Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

A pedestrian matter

The chequer board approach (in need of a gravel top up)

The chequer board approach (in need of a gravel top up)

This morning’s column is for readers on low budgets or in mature gardens. Path surfaces. If you are on a new property which has been landscaped, or what passes for landscaping, odds on your paths are in place and are concrete. We just love the utility and endurance of concrete in this country.

New concrete dries to a somewhat startling white which is usually appropriate to a new build, but can look garish and out of place on an older property. It also leaches lime for the first few years so you are likely to have trouble growing plants such as rhododendrons and camellias alongside it. The foliage will go yellow on acid loving plants.

Aged concrete softened at the edge with prostrate thyme

Aged concrete softened at the edge with prostrate thyme

Because we have a fair amount of old concrete here, where we have chosen to go with extending concreted areas or new paths, we take the trouble to mask the new look. Adding colouring (black oxide) counteracts the whiteness. Once it is all smooth and starting to start dry, we spray a sugar and water solution over the top. That strips the smooth top layer and exposes the aggregate. Voila. The concrete looks aged from the start.

Were we English, we would have a tradition of flag stones and stone pavers. We are not, so they are a very expensive option. You can get a similar effect in concrete pavers which come already roughed up and coloured to give the overall impression of stone. It’s a good product. We have used it to pave a small courtyard and the same style of pavers were used in a modern outdoor dining area I featured on this page a fortnight ago. The larger sized pavers look better if you want the flagstone look. Ours are 600mm square.

I don’t recommend brick unless you live in a dry climate. Old bricks are porous which means they soak up moisture and retain it, enabling moss to grow very nicely thank you. Brick paths tend to be extremely slippery for much of the year and therefore hazardous. It is also difficult to get a relatively even surface and if you don’t construct a solid edging, the side bricks roll out.

Gravel paths are usually best retained with a solid edging to reduce spilling. We have used concrete sidings on ours. We like gravel paths. There is something satisfying about the scrunch as you walk along them and they are softer on the eye than unforgiving concrete. They are not as simple to install as they first look, however. You can’t just pile gravel onto the ground because the mud will rise from below. You need to excavate down to lay a compacted base course first before you top with your choice of gravel. For foot traffic, a 5cm base should be fine. Don’t lay the top gravel so thickly that it makes walking difficult. You also need to choose your gravel with care. Rounded stones can be like walking on marbles but you want a grade which is reasonably consistent (in other words it has passed through a screen) to look attractive.

Gravel can be quite difficult to keep looking smart without a leaf blower. We did it for years with a leaf rake to remove the build up of litter but it is labour intensive and doesn’t do a particularly thorough job. The leaf blower removes humus in a trice and we wondered why it took us so long to discover its merits. However it is a noisy and intrusive machine and your neighbours will come to dread it as much as your lawnmower. A certain amount of gravel will get blown into the surrounds too.

If you have a larger area to cover, placing pavers at regular intervals throughout a gravel area can add interest and style cheaply. To look good, measure the placement of the pavers to keep them regular and put them down before you lay the top layer of gravel.

We have not gone with wooden walkways at all. In our garden, they would make us look too much like an institutional or public garden (“the DOC look” as we call it). Having seen them elsewhere, I would comment that even corrugated decking timber can get slippery if it is wet for protracted periods or in shade areas and it can be particularly hazardous on slopes. There are non slip products you can buy to secure to your wooden paths or steps but they will add to the cost. If you are not a public garden, then I think wooden walkways tend to be a better aesthetic fit to a modern house with acres of timber decking.

Mulching the leaf litter for the most pleasant walking surface of all

Mulching the leaf litter for the most pleasant walking surface of all

In woodland areas, we keep a thick layer of natural mulch on paths and we shun hard edgings because we want a natural look. In the last few years, when we groom up for our annual spring garden festival, we have gone a step further and raked up the all the litter and fed it through the mulcher. What comes out is a consistent grade of anonymous brown mulch which we then rake back over the paths. It gives the softest and springiest surface to walk on. While it doesn’t compact down, it is remarkably durable as long as it doesn’t get washed away and it can be maintained with a leaf rake. It looks really good until autumn when we get both wind and fresh leaf drop so it is not a long term solution but it gives an attractive option for wooded areas without expenditure.

Some level of consistency is desirable. No matter what size your garden is, you probably don’t want to be using a whole range of different path surfaces. They don’t all have to be the same and paths can differentiate between high use, formal and informal areas. But the overall effect will usually be more cohesive if you can keep some level of uniformity.

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

The Terminator of the World of Weeds?

A free sample for review! The terminator of the weed world.

A free sample for review! The terminator of the weed world.

It is not in the job description for garden writers that freebies are included. In all my years of garden writing, excluding books for review, I could count such things on the fingers of one hand. I only mention this because I once found out that the wine writer for a provincial newspaper received boxes of samples to his door. I was so jealous.

Imagine my excitement when something arrived. Even more excitable was the accompanying publicity sheet which proclaimed “hasta la vista” to weeds when using (wait for the drum roll) Weed Weapon. Yes folks, I had a convenient spray bottle of weed killer in my hands.

First up, let us be clear. Despite the name of the company that produces this product being Kiwicare, which sounds so wholesome, there is nothing organic about it. It is a new twist on an old standby which is glyphosate (formerly sold only as RoundUp). Forty years of experience tell us that of all the herbicides around, glyphosate is as close to safe as you can get. It could be argued that it has revolutionised the way we think about gardening and lowered our tolerance for weeds. Glyphosate has often been described as the equivalent of a labour unit because you can whip around with a knapsack on your back and cover a large area very quickly.

We use glyphosate here and Mark has always dreaded the day that it may be found dangerous because we could not maintain the standard we want in our garden without it. He has kept an eye on the research and there is no hard evidence that it is damaging or dangerous. This is because it does not accumulate and it breaks down very rapidly on contact with soil or water. It does not cause cancers, it does not appear to harm insect life and basically you would have to swallow a fair amount of it undiluted to cause yourself any harm.

It was a very different story with earlier weed killers. Paraquat was and still is used in some quarters as an alternative to glyphosate. It knocks down plants within hours of application and its environmental bill of health is not too bad. It is also the main tool with which to commit suicide in third world countries because it is cheap, readily available, has no antidote and you need very little in order to cause a deeply unpleasant death. Its dermal toxicity (in other words the ability to be absorbed through the skin) is very high which makes it dangerous for gung-ho home gardeners.

Back to Weed Weapon, which gives the quick hit of Paraquat, apparently without the dangers. One of the problems with glyphosate is that it takes a long time to be sucked into the plant’s system and to kill it. This is temperature related so it can be about seven days in summer and anything up to three weeks in the depths of winter. In that time, some weeds have the capacity to set viable seed. Weed Weapon’s active ingredient remains glyphosate, at 7.2 grams per litre. As far as I can see from Monsanto’s website, this is at the weaker end of dilution rates best suited to quick growing annual weeds and grasses. What makes the difference is the combination with saflufenacil which is a recent addition to the weedkiller range. It is this that gives the knockdown, browning effect on weed leaves within hours. I did a bit of a search on this saflufenacil but the papers Google pulled up were all highly technical and well beyond my very limited high school science. The publicity from Kiwicare blinded me further with science (Protoporphyrinogen Oxidase inhibitor) but it will have been approved for sale by the appropriate New Zealand authorities. It is claimed that it is biodegradable in soil. I mention this because we know glyphosate is but sometimes, when different chemicals are combined, the result can be less predictable than just the sum of the parts.

At least the pesky equisetum is dying

At least the pesky equisetum is dying

What I can tell you is that Weed Weapon in its ready to use form is perhaps worryingly easy to use. It comes in a squirty bottle like window cleaner. It requires an accurate aim because if you catch other plants, you may kill them too. It certainly knocks down most plants quickly – the dying process is visible within hours. You will be paying for convenience. It retails for around $20 for a one litre squirt bottle. For me, its most useful application is killing out a nasty, invasive equisetum which wriggles out between rock walls but resists being pulled out with its roots. Paraquat users would be well advised to swap to this safer option.

If you are going to use it, you should always wear gloves and not just gardening gloves as shown on the little pic on the back of the pack. Most gardening gloves are absorbent to some degree. You should be using rubber, plastic or latex gloves which you can buy at the supermarket. While it may well be relatively safe to use with low dermal toxicity, good practice says to take precautions. Wearing impermeable gloves is one and never spraying on a windy day is another.

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

The outdoor dining and entertaining conundrum

A well designed outdoor dining area at Foreman's garden in Lepperton - and well under 20 paces from the kitchen

A well designed outdoor dining area at Foreman’s garden in Lepperton – and well under 20 paces from the kitchen

We live in a house which was built in 1950, long before “indoor outdoor flow” was ever conceived of and there is no doubt that we lack it. At one time, I had ideas to rectify this and went as far as getting concept plans drawn by an architect. The estimate of $100 000 for the work was a bit of a disincentive so we did not proceed, for which I am now relieved.

The latest House and Garden magazine has an article on the renovation of a Wellington property where the owner is quoted as saying: “We didn’t want to open the front of the house to the weather because, if we did, we’d all get blown away. We designed our house as an interior home, not an exterior one. Wellington is not a sit-outside sort of environment.” Actually, much of this country is not best suited to outside entertaining, at least when it comes to evening dining. Witness the plethora of fire pits, gas heaters and outdoor fireplaces. But you would not think that to look at modern design in houses and gardens.

One of the properties featured in the new book “Contemporary Gardens of New Zealand”, shows an outdoor dining area on an exposed platform with no shelter or shade and down a flight of 37 steps. Or it may be 39. I bet they never use it. Who wants to dash up so many steps to get the dipping sauce you forgot, or the serving spoon? Make that glass of wine last because the first to finish gets to climb the steps to the house to get another bottle or two. If the owners leave the dirty dishes on the table until the next morning, the neighbours will be able to see and judge. That particular property has a second outdoor eating area immediately by the house so you can be pretty sure that is the one they use.

Oft times, home owners place seating and entertaining areas too far from the service areas. I paced it out and think that few people would want their outdoor eating area more than 20 paces from the kitchen. It becomes inconvenient and if it is inconvenient, you won’t use it much. I’ve seen too many summer houses placed where they will create a focal point in the garden but they are just in the wrong place for use. Unless you have servants at your beck and call (and children are an unreliable substitute), save your money and make a focal point in some other way.

Most of us will wander a little further with just a cup of coffee in hand, but again if your seating areas are beyond about 30 paces from the electric jug or fridge, you are not likely to use them for morning teas or evening drinks. Even more than gazebos, garden seats are often stationed as focal points rather than for use. Never is this more obvious than when it is but one gaily painted chair. I think that seats need to be placed where you will use them, not used as de facto garden ornaments.

Just our glorified porch but an indication to me of how well used a garden room could be

Just our glorified porch but an indication to me of how well used a garden room could be

Garden rooms are my preferred solution after noticing these in a number of English gardens. These differ from gazebos and summer houses in that they have the capacity for more protective walls. There are times when just a roof is not enough to keep the situation pleasant enough to linger longer. Most of us find eating outdoors very pleasant in the right conditions and it can also make for more relaxed entertaining. After all, gardens are best enjoyed when you are out amongst them, not viewed from house windows so a charming and versatile garden room situated not more than 20 paces from my kitchen would be lovely addition. With some forethought and investigation, it could be so much more than just a free standing conservatory or a trellised gazebo. In the meantime, we make do with a comfortable outdoor dining suite beneath a large sun umbrella which is good for daytime use when there are more than just the two of us, but not so good for long evenings, even in summer. The closest we get to a garden room and the reason I know one would be well used, is our favoured sitting spot which we use all year round and at all times of the day. It is enclosed on three sides but completely open to the garden. It is just a glorified front porch and it only fits two comfortably but I think it is a pointer in the right direction for my choice of a garden entertaining area.

My all time favourite garden room from the Alhambra in Granada but it may look a tad pretentious here

My all time favourite garden room from the Alhambra in Granada but it may look a tad pretentious here

I leave you with the very best example of a garden room or gallery that I have seen. It might look just a little pretentious in my garden, it being of Moorish origin dating back to the tenth century and located in a palace at the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, Spain. But can you imagine entertaining in that space and glorying in your garden surrounds?

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

The vexing issue of underplanting

A row of alternating annuals makes a statement, though it may not be the statement the gardener is aiming for

I had a day out and about looking at gardens recently and I was struck by the nature of under planting, though this preoccupation may have had more to do with my thoughts at the time. What I noticed about the under planting was how badly it was done in a couple of gardens. Bear with me, dear readers. You are going to have to imagine it because I know the garden owners so I was not going to whip out m’camera and take photos of the worst examples to embarrass them in the newspaper and on line.

Words like mishmash and hodgepodge came to mind as I looked at the bottom layer of plants in otherwise perfectly competent gardens. In other words, they had good upper layers of larger plants but when it came to the bottom layer of ground covers and under plantings, the selection criterion seemed solely that the plant should not reach more than 30cm in height. And there was one of this, one of that and one of the other, bunged in higgledy piggledy in most spaces.

Even worse, and I had to visit my local garden centre to set up a photo to demonstrate, is the horror of alternating annuals in a row along the edge. These certainly make a statement in the garden, though it may not be the statement that the gardener thinks when he or she plants them. I saw something similar (maybe with pansies and alyssum?) looking incongruous in a garden with otherwise high quality woody trees and shrubs and there were not any resident children to justify such a lapse in taste.

Nor am I a fan of edging plants, or indeed anything planted in rows other than proper hedges or vegetables, but that is a matter of style and personal taste. Fringes of mondo grass, liriope or anything else leave me cold but edging rows of matched annuals make me raise my eyebrows. Not even moderately tasteful white petunias cut the mustard when planted as an edging.

The contemporary look is to plant in blocks. The landscaper look is to plant in sharply defined geometric blocks each comprised of only one evergreen plant. Clivias are good, renga renga lilies are a bit untidy. Hellebores are probably acceptable, as is liriope or trachelospermum. Natives like prostrate muehlenbeckia are better.

Bergenia ciliata and Siberian irises – this gardener’s version of block planting

The middle ground is to gently block-plant but in more interesting combinations and in less rigidly defined grids. I am far more comfortable with that approach and it makes gardening interesting to play with different combinations. It also has advantages in making maintenance easier to group plants which require more frequent care – such as dead heading, staking, dividing, or grooming. Rectifying mistakes or bad decisions including eliminating invasive thugs is more localised if you are planting in blocks. I tend to blur the edges of my block plantings so that the overall look is softer and less delineated because that suits our style of gardening better. There is no doubt that if the upper layers of the garden are varied and mixed, some sort of unity in the bottom layer creates a more harmonious picture. I would argue that the flip side of the coin is also true: if your upper layers are rigidly conformist and consist of restrained plantings of only one or two different plants, ringing the changes with more complex and varied under plantings will make it a great deal more interesting.

Acceptable clivias

If you don’t want to go the block planting route, the old fashioned cottage garden genre may be an alternative. Essentially this is a jostle of perennials, annuals and bulbs in combination with small shrubs, often roses, where self seeding is encouraged. If you want a more modern look, you colour tone it rather than the traditional riot of random colour that nature achieves. If you like a tidy garden which is weed free, it is not an easy style to manage well. More often it is best viewed in passing, rather than looking at the detail.

Then, of course, you could ask yourself whether under planting is even necessary in some areas. The requirement that all garden beds and borders be layered with nary a glimpse of garden soil is relatively recent. In times past, it was fine to plant shrubs and trees without any bottom layer at all. It was called a shrubbery. Just don’t plant the shrubs too close together or you end up with a hedge. Each shrub needs to stand in its own space. As nature abhors a vacuum, mulch all the bare earth with something anonymous or you will grow a carpet of weeds. It is certainly easier to maintain than more complex plantings. It will probably look more attractive than the hodge podge assemblage of random plants I saw. It should look classier than the row of alternating annuals. Maybe it is time to start a movement called The Shrubbery Revival. Neo-shrubberies, maybe?

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

Modernist gardening, modern gardens and contemporary design


I felt as if I was looking at a parallel universe as I browsed “Contemporary Gardens of New Zealand”.

In fact, I think that the book is incorrectly named. It might be more accurately titled: “The Modernist Revival in New Zealand Garden Design”. The dominant impression is that the contemporary garden in this country is hard-edged design stripped of colour and plantsmanship. Who needs more than griselinia, nikau palms, corokia, strelitizia (the bird of paradise plant), xeronema (Poor Knights lily) and trachelospermum (star jasmine)? Yes, I know that is over simplifying, but most of the gardens included in the book use a very limited range of plants.

Modernist gardening has its roots in 1930s garden design. In fact, if you look back at some of those early examples, they would still look cutting-edge today. But it is only one style and the mistake is to think that modernism as a movement is synonymous with modern and therefore contemporary.

I would argue that modern gardening in this country goes well beyond the modernist revival style. How can anyone write about modern gardening without discussing the huge resurgence in interest in the edible garden? There is a distinct trend returning to utilitarianism usually seen in times of war and food shortage, where the growing of plants for ornamental purposes was seen as frivolous and every plant should be edible. These edible gardens, even when dressed up as potagers, don’t look contemporary and don’t photograph as well, but they are a definite modern trend.

Similarly, we are witnessing a movement against the chemical intervention of the last few decades. Call it organics, call it ecology, or naturalistic gardening, even sustainability – all reflect a rejection of the gardening values of the previous generation and a concern for harmony in nature. The modernistic gardens in the aforementioned book all play lip service to the idea of a “strong sense of place”, being “deeply respectful of the unique location”, the context – to the extent that I somewhat uncharitably started to think of all the Miss Universe contestants who give 60 second speeches about wanting world peace and homes for fluffy kitties. I would argue that at least some of those gardens demonstrated man’s imposition of rigid symmetry and entirely unnatural monocultures which is in fact the opposite of a harmony with place.

Most people actually like flowers

Most people actually like flowers

What is difficult to believe is that a garden genre which strips colour, seasonality and flowers from the garden is ever going to be more than a passing trend which appeals to a minority, most of whom are not gardeners themselves. There is next to no pink in this book on contemporary gardens, nothing voluptuous or even pretty. At its best, it is all terribly sculptural. If the owners want to have flowers indoors, most of them will be buying them from the flower shop. In my experience, most people like flowers and colour in their garden. And while seasonal change is messy, it is also what gladdens the heart for many.

The Foreman Garden in Lepperton

The Foreman Garden in Lepperton

I visited two local gardens last week which I would describe as modern or contemporary examples. Both are the creations of younger woman who are very keen gardeners and both are beautifully maintained and represent a great deal of time, thought and skill. The first was an example of green and brown austerity with a very limited range of plants, which has its origins in the modernist style though I found the use of curves to be more sympathetic to the surrounding countryside than hard edged symmetry. The total package of “the look” was what mattered and it was clearly designed to be as static as is possible when working with living plants. It was well executed and I can enjoy looking at such a garden, even if it is not to my personal taste.

La Rosaleda - photo credit Jane Dove Juneau

La Rosaleda – photo credit Jane Dove Juneau

The second garden was equally beautifully executed but could not be more different. It was an over the top riot of flowers, particularly roses, where the owner wields total control over the colour scheme and every plant combination represents thought. But pastel. Indubitably pastelle, with the most refined colour transitions throughout the garden. That love affair with the romance of pastel colour and the rejection of primary hues harks back to the Edwardian rejection of the garish Victorian gardens. It is incredibly pretty, feminine and romantic and in its most recent incarnation, is just as contemporary as the modernist garden design.

Landscapers are a breed apart from gardeners. That is not a value judgement. They are just on a different path, as indeed are plantspeople who have no interest in design but find the botanical detail of different plants fascinating. Both landscapers and plantspeople have their own unique language which sets them apart, accords them a higher plane is some eyes. In the middle are the gardeners who try to bring together both the design and the plants.

That said, there was one garden in the book that rendered me awestruck. It was the work of Queenstown landscape architect, Paddy Baxter and the location was in a remote area on the flanks of the Remarkables. It was not pretty, it was not conventional. It used pretty much all local native plants and it was the most exquisite example of anchoring a residence into its environment by sensitive landscaping. That was a very fine example of one type of contemporary garden.

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