plots, a high level of interaction, cooperation and community can evolve – and with that, peer pressure to keep your allotment up to scratch.

No one system fits all. Community gardens fill a different niche. Everything is shared and participants or volunteers are required to work within that cooperative ethos. I don’t think it is a coincidence that community gardens are springing up through Christchurch – over 30 of them, I was told. In the aftermath of the quake, there is comfort in community at a very local level.

004 The New Brighton Community Gardens were created before the earthquakes but the coordinator, Catherine O’Neill, told me that interest had grown exponentially since those events and she now has around 100 volunteers registered. For two hours work a week in the gardens, they can take home free vegetables. This project goes way beyond just the gardens, though they are at the heart of it.

It is the site of a former sports club (croquet, then bowls if my memory serves me correctly), so it did come with a very handy building incorporating toilets, kitchen and a good sized meeting room. The building is used by other community groups as well as being a base for the gardening volunteers and related workshops.

On a sunny summer’s day, the gardens were a riot of colourful flowers and vegetables. There is so much more to it than mass producing utility cabbages and Catherine observed that they wanted them to be a place of beauty and colour as well. There is a growing recognition now that it makes good sense to inter-plant vegetables with flowers which can attract and feed beneficial insects but flowers also lift the spirits with a joy that it is hard for a carrot to manage.

A quaint bird house built by a volunteer at the New Brighton Community Gardens

This particular community garden has developed in infrastructure which includes a paid coordinator. Its success must lie in part with having found coordinators who have gardening skills, interpersonal skills and a strong sense of community. There must also be people in the background with good administrative and fund raising skills because there is a need for some outside funding. These things do not run themselves.

It will be interesting to see how the community gardens and allotments develop in the next decade or two in Christchurch. One aspect of the quake damage is the large number of plots of land which are likely to remain vacant for some time to come. While there is a certain amount of guerrilla gardening going on and some less guerrilla-like and more community-based (you can check out Greening the Rubble on line), will it be just a matter of time before residents spread their wings – or their patch of dirt in this case? There is a limit to how many green parks, gardens and street plantings rate-payers will want to pay for Council to maintain and it certainly won’t be taking in all the open space that is being created. In the new normality that Christchurch has forged, it is likely that some local residents will start expanding their gardening space.

The indefatigable gardener and garden writer, Di Madgin, told me that she would be needing an allotment when they move to their new house shortly because it is in an area of high density housing. She offered up what must surely be one of the most practical suggestions to combat the destructive nature of vandals where gardened areas are not attached to a house. Beehives. “A larrikin would never try to graffiti a beehive more than once,” she said.

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

The Lost Gardens of Christchurch

Behind every overgrown gateway, there is a personal story

I went to Christchurch last weekend.

It is very hard to grasp the sheer scale of what has happened in Christchurch when you don’t know the city well to start with and you are gaining most of your information from the mainstream media. That is not a criticism of the media. It is just that the biggest and most spectacular will get covered (such as the demolition of the CBD) or the most extreme (families still living in caravans or garages). In between lie tens of thousands of individual domestic stories of lives changed forever.

I stayed in an old part of the city, immediately beside a red zoned area alongside the Avon River and my evening strolls took me down streets which are to be cleared by July. The water level in the river has risen and these residential areas are deemed too high a risk to repair. It was poignant in the extreme.

Graffiti and vandalism abound

Initially there was a slight thrill of mystery and the classic children’s novel “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett kept coming to mind as I peered at overgrown gateways and glimpses of houses behind rampant foliage. These had been gardens tended down the years until the earthquakes. With no humans in residence any longer, the plants were taking over and there was a sense of wild abandon.

I quelled those sentimental thoughts very quickly. Behind every one of these gates, often hanging crookedly, behind every garden wall or fence – usually broken – lay a personal story of distress, probably of hardship and extreme dislocation. I just didn’t know the individual stories but I was embarrassed by my trite romanticism.

It was unbelievably haunting. Along River Road, maybe one house in ten was still occupied (though not for much longer now). A second house in every ten had already been demolished. The remaining eight were empty. Some were clearly damaged badly, others less so. But as the people move out, the vandals move in. There was graffiti everywhere on top of damage that was not always earthquake related. That edge of lawlessness and sense of only just holding the ugly side of humankind at bay adds to the feelings of tension and dislocation.

I imagine it is like London after the Blitz. There is no quick fix here. It will take 20 years before the new face of Christchurch takes over and entire generations will have been changed forever by the experience of living through the new normality that is life in that city.

So what happens to formerly loved suburban gardens that are abandoned?

Grass grows but rather than long, rank, greenish mix of grasses that we get in wetter climates, this is tinder dry and uniformly brown. The fire hazard is such that some properties with larger lawns have clearly had the grass cut, presumably with line trimmers, as a safety precaution.

Trees and shrubs survive and keep growing and flowering. But without a garden owner trimming them back, they encroach ever further, making passage difficult.

Wisterias were obviously much favoured and will survive no matter what. Unpruned, they are stretching out their tentacles in every direction, taking control. The same is true of ivy.

Hydrangeas and roses, growing ever larger, flower on.

Historic house sitting in limbo but the gorse and broom are staging a comeback in the central city

Only the toughest of perennials survive and probably sooner rather than later, the convolvulus will smother everything. That is if the perennial pink climbing pea doesn’t get there first. It was interesting to see gorse and broom moving back in to inner city locations. It is likely that this was the effect of liquefaction bringing long dormant seed to the surface because it must be many decades since these plants were grown in inner city Christchurch.

Formality and garden design disappears very quickly. It made me reflect that the whole notion of formal design is an imposition by humans on the natural landscape. Left to its own devices, nature moves straight back in and blurs all the hard edges before swamping them out altogether. In fact there are few right angles left anywhere in that area. Everything is dislocated and angled off the true and formerly straight lines waver, even on the roads.

The contrived water features just looked sad, tacky and derelict. They were bereft of any water. I guess the watertight seal on most had been broken when the ground heaved so violently and the long dry summers mean there is no accumulation of rain water.

It wasn’t actually depressing, more disconcerting to find a formerly pleasant and staid leafy suburb turned upside down.

To then visit the nearby New Brighton community gardens was like a breath of life with a vibrant community response to a shared crisis. Community gardens are sprouting like Topsy. I was told there are over 30 of them now throughout Christchurch but their story will have to wait for another day.

Roses flower on in formerly loved gardens, now abandoned

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

Gardening on a steep slope

Terracing allows for easier gardening after the initial cost and effort (but I think the steps are too steep to be comfortable)

I had a few days in Tauranga last week. It is always interesting for me, a country dweller, to stay in city suburbia. It reminds me that others garden in very different situations. In this case, I was staying with my sister who lives on a relatively steep hill and that certainly brings a whole new set of challenges for gardening.

If I was starting from scratch on a steep section, I would get wide steps in first and then start working around them in terms of the garden on the sides. Where space allows, wide steps look far more generous and remove much of the off-putting aspect of a steep slope.

Where space allows, wide steps look more generous and less onerous to climb

There are rules for garden steps. The DIY home owner often makes the mistake of getting the tread width and riser depths wrong. The riser is the vertical piece and the general advice is that in a garden situation, it should not be more than about 15cm. To balance that, the tread (or flat part of the step) should be about 30cm. That is a gentler gradient than indoor house stairs. There is plenty of information around on this topic and it pays to take notice. The hand hewn steps in my sister’s garden were probably the other way around and very difficult they were to negotiate as a result.

If you decide to do a zigzag path crossing your section rather than steps, take the time to get the path almost level crossways. Most of us have two legs the same length. It is not at all comfortable to limp along a path that slopes sideways as well as wending its way up or down a bank. I say almost level. You want your path to shed water sideways rather than channelling it down the length so you need just a slight gradient across. Get the spirit level out.

Once the steps or paths are in, you can then decide what you are going to do with the sides. It is difficult on a steep slope. If you are a serious gardener, you will probably want to put in terraces. If you don’t, you are going to destabilise the slope every time you dig into it and the rain will wash the soil downhill. It is also physically uncomfortable to work perched on a steep angle.

Just remember that if you terrace and sow lawns, you need to make it easy to get the lawnmower down. If it is too difficult, you will keep putting off mowing the grass.

Weed mat is never a good look

If you don’t want to tackle the effort and expense of terracing – the hard landscaping, retaining walls, finding topsoil to fill your terraced areas and the rest – you may choose to let nature take over your slope. One hopes not many of you will think it appropriate to clad your slope in ugly weedmat. That is a truly awful finish. In shaded areas, allowing ferns and mosses to colonise gives an attractive, natural look over time.

In sunny areas, you will need to give a helping hand. Whatever your opinion of agapanthus, it does a great job of retaining clay banks with the bonus of summer flowers. Alternatively, there are a range of sedums and sempervivens that you can plant and leave to smother a dry, sunny bank. Or you can establish our native iceplant (horokaka or Disphyma australe) which evolved to cope with these types of conditions. Renga renga lilies (arthropdium) prefer a little shade but will tolerate full sun and will grow in inhospitable soils.

A bare bank will erode so you need to stabilise it with something.

Professionals step fences to get them down slopes

I would also observe that fences can define your station in life. A DIY fence often follows the lie of the land, undulating its way down the hill. A professional fence steps its way down. That is all on that matter.

The DIY fence is often obvious by its undulating line, following the contours

I admit that I leaned on the decking railing at my sister’s house and looked at her steep section which runs down to a native bush reserve and then an estuary. I looked at my sister. Confine her gardening to the flatter, more accessible areas immediately by the house, I suggested, and let the lower slopes revert to bush. She will keep her lovely outlook without having to do major construction and continual garden maintenance on a difficult site. I think it likely she will heed my advice.

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

The Chelsea chop comes to New Zealand

Lobelia, phlox, campanula, aster, pensetemon and coreopsis – all candidates for the Chelsea chop here

We are fairly dedicated viewers of the long-running series BBC Gardener’s World. Of late it has been on free to air Choice TV (interspersed with huge quantities of advertising) and sometimes it turns up on the Living Channel. There was a programme that screened here last November which demonstrated the technique of the Chelsea chop. I tried it in a small way and will be doing a great deal more of it this coming year.

The Chelsea chop came by its name, apparently, because at the end of the annual Chelsea Flower Show, many surplus plants were returned to nurseries. These plants in full growth, nearing or at their peak, were often cut back hard. Presumably some were plants forced into early growth to peak for the show and that early growth can be leggy. Plants responded with greatly increased vigour and put on extended floral displays with much bushier and more compact shapes.

Thus did the term the Chelsea chop enter the lexicon of English gardening.

Right, I thought. Chelsea is towards the end of May which translates to November in our hemisphere. I headed out with the snips to experiment. It seemed extreme because I was cutting off flower stems which were already well advanced. In some cases, I cut half and left half. I can now report that it works and I will be doing a great deal more of it next spring.

Important points to note are that we are talking about perennials here, not shrubs or bulbs. You need to understand your perennials because it only works on varieties which repeat flower. If you snip the ones which only flower once, such as irises or aquilegias, you won’t get any flowers at all.

I tried it on perennial lobelias, sedums, penstemons and asters.

The unchopped lobelias have shot up their flower spikes to over 1.5 metres and they have promptly fallen over in the welcome rain this week. The plants I Chelsea chopped are only a few days behind in their stage of flowering but have tidy, sturdy stems about 50cm high. They are much better in the garden borders.

Sedum, left to its own devices and falling apart already

Many readers will understand when I complain about the sedums which grow brilliantly from such tidy rosettes at ground level but when they reach a certain point of being top heavy, they fall apart. The Chelsea chopped ones are a more compact and holding together at this stage.

I cut the asters because I didn’t want them to flower until late summer and they were threatening to do it too early. They are just opening now, on lovely bushy mounds of plant, and should take us into autumn.

I see the Telegraph website advice is to do it with Campanula lactiflora (which can get a bit too tall and fall over if you don’t stake it), rudbeckias, echinaceas and heleniums as well. Their writer advises to prune back by a third. Essentially it is a more extreme version of pinching out plants at their early stages to encourage bushier growth.

Perennial gardening is our current learning project here. We have been working on it for a few years now and the more we learn, the more we realise there is to learn. New Zealanders don’t have a great record in perennial or herbaceous gardening. We lean more to bunging them all in together in mixed borders, or working from a very limited palette in large swathes of the same plant.

Sedum, cut back last November and holding itself well. Flowering is unaffected

The mix and match approach to perennials is very English. They just do it so much better than anywhere else we have seen. Underpinning it (at its best) is a wealth of experience in successional flowering and good combinations. It is not just flower colour combinations, it is also compatible growth habits. This may be growing a naturally leggy plant (such as Campanula lactiflora) through a plant that is sturdy enough to support its leaning companion. It is making sure that a big voluptuous plant can’t flop all over a low growing, more retiring specimen. It is getting variations within the foliage as well as the flowers. It is getting the plant shapes right.

And it is not just peak flowering looking its best for three weeks of the year. It is understanding which combinations will take the garden through the season from spring to autumn, so as one finishes, another star takes centre stage. Judicious use of the Chelsea chop can extend the display, staggering flowering through the season.

There is a lot to it. No wonder people opt for mass plantings of the same plant. It is much easier. So too with the cottage garden which does not require the same level of skill. This type of intensive gardening is not to everybody’s taste but we are finding it interesting to learn. To be honest, I had not appreciated the skill that goes into putting in a really good planting of herbaceous material.

I will be doing my best impersonation of a garden hairdresser come this November. I will be out there snip, snip, snippin’ away.

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

Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Tikorangi News

Allotments and community gardens

The Lost Gardens of Christchurch

Gardening on a steep slope

The Chelsea chop comes to New Zealand

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