Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

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.

Welcome back to our resident gecko, Glenys

Gecko, probably Hoplodactylus pacificus.

Gecko, probably Hoplodactylus pacificus.

We are very pleased to see our resident gecko back sunning herself in the same spot as last year on the gnarly old pine tree trunk. As this is apparently the behaviour of a pregnant female, it means we have more than one gecko in residence. If she was successful in bearing her babies from last year and they survived all the predators which includes adult geckos, it may mean we have several. Given that spotting one gecko is a rare occurrence (last year’s event caused considerable excitement amongst local herpetologists), we are never going to know, but we are hopeful that Glenys’s behaviour may become an annual event. The sunbathing is apparently part of the incubation process of the young.

It takes an eagle eye to spot a sunbathing gecko. We may well have others in less prominent spots and we may have had them here all the time and just never spotted one before. It is likely that Glenys is a fine specimen of Hoplodactylus pacificus.

Earlier stories from last year:
1) Gecko update
2) The first story (and best photo) about our gecko, as well as the flocking kereru and monarch butterflies which were delighting us at the time – Wildlife in the Garden, New Zealand style.