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Abbie’s newspaper columns

More bad Penguin

Stop Press
Penguin NZ have issued an immediate recall of all copies of this book.

Slight sense of deja vu here - side by side

Slight sense of deja vu here - side by side

There was a bit of a problem with the first version of the Tui NZ FRUIT Garden by Sally Cameron, published by Penguin NZ. In fact it was clearly quite a large problem, given that Penguin ordered an immediate recall within a few days of its release. It’s usually called plagiarism – rather too much cut and paste from copyrighted sources without acknowledgment. It was the third such embarrassing incident in quick succession for this publisher, the highest profile being Witi Ihimaera’s work, The Trowenna Sea. No matter. Publishers closed ranks and I was on a National Radio panel where other professionals explained that it was all the author’s fault and none of this could possibly be blamed on the maligned publisher.

To my astonishment, Penguin NZ, with the backing of their sponsor Tui Garden, ploughed ahead using the same author to rewrite the book and a year later they issued a second edition which was substantially different. No better, mind, but different and minus the sections which appeared to have been plagiarised.

Would you not think that both Penguin NZ and Tui Garden would have put the first book by the same author in the same series – The Tui NZ VEGETABLE Garden – under the microscope at the same time? I reviewed it when it came out in 2009 and I was far too kind. In my defence, all I can say is that it seemed markedly better than the other book which I was reviewing alongside it. When faced with the FRUIT book a year later, I questioned whether the earlier VEG book might suffer from similar problems related to cutting and pasting other people’s work. I even cited the garlic entry and gave its source as a copyright website belonging to somebody else.

Given the obvious inexperience of the author, did nobody involved think it warranted a closer look? We are talking the same book series, same author (Sally Cameron), same sponsor (Tui), same publisher (Alison Brook for Penguin), same editor (Catherine O’Loughlin). When the author is already under scrutiny, in the dock so to speak, it is difficult to believe that others involved can dump all the blame on her a second time.

It was only ever going to be a matter of time before somebody noticed. And two weeks ago, somebody identified a primary source for the Tui NZ VEGETABLE Garden and posted the following comment on my website:
“Not only has Dr D G Hessayon ripped off Sally Cameron’s Tui NZ Vegetable Garden, chapter and verse, but, he also had the temerity to do it four years prior to Sally being published.
Is it OK to lift entire chapters of books if you include a reference to that book at the end? Hope so, ‘cos I’m just finishing my book “Great Expectations” with a small reference at the back to Mr C Dickens.”

Dr Hessayon's book may look a little old fashioned but is packed full of information and is a best seller - for British gardners

Dr Hessayon's book may look a little old fashioned but is packed full of information and is a best seller - for British gardners

My informant was working from a more recent copy of a source publication, “The New Vegetable and Herb Expert”. English horticulturist and bestselling author, Dr Hessayon actually published his book a good ten years before Sally Cameron produced hers. It took me mere minutes to track down a copy on Trade Me. I think I paid $12 for it plus P&P and it arrived in the mail this week.

Well. Oopsy. How many examples are sufficient?

1) On turnips: Hessayon: Round is not the only shape for these Early turnips – there are also flat and cylindrical ones. There is not much variation in the globular Maincrop types sown in summer, but you can choose the yellow-fleshed Golden Ball. (page 105)
Cameron: Round is not the only shape for these early turnips – there are also flat and cylindrical ones – but there is not much variation in the globular maincrop types sown in summer. (page 174 and one can do a side by side match for much of pages 174 and 175).

2) On Brussels sprouts: Hessayon: Birds are a problem – protect the seedlings from sparrows and the mature crop from pigeons. Hoe regularly and water the young plants in dry weather. The mature crop rarely needs watering if the soil has been properly prepared…. (pages 34-5)
Cameron: Birds are a problem. Protect the seedlings from sparrows and pigeons that will eat the mature crops. (Which type of pigeons, Sally?) If scarecrows don’t work, hang cutlery from a clothes hanger. (That suggestion does appear to be a Cameron original). … Hoe around the plants regularly and water the young plants in dry weather. The mature crop rarely needs watering if the soil has been properly prepared….( page 70 -71)

Even the instructions for picking are eerily identical.
Hessayon: Begin picking when the sprouts (‘buttons’) at the base of the stem have reached the size of a walnut and are still tightly closed. Snap them off with a sharp downward tug or cut them off with a sharp knife.
Cameron: Begin picking the sprouts at the base of the stem when they have reached the size of a walnut and are still closed. Snap them off with a sharp downward tug or cut them off with a sharp knife.

Similar problems exist with broccoli, celeriac, Jerusalem artichoke, the aforementioned garlic and more and I cannot claim to have done anything near a complete analysis. Given that the problems appear to be of a similar magnitude to the first version of the FRUIT book which was recalled, will we be looking at a recall of the VEG book? Maybe Tui Garden might consider whether it is a good look being affiliated to a book which claims to give good advice to New Zealand gardeners when a fair swag of it seems to have come from a book for British gardeners.

Lightning, it appears, can strike twice in the same place. It just beggars belief that editor, publisher and sponsor all appear to have failed to factor that in to their considerations.

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

Version 1 at the top, version 2 at the bottom. Just Tony Murrell's photo has disappeared from the cover though the content was substantially rewritten

Version 1 at the top, version 2 at the bottom. Just Tony Murrell's photo has disappeared from the cover though the content was substantially rewritten

The ongoing saga (and it is developing into a saga):

1) The review of the second edition of the fruit book: The Sequel – a second coming for the Tui NZ Fruit Garden

2) Does credibility and reputation count for nothing these days, or does Penguin just think we have short memories? (written upon hearing that Penguin and Tui were using the same author to rewrite the fruit book)

3) The story that started it all and that is currently the second most read article on my website, still receiving hits every day: The Tui NZ Fruit Garden – dear oh dear

4) The lead story on the Taranaki Daily News which broke the first plagiarism story. Since then I have parted company from the Daily News and moved to the Waikato Times.

5) The original review of the Tui NZ Vegetable Garden, which was far too kind and is now embarrassing to me as a reviewer. But I leave it in place because it is a good reminder – and I am considerably more thorough at reviewing garden books in NZ than many others. The Tui book did look better than the other one I was reviewing at the same time – but it, at least, was actually written by the author, based on her experience (however limited it was). Separating the genuine enthusiasts from candyfloss fashion gardening

6) The Tui NZ Flower Garden I merely add this one to complete the set. I declined to review the companion volume on kid’s gardening but I did review the flower book (same series but different author). I would not for one minute suggest that this volume suffers from plagiarism, not at all. It could only be original, for reasons which may be obvious if you read the review.

Summer is for lilies

Auratum lilies in the summer border

Auratum lilies in the summer border

Flowers mark the seasons for gardeners. To us, autumn means nerines. Winter is for camellias, late winter brings snowdrops, bluebells and magnolias. Spring means rhododendrons and cherry trees. And summer? Lilies are the flowers of summer.

Not roses. They look wonderful in late spring but by the time summer arrives, the roses are past their best. They tend to be happier in drier climates with low humidity, often with the advantage of cold winters to kill greeblies and fungi. To keep them looking good in warm, moist climates with high humidity requires a rigorous spray programme and good management. It can be done but we don’t do it.

But the lilies need no such fuss and they reward us with masses of blooms throughout the summer season, though to have a succession of them, you need to grow a range of different types. Fortunately there are plenty to choose from. There are well over 100 different species and that does not include the hybrids. Nor will I sidetrack onto plants that are referred to as lilies by name but are not lilies by nature – zantedeschia or arum lily, gloriosa or climbing lily, let alone daylilies and waterlilies.

We start with what we call the Christmas lily which is Lilium regale. It is a fragrant trumpet lily from China which is flushed deep red on the backs of the petals and is usually in flower for me to pick for the Christmas table. If you are thinking of a pure white Christmas lily (much favoured by florists), you are probably referring to Lilium longiflorum which hails from Japan. The renowned madonna lily, with its pure white trumpets, is yet another species (candidum) from southern Europe but it is distressingly prone to virus.

The Aurelian lilies are an earlier flowering favourite

The Aurelian lilies are an earlier flowering favourite

Dovetailing with the Christmas lily, we have some lovely, sweetly scented trumpet lilies of the Aurelian type. These are a personal favourite. I love the soft honey apricot and lemon colours of the ones we have here and they are easy to grow in a garden border. Like most lilies, they pick well.

The tiger lilies lack scent but are easy to grow

The tiger lilies lack scent but are easy to grow

The tiger lilies are pretty common and dead easy to grow but they lack scent, which can be a bit of a disappointment. If you can overlook that deficiency and you garden with orange tones, these lilies are perfect in mixed plantings. They rarely need staking and after flowering, the foliage dies down pretty quickly. The petals are described as reflex – in other words they curve backwards, not unlike a crown. There are a number of other lilies with this flower form (referred to as Turk’s cap lilies because they resemble a Turkish headpiece), but the tiger lily is in fact Lilium lancifolium, sometimes referred to as Lilium tigrinum. We don’t find the proper Turk’s caps (being L. martagon) anywhere near as easy to grow. If you know someone with tiger lilies, they produce masses of tiny bulbs (called bulbils) on the lower stem and these will reach flowering size in a couple of years.

All these lilies are but the prelude to the extended display we get from the astounding auratums. I wrote about these in Plant Collector over a month ago, the wonderful golden rayed lilies of Japan. They are still in full flight here and a major feature of the summer garden. They are big. They are beautiful. They are very fragrant. One might consider they are a bit over the top – but never vulgar. If planted by a path, they will need staking to stop every passerby being touched with golden pollen. Similarly, when a clump gets too congested, they will be inclined to fall over, unless staked. In garden borders or beds of tidy, compact little plants, the auratums will look out of place. But in big borders with big plants, they are superb. For us, they are the number one flower of summer.

The final flurry for the season comes from the late summer Lilium formasanum, which geographically inclined readers will understand means that these are indigenous to Taiwan. This is another scented trumpet type, predominantly white often flushed rosy pink on the petal backs, generally unfussy and commonly seen in gardens. Formasanum will seed down readily (too readily, some say, but we have never found it a problem) and grow even in semi shade and open woodland areas of the garden. It will flower in just its second year from seed. It makes a particularly good garden subject because its foliage is light and fine so it is not too intrusive in the dying down stages and it does not usually need staking.

I pick lilies to bring indoors. I love the way just one stem can scent an entire room for many days on end. Lilies produce the leaves and the flowering stem all on the same spike. It is important to remember when picking that you must leave sufficient stem and foliage for the bulb to continue photosynthesizing. This is how it builds up enough strength for it to flower again next year.

Lily pollen can stain badly. I am guessing florists carefully brush the pollen from each stamen, being careful not to allow any to fall and mark the petals. I nip off the pollen coated tips, leaving the central stamen. It seems a shame but I know from experience that I do not want to be trying to get pollen stains off carpet and upholstery. You have to keep doing it as buds open in the vase but it is a small price to pay for one of the very best cut flowers I can think of. (See comment below – rethinking these actions now.)

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

Auratum lilies with lobelias

Auratum lilies with lobelias

Lunar planting – your very own personal organiser

Mark has had A Revelation. If he turns around three times in an anticlockwise direction in front a pot of fresh sown seed, the seed germinates and grows more rapidly. He is fairly sure this has something to do with channelling cosmic energy and just to prove it, he is going to sow two pots at the same time but hide one around the corner so it can’t see his actions. He is confident that the seed that has received the special attention will grow better and this experiment will give conclusive scientific proof.

Silly? Of course.

We have been looking at planting by the moon, in an attempt to see if there is any independent evidence to back up the claims. We are seeing lunar gardening being featured ever more widely in this country, almost to the point of becoming mainstream. Is there any scientific foundation to it? Not that we could find. Well, there is the work by Nicholas Kollerstrom but there is a bit of a credibility gap with him – he being best known as a leading Holocaust denier. Beyond that, it is all affirmation, testimonial and anecdote.

We could comprehend the theory that the times when the moon’s gravitational pull is at its strongest are the best times for plant growth. I don’t say we believed, but we could understand it. What we failed entirely to get a grip on was why this meant you could ONLY plant at this time for best results. Some seeds can take a long time to germinate. If you planted them two weeks early (when the gravitational pull is weaker), what is to stop them just sitting there waiting until the time is right? Why are they allegedly so disadvantaged when compared to seed planted 14 days later at the right phase of the moon? Logically, should not the gravitational pull be a deadline, not a tight time frame? We also failed to get to grips with the differentiation between the positive forces of a waxing moon and the negative forces of a waning moon when the gravitational pull is roughly equal at various stages.

There is a fair amount of wiggle room. There does not seem a definitive source of guidance so beyond the principles of gravitational pull and the lunar influence on tides, most other interpretations appear to be flexible. Some claim that you should only water on a waxing moon, others that if you mow your lawns or clip your hedges in the last quarter, you will slow regrowth. This might be termed residual effect? It appears that timing is everything and we can indelibly affect the long term behaviour and subsequent performance of plants based simply on the exact timing of planting, pruning and other gardening activities.

It didn’t get any better when we delved further. Fertile and barren days are apparently linked to the zodiacal belt. You know, the signs of the zodiac. That is astrology and you have to be of a certain ilk to take astrology seriously in your daily life.

We came to the conclusion you have to be a believer. Planting by the moon in modern times has more to do with pagan moon worship than scientific fact. And it arouses great passion and devotion amongst followers, a sense of belonging and a belief that all will go well – as long as you follow the rules.

Ancient practice alone is not validation. We are so selective in our use of history. Fortunately we no longer think that sacrificing the odd virgin or two will bring better harvests. In the days before calendars and clocks, it is likely that the ancients did indeed use the moon’s phases to determine planting times, along with other factors like day length, temperature change and seasonal rainfall. Productivity and harvests have long been wrapped up with religion and both the moon and the sun were objects of veneration. How curious that moon worship has persisted in this form and remains a major source of spiritual inspiration.

And yet, just as the outcome of biodynamic practices can be sound organic land management no matter how flaky some of the underpinning rules appear to be, so too can planting by the moon have beneficial outcomes. As far as we can see, it is the perfect tool for people who need deadlines to get themselves organised and motivated. “You must plant this carrot seed within the next three days or you will have to wait another month by which time it will be too late.” You obediently follow instructions. Whereas the non believer procrastinates and delays, thinking there is still plenty of time, so often doesn’t get around to planting the seed at all. Lunar planting is your own personal organiser but, as far as we can see, it does not actually have anything to do with the moon’s gravitational pull.

Organics, biodynamics, permaculture, planting by the moon – these are all ways of encouraging sound gardening practices which enhance the environment rather than harming it. I just wish some of the proponents and their devoted followers didn’t feel the need to use pseudo science to try and justify what are sometimes faith-based gardening systems.

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

Photos for this article here have been sourced from Wiki Commons. Photo credit for lunar eclipse time lapse: A. Skorochod.

From big picture gardening to small picture detail

Ours is not a rockery for growing alpines

Ours is not a rockery for growing alpines

My mission to weed our stream and ponds, about which I wrote last week, has been subsumed. That is to say it has largely been taken over by the menfolk in my life and turned into something much larger but I am not complaining. I was trying to clear the water weed. They are now building an additional weir, flushing the stream and hiring a sludge pump to clear the ponds. I know my limits. I have moved up from the park and into the rockery.

Moving from the open areas to the intimacy of the rockery is going from one extreme to another. The former is big picture gardening and much concerned with giving large trees space to grow and anchoring the whole picture well into the surrounding environs. This used to be called borrowed views and vistas before those terms became so pretentious they fell into naffdom. The rockery is all about little pictures, highly detailed gardening. I wouldn’t be without either, but I really enjoy the attention the rockery requires.

Traditionally, rockeries were about creating an environment that resembled scree slopes of mountains in order to grow alpines. We cannot grow alpines. We’ve tried but it doesn’t work. Our high humidity, high rainfall and mild year-round temperatures conspire against alpines. For us the rockery has become the place to keep track of treasures and to confine dangerous but attractive bulbs. Most gardeners know how easy it is to lose bulbs in garden borders. Some get swamped out by neighbouring plants, some are so anonymous when dormant that they get pulled out with other plants, some just seem to go, we know not where. If they have their own pocket in the rockery, it is possible to label their location and restrict competition.

Rockery conditions are surprisingly harsh. All that stone and other hard material heats up in summer so the soil dries out quickly. The gentle, steady rain we had last week didn’t penetrate very far. This means you have to be pretty selective about small shrubs, perennials and other plants but the bulbs don’t usually mind. In the wild, most are used to marginal conditions.

Too much of a good thing - Cyclamen hederafolium with black mondo grass

Too much of a good thing - Cyclamen hederafolium with black mondo grass

Two summers ago, I took the rockery apart pocket by pocket. At the time, I estimated there were about 500 separate compartments and it took me a full month’s work. At least I got to know it and all its inhabitants. This time I am only concentrating on the messy bits and the areas where plants responded a little too enthusiastically to the earlier renovation. The combination of black mondo grass and pink Cyclamen hederafolium is very pretty, especially as snowdrops come through the marbled foliage of the cyclamen in the depths of winter. But you can have too much of a good thing and all three inhabitants were trying to outcompete each other. I am thinning them drastically.

To garden in this style, you have to be willing to tolerate the messy season bulbs have, when their foliage is looking past its best. Most bulbs use the time after flowering to build strength below ground so they can flower again next year. When they have done that, their foliage dies down naturally. With some, this is a quick turnaround. Others, like nerines and colchicums, take many months. We just try and ensure that other areas of the rockery have more attractive displays to distract the viewer and leave the plants to their natural cycle.

I used to think that every pocket of the rockery should have something of interest in it all the time. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds because you then need to use a succession of maybe four different plants which can co-exist quite happily – and each compartment should have different combinations. In other words, for me this would be getting on for 500 miniature gardens. Rockeries are no place for mass planting. I flagged that idea – too hard and not necessary. Some compartments will have periods of the year when they appear empty and that is fine as long as there are no weeds. There is no place for any weeds at all in this intensive style of gardening.

Ours is an aged example – sixty years to be precise. We have some fine, gnarly, old, characterful dwarf conifers to give year round structure along with some smaller growing cycads (though somebody forgot to tell the handsome Cycas revoluta to stop growing). We have a few easy care, small perennials to soften the edges. A compact little blue campanula is one of the best of these along with a well behaved little scutellaria. We like the tall punctuation marks of some plants drifted through the rockery. The upright orange-toned orchid, Satyrium coriifolium, is the choicest one. The large flowered yellow Verbascum creticum seeds down gently to give the statement in late spring and the amaranthus (Love Lies Bleeding), similarly self seeded, is growing before our very eyes to fill the vertical accent role in autumn. These plants just provide a framework for the real stars – a succession of any and all interesting bulbs we can grow.

It means there is always something of interest to look at. I enjoy that sort of detailed gardening.


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

The battle with the water weeds

We have dropped the water level for me to hand scoop the stream

We have dropped the water level for me to hand scoop the stream

I have been getting really down and dirty this week, hand pulling the weed from our main stream. As this involves wading in mud up to my knees, I emerge looking decidedly worse for the wear and no, you are not going to see a photo of me in this state.

Our main issues are with dreaded oxygen weed, Cape Pond weed and blanket weed. If we didn’t stay on top of them, the entire water surface would disappear below vegetation, which rather defeats the purpose of having a stream in the garden. I asked Mark if he thought our problems were related to farm run-off and excessive nitrogen but he is of the opinion that it has more to do with slow water flow rates, though he felt the build up of mud and silt in our streambed would be extremely fertile. When we get sudden bright green algal bloom, it is an indication of nitrogen being applied on farms upstream.

The worst offenders: Cape pond weed and oxygen weed

The worst offenders: Cape pond weed and oxygen weed

There is something very appealing about a natural stream but they are not without their problems. Offhand, I thought of three gardening colleagues with natural streams. One has problems with flooding in torrential rain. The water cannot get away fast enough so it builds up on his property. One has no problem at all with flooding because their stream is in a deep ravine, maybe 20 metres below the level of their land, but this means it isn’t really a significant garden feature. The third has a picturesque mountain brook to die for, bar two factors. Their land has sufficient natural fall to clear flood waters quickly but the bubbling brook can turn into a torrent that scours everything alongside. This means that they can’t have streamside plantings of any quality. They tried two or three times before giving up, having seen the plants ripped out and carried away. Their second issue is that the water is of high purity so a number of neighbours have water rights granted. Each neighbour has installed their own alkathene pipe at the top of our friends’ garden where the stream enters, running the pipes along the streambed until they exit at their adjoining properties down the bottom. There must be at least five alkathene pipes, both black and garish white, visible in that stream. It is not a good look.

So be careful what you wish for. None of these people, however, have to do what we do and clear the waterway of vegetation every year or two. We eliminated problems with flooding and scouring but our water flow is not sufficient to stop the growth of water weed. Our wonderfully natural looking stream is actually the result of outside expertise and in-house experience coming up with a low tech solution. We control the water where it enters our property by means of a simple weir. In normal conditions, this allows the water to flow equally down two streambeds. One meanders pleasantly through our park while the other is a deeper flood channel girded by stop banks. The two stream beds join up again on the other side of our property so the flow downstream is completely unaffected. When heavy rains cause flooding, a mechanism is triggered which directs all the water down the flood channel. By these simple means, we eliminated flooding, boggy patches and scouring from the park though we do have to manually reset the weir in order to get the water flowing again.

The pond weed is the direct result of having a relatively low flow through the park area, though our stream is such that it never dries up. Oxygen weed is a curse. We had a bad infestation which Mark finally eliminated entirely for some years. He blames the reinfestation on people emptying unwanted goldfish bowls into the stream at the corner by the road. Do not ever do this. The goldfish are most likely to die but the oxygen weed is an invasive menace in slow moving water.

Our other great burden comes from a former neighbour who, as far as Mark is concerned, should be lined up and shot for liberating such an invasive weed. African Cape Pondweed, also known as water hawthorn, (botanically Aponogeton distachyum) is undeniably pretty, with a very long flowering season. Presumably this is why the former neighbour planted it on the margins of his ponds. Because he had no control over the water flow, the inevitable floods scoured it all out of his place but it found a lovely home in our slow moving sections. I don’t know how many hundreds of hours we have spent rooting it out. It is quite good friends with the oxygen weed because it can grow through it and spread its lily pad-like leaves. Between them they have the potential to turn our stream to bog. Native weeds are nowhere near as aggressive.

It is only yours truly who has shed most clothes to get in and hand pull the water weeds this year. Generally this is done by the two men in my gardening life (Mark and Lloyd) who take it in turns to wield the long handled rake and manually haul it all out on to the bank. It is a slow process and pretty hard on their backs. I thought it would be faster and easier to do it by getting in and so it is proving to be. The water is pleasantly warm, the mud even more so on sunny days. I just have to time my mud wrestling because I can’t exactly stop for lunch or a cuppa. Wisecracks about eels are not welcome.

Lloyd at least stays cleaner on the end of the rake but it is harder on the back

Lloyd at least stays cleaner on the end of the rake but it is harder on the back

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