Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Simple Ideas to Import (from Spain and Portugal)

First published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.


Tiles
Both Spain and Portugal have long histories of bright tiling which can look garish and out of place in different cultural and geographic contexts. However, the more restrained use of tiling, seen here at the Royal Palace in Seville, may fit the bill in more humble abodes in New Zealand. Setting a small tile into a predominantly brick paved area reduces the problems of a slippery surface when wet. Clay bricks (which grow moss too readily in many parts of this country) could be replaced with concrete for a safer walking surface.

Using bright tiles on the risers of the steps with very plain treads adds detail without being too dominant.

Mosaics

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the modern fashion for colourful and often rough mosaics and I suspect it may go down in history as an aberration in good taste on a par with macramé. The mosaics of antiquity in Spain were wonderfully detailed and executed with precision and go to show that good design and craftsmanship are timeless.

Mixed modern paving

We can certainly learn from the detail of modern paving, these examples are from Madrid. Bold, geometric designs, variations in texture and a subtle mix of muted colour can make an expanse of paved or sealed area a great deal more interesting. A mix of different sized pavers, flint, and flattish pebbles of a fairly small grade set in concrete make a pleasing surface.

Mixed paving and tiling

These two examples are from the famous Alhambra in Granada and may appeal to those who are looking for more detail in their paving. The small coloured tiles set in the brick squares are probably very old but recycled in a much more modern construction. The long view down the avenue is also a recent reconstruction and the detail is used to accentuate design features. These details have been picked out in black pebbles placed on their side which gives a relatively uneven surface which must be impossible to sweep. A blower vac would be needed to keep this area free of garden litter and debris.

Blue tree
Clearly one tree died in this avenue in Queluz, Portugal but that did not deter the local authorities from turning it into an eyecatching feature. It was painted well. Twiggy growth and loose bark must have been removed and it was given more than one coat of paint. Choosing a colour other than bright blue might make it a more subtle option for a home garden. A muted rusty red would be less visually dominant, while a cream could light up a dark area.

Bring back plants! Please.

Even after 60 years, Pinus sylvestris Beauvronensis keeps getting better and maturing well, even though it remains under 2 metres tall

Even after 60 years, Pinus sylvestris Beauvronensis keeps getting better and maturing well, even though it remains under 2 metres tall

Until recent times, maybe only a decade or so, New Zealand gardens used to be all about plants. Sophisticated design concepts were rarely seen and terms like spatial relationships referred to Cape Canaveral. These days garden design is cock of the roost and plants are very much a secondary consideration for many people.

Good design is ageless and not to be derided in any way, but I mourn the devaluing of the role of plants in a garden. Frankly, you can only get so far with clipped hedging (usually buxus, sometimes lonicera or teucrium), renga renga lilies, mondo grass (be it black or green), catmint groundcover (nepeta) and white standard roses (be they Iceberg or Margaret Merrill). Maybe kumquat or mandarin trees in planter boxes or large containers. You can achieve a perfectly nice, tidy garden using those run of the mill plants which are in everybody else’s garden as well, but it is never going to be anything special, no matter how good the design framework.

To lift a garden above the ordinary, good design needs to be complemented by interesting plants combined in interesting ways. Mind you, I would say that. I have always believed that mass plantings of a single variety are best in public parks and on traffic islands. I find it exceedingly dull in home gardens. It takes more gardening skill to marry together a whole range of different plants but that is the fun part of gardening.

Start with trees. You can not magic up instant trees. You can buy advanced grade specimens but they are still going to be juvenile and take years to reach maturity. There is simply no shortcut with trees so the sooner you get them planted in the right positions, the sooner you will see some results. And make at least some of those trees good long term specimens. Some trees just get better with age, others look better in youth and get scruffy and past it too soon. Learn to tell the difference so when you cut out the short term filler trees, you are left with some good specimens. Pretty trees such as many flowering cherries, Albizia julibrissin, the blue flowered paulownias and some of the pillar conifers are great for quick impact but rarely age gracefully. Really good trees will take future generations into the next century so they need to be chosen carefully for the right position and given time to grow. They don’t have to be forest giants but you may need to do some research to make good choices. Not a day goes by here when we don’t mentally thank Mark’s great grandfather who left us a legacy of fine trees planted in 1880, and his father who added to it with many rare specimens in the 1950s. Trees give stature and backbone to a garden, be it large or small.

Search out treasures. If you have ever been on a garden safari where you visit many gardens in quick succession, you may have noticed how they can start to look very similar and meld in the memory because they use the same palette of plants. With an ever diminishing range of plants being offered for sale in this country, this scenario is going to get worse, not better. It clearly doesn’t matter if you don’t mind having a garden that looks the same as everybody else’s, but as a nation we tend to favour an element of uniqueness. We don’t want to live in a street where every house is identical, even to the floor plan, but we are leaning in that direction when it comes to our gardens. Good gardeners regard the sourcing of rare or unusual plants as being like a treasure hunt.

It is plant combinations, mixing and matching, that gives interesting detail to a garden

It is plant combinations, mixing and matching, that gives interesting detail to a garden

Experiment with plant combinations. While it is easy and quick to plant a swathe of the same plant, putting together a mix of different foliages and flowers that please the eye is more satisfying. Done well, there is an overall harmony which is pleasing at first glance while the detail invites you to linger and look more closely. Done badly, of course, it looks a hodge podge but you can always learn from that. If you are mass planting using only one or two different varieties, there is no reason to linger and look – you are just after the first glance impression.

In brief, the two rules of thumb in creating good combinations are to think of layering so that not everything is the same height and to get contrasts in foliage. Grasses are never going to look dramatic planted alongside other grasses but combined with a big leafed plant like a canna lily, a Chatham Island forget-me-not or pachystegia, they will have a great deal more zing. Plant combinations are about more than trendy colour toning.

There are a fair number of good designers around whom you can pay to give you a well planned garden in terms of the use of space but good designers who are passionate and knowledgeable about plants are as scarce as hens’ teeth. Good gardens are usually owned by good gardeners who know a great deal about plants themselves. And it is the plants which give the dynamic aspect to a garden and so bring life to the space.

The latest take on living sustainably

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

Ah, the romance of picture book chookies in your back yard

Ah, the romance of picture book chookies in your back yard

The Good Life has come to Havelock North, but it has been renamed Green Urban Living and it is all absolutely simple and easy to manage, requiring very little time. That is according to author, Janet Luke, who has written a book of encyclopaedic spread (but not encyclopaedic detail) based on her own personal experience. The book is backed up by 32 You Tube clips and many website references.

Topics covered include setting up a green urban garden, compost, sustainable water use, growing vegetables, fruit, herbs, flowers (an eclectic mix ranging from paeonies to sunflowers to globe thistles), keeping chickens, beekeeping, worm farms, gardening with kids – all peppered with Top Tips, recipes, and hints. Plus photos – all in 172 pages. It is a very busy book.

On the positive side, the author is passionate about her topic and comes to it from practical and personal experience. If you are into the new age, trendy urban living which wants to be green but is not too purist, then you may well find the enthusiasm and simplified advice in this book is a wonderful motivator. I looked at some of the You Tube clips and there is an engaging naivety and brevity about them. Janet Luke has worked extremely hard to put together a comprehensive but user-friendly package.

If you are a crusty, hardened old cynic who has been through all this (going green is hardly a new concept – many of us chose that way back in the mists of the post Woodstock era of the 1970s), then the newfound zeal, sweeping statements and sometimes very woolly thinking of the latest converts can seem a little like reinventing the wheel.

Green? Hmm. I don’t see buying grow bags filled with potting mix as being green. Nor do I think wheeling your barrow around your neighbourhood as soon as you hear a lawnmower start up is particularly green. For starters, you have no idea what chemicals your neighbours may have used on their lawns (some lawn clippings are too toxic to use in a compost heap). Added to that, you are taking away their organic material to your site – which hardly follows permaculture principles.

Do we really believe that cabbage whites have large enough brains to be duped?

Do we really believe that cabbage whites have large enough brains to be duped?

We are deeply suspicious of the claim that white butterflies are territorial. The current received wisdom is that you can deter incoming cabbage whites by putting half eggshells on sticks amongst your brassicas, fooling them into thinking that another cabbage white is already in residence. This is not the first time I have seen this claim so I did a quick Google search to see if I could find a credible source to confirm it. The key word here is credible. I failed. We are storing our eggshells and when the first cabbage whites of the season show up here, Mark will be out testing this theory. Having observed clouds of cabbage whites on crops such as swedes, we lean to the view that this piece of advice is more wishful thinking than actual fact.

But it is not doubt that we feel regarding the claims that commercial corn is mostly genetically modified and controlled by the terminator gene so it makes sense to keep to heirloom varieties. The author clearly has not got to grips with the differences between F1 hybrids, line breeding, selection, genetic modification and the terminator gene. And seed companies in NZ like Kings and Yates might be a little annoyed to see the suggestion that their product is GM. Internationally, many commercial crops of maize have undergone genetic modification (in which case, it can equally be argued that the dreaded terminator gene is a good thing because it will stop the escape of some GM material into the wider environment), but what is sold in this country, certainly for home gardeners, is not GM. It is either the result of controlled crosses (which is an F1 hybrid) or of line breeding (selecting out the best performing cobs and continuing with them). That is what has brought us the new generation, sweet and tender corn that we all expect now. By all means go back to the heirloom varieties if you wish. Just don’t expect to be eating the tender and super sweet product because those old varieties are tougher and starchier and more akin to maize. Sweetcorn has improved in taste and texture in recent times, which cannot be said of all vegetables.

The retired beekeeper we had staying last week was critical of the chapter on beekeeping. He was surprised to find that top-bar hives, as promoted by the author with near religious zeal, are even legal in this country and he pointed out numerous reasons why they are inferior to the Langstroth hive. Of course Langstroths don’t look cute. He also felt that, given the author’s brief experience of beekeeping, she has been very lucky so far and she makes it look too easy altogether. I just thought that the advice that you could have your beehive on an apartment balcony or the shed roof came more from the Do As I Say school of advice, rather than the Do As I Do school. How on earth are you going to monitor and look after your hive if it is on a shed roof? That said, it is interspersed with some sound advice with regard to legal requirements and she recommends you join a local beekeeping club. I could not understand, either, why apartment dwellers would want to have a worm farm on their balcony. Move to ground level, I say.

It is great to see interest in topics related to sustainability, reducing one’s carbon footprint and organics. I would just prefer to see a little more rigour along with the joyous fervour.

Green Urban Living by Janet Luke. (New Holland; ISBN:978 1 86966 322 3).

Tikorangi Diary Thursday 13 October, 2011

Mark's meconopsis available again

Mark's meconopsis available again

As we hurtle into spring, the pressure is on to get the garden all groomed up and ready for our annual garden festival at the end of the month. This means we are around most of the time so plant sales are not restricted to just Fridays and Saturdays. If you come in and can’t find anyone, please sound your car horn. We have Eftpos available (but not credit cards).

Half price on most magnolias (while stocks last). This includes Vulcan, Burgundy Star and Black Tulip but not Felix Jury (which is in short supply). It is nearing the end of the season – the plants would be happier in your garden than in our nursery. There are about a dozen Magnolia grandiflora “Little Gem” left at the bargain basement price of $12 (but the Camellia Jury’s Yellow have gone). Magnolias are listed under Plant Sales on our website but not with sale prices – halve them. This offer includes good plants of Fairy Magnolia Blush – if you have been planning a hedge of them, now is your chance to do it at a very reasonable price.

The very curious Arisaema sikkokianum

The very curious Arisaema sikkokianum

In the treasures line, we have some of Mark’s meconopis for sale – blue Himalayan poppies. These plants are already in their second year and show more perennial tendencies than usual in our climate (though not guaranteed perennial – it would pay to gather the seed this year as well). And we have good plants of Arisaema speciosum (great for woodland carpets) and the curious, showy but more difficult Arisaema sikkokianum.

No mail order, sorry. Personal customers only.

Garden maintenance, sustainability or just garden grooming?

Judge not a garden upon the daisies in its lawn

Judge not a garden upon the daisies in its lawn

There is nothing like preparing a presentation to focus the thinking. So most of our discussions here recently have been clarifying thoughts on what makes a good garden. The ever-so-brief outline is that good gardening is a combination of good design, good plants and plantsmanship over time, maintenance and sustainability all served up with more than a dash of panache, style or flair. If you want the full details along with all the accompanying examples, you will just have to come to the Waikato Home and Garden Show today at 12.30 or tomorrow at 2.30 (find the Weekend Gardener Stage).

Because we garden on a large scale here and The Significant Other had a deeply disturbing Significant Milestone Birthday recently (“It is all downhill from here,” he keeps reminding me), sustainability is a gardening principle we are spending a lot of time thinking about. But it wasn’t until I was working through my presentation that I came up with the hypothesis:
“We spend far too much time worrying about garden maintenance in this country and not enough time worrying about sustainability. In fact, so-called maintenance is in danger of being accorded a status way beyond its importance. What compounds this is that what is frequently seen as garden maintenance is in fact garden grooming – edges, hedges and lawns.”

Garden grooming is what presents a garden well and it is just as important as housekeeping indoors. But while the initial design and fit out of a house is a highly skilled exercise, often employing the services of an architect and an interior designer, the routine cleaning is a low skilled task at best and can be carried out perfectly adequately by someone with little thought and no understanding of the skill level that went into creating the interior. So too in the garden. When we still employed staff in the nursery, we would despatch them into the garden with leaf rakes and edging tools when we had to spruce up in a hurry. Generally they weren’t gardeners and they needed clear boundaries set lest they do real damage, but they were fantastic garden groomers. They could whip through and titivate in next to no time, partly because they didn’t get distracted by plants. At the end of it, the garden looked fantastic. It was a bit of a revelation to us that if the underpinning garden is in good shape, it doesn’t take particular skill to add the icing to the cake. Yet it is that sharp finish that is often judged as garden maintenance.

People who open their garden to the public will know all about this final grooming round and just how smart it makes the garden look. Most garden visitors now expect that high level of finish, especially for festivals and events. It is a great deal easier to manage if your patch is a small town garden and I have seen some splendid examples of immaculate presentation. Alas, as many have come to consider that this elevated level of garden grooming is the measure by which a good garden is judged, large gardens encompassing several acres have come under pressure to achieve the same, immaculate, sharp appearance. We do it here once a year for our annual garden festival and I love how smart the garden looks and vow every year to maintain it at that level. But it is completely unsustainable across seven acres. Without an army of gardeners (about one to an acre, perhaps), it just is not possible to keep it that spic and span for 52 weeks of the year. Besides, battling nature takes all the fun out of gardening.

Immaculate garden grooming is not the same as maintenance (photo: Jane Dove Juneau)

Immaculate garden grooming is not the same as maintenance (photo: Jane Dove Juneau)

I call that finish garden grooming. Garden maintenance should be considerably more extensive and require much greater skills. It is, or should be, all about managing your garden in sustainable ways so that it is a source of pleasure and not a burden. It is about keeping control of weeds so they never get beyond you, about keeping plants and soils healthy and about eliminating gardening practices which are all round bad for the environment. It is about adapting to changing environments within the garden over time. As trees and shrubs grow, they start to cast shade and their roots spread further. The gardener needs to change some plantings and practices as the growing environment changes. Maintenance is about keeping trees a good shape, avoiding forked trunks, lifting and limbing, and about knowing how and when to prune. It is about lifting and dividing choked perennials, deciding which plants are precious and which are expendable, restricting or eliminating plant thugs, rescuing bulbs which have become so overcrowded they no longer flower.

That is what garden maintenance should be about. To me, it is not about whether there is the odd flat weed in the lawn. Goodness knows, we have a park full of pretty white daisies though we do try and keep flat weeds out of the house lawns. At least our lawn clippings are not toxic and can safely be put on the compost heap or indeed used in the vegetable garden except that we never gather the clippings. We mulch them back in and that means we never have to add fertiliser to the lawn.

I appreciate the immaculate presentation of a garden but only when it is the final touch to one which is actively and positively gardened, not when it substitutes for an underlying lack of quality management. Look beyond edges, hedges and lawns.