Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

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.

The differing agendas of gardeners, novices and designers

If you will only grow evergreen plants, you miss out on seasonal delights like Prunus Awanui in flower

If you will only grow evergreen plants, you miss out on seasonal delights like Prunus Awanui in flower

I am trying to think if there are any plants which do not have an off period and which look good all year round. I have failed to come up with anything other than conifers and they are hardly the country’s most popular plant family these days. Every other plant I have thought of has times of the year when they look better than other times and generally they go through a scruffy period.

Most conifers don't seem to have an off-period but too few people want them in their garden these days

Most conifers don't seem to have an off-period but too few people want them in their garden these days

It is a bit like the perceived wisdom that evergreen trees and shrubs don’t drop their leaves. Sorry, but they do. They just don’t drop them all at once in autumn. It is in the nature of woody plants to drop a full year’s foliage every year. They may hold onto leaves for several years, but sooner or later they drop them. Some drop them gradually and quietly all the time. Some have a bit of an off period when they will shed more (usually just before the fresh growth comes). Some, like our enormous Schima noronhae, are semi evergreen and will drop the lot as the new leaves come so it is never without foliage but each set only stays one year.

Gardening and nature is an inherently untidy business. If you can’t live with that, you may be better off in an apartment with no outside space calling out for plants. What started this train of thought was reading a landscaper’s account of a client’s garden where plants were chosen for their year round foliage, their lack of an off season, preferably shiny green and fragrant (presumably they were allowed to flower because foliage tends to be aromatic, rather than fragrant). It is a list of attributes I have often seen before, almost invariably from novices, non gardeners and designers who by very definition tend to have clients falling into the first two categories. It all seems so controlling and static to me – wanting to create a pleasing picture that will stay the same all year. I just think that is what you do inside the house with inert objects away from the ravages of the elements. It is more about design than landscaping.

I can’t imagine having a garden which does not celebrate the seasons. Why would you want to eliminate the variables of nature when that is what makes it interesting? If you refuse to have deciduous plants, you miss the fresh and fulsome spring burst when they look so lush. You also miss the autumn colour on some (though this will be better if you live inland and in areas where you get sharp frosts to signal the change of season). There is a beauty in bare branches throughout winter, especially if the plant has interesting bark or form. These are not as obvious on plants which remain fully clothed all year round. So many deciduous plants burst into bloom, to be followed soon after by the foliage and those plants which flower on bare wood are hugely more spectacular than plants which flower amongst the foliage. Think of magnolias, flowering cherries or chimonanthus. But not just woody trees and shrubs: bulbs mark the passage of the seasons better than any other plant group I can think of. In the static picture garden, there is no place for bulbs, the vast majority of which have an undeniably scruffy season after flowering before they go to bed below ground for their dormant period. But before that scruffy time, they wow us with their flowering brilliance.

The delight of seasonal bulbs - Moraea villosa (the peacock iris) with Narcissus bulbocodium behind

The delight of seasonal bulbs - Moraea villosa (the peacock iris) with Narcissus bulbocodium behind

That said, I wouldn’t want a garden which only has deciduous plants. Evergreens give year round structure and colour, even if they are mostly shades of green in foliage. It is the mix of plant groups and differing characteristics of plants that makes the garden a more interesting place.

Neither would I reject a plant because it lacks scent just as I would be unlikely to buy a plant on scent alone. We have many scented plants but it is more obvious with most if you pick them and bring them indoors. It takes a very strong scent to stop you dead in your tracks outdoors – some daphnes, perhaps, jonquils, auratum lilies and orange blossom come to mind. These are heady scents but you usually have to be within a metre or so of the plant to smell them. All that fresh air outside dilutes and dissipates scent more quickly than most people realise. It is far more common that you need to stick your nose right into the flower to smell it. Certainly, fragrance is a bonus but a basic criterion for selection? Not in my books.

I guess it all comes down to the difference between a designer and gardener. The former wants something that looks good and can be maintained easily while the latter wants something which is interesting, changing, even challenging and looks good.

In Praise of Plunging

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

Plunging is a gardening technique that has been around for a long time but is not often seen in New Zealand. It is simply burying a porous pot in the ground so that only the lip is visible. Traditionally, in the United Kingdom, it was often done to stop the roots of the plants from freezing in cold winters. It also stopped terracotta pots from shattering in severe frosts. It is also done to equalise moisture and to stop plants getting either waterlogged or too dry. If you visit the alpine houses at the RHS Wisley Gardens, you will see that all the alpine treasures are grown in pots which are plunged into beds of compacted sand.

Plunging is a technique I have been using around our garden for a variety of purposes. It is important to note that it only works with porous pots. Fortunately, I inherited a collection of aged terracotta pots and drainage pipes in various sizes which fit the bill. If you use glazed or plastic pots, the water cannot move between the surrounding soils and the plant’s roots in the pot.

1)      I had some rather special camellias which blew over every time it was windy and which dried out too quickly in summer because I was erratic with watering. They were also getting too heavy to move easily and root pruning and repotting became difficult as the plants grew ever larger. I did not want to plant them out in the garden because I still wanted to feature them as a group. Plunging the pots into a border was one solution. They never blow over. They do not need anywhere near as much hand watering because the moisture from the surrounding soil keeps the pots damp and cool. They remain featured as individual plants. Where some were badly root-bound, I cut off the base off the pots to allow the roots to get into the soil. The remaining plants are treated as container plants and repotted every two years with fresh mix.

2)      I frequently plunge pots of seasonal bulbs to add colour and interest in key spots. When they are past their best, they can be removed out of sight and replaced with something else instead. This particular pot is Narcissus Twilight, One of Felix Jury’s cyclamineus hybrids.

3)      Plunging is one way of keeping track of special plants, especially bulbs which are easy to lose when they are dormant.

4) Equally, plunging can be used to keep invasive plants confined. It won’t work where a plant spreads by setting seed but it is successful in keeping runaway plants under control. Most of the mint family have this tendency, as do many of the ornamental oxalis.

5)      Plunging can be used to restrict growth and to keep plants reduced in size, so it is a rough form of bonsai. I wanted this deliciously fragrant lemon myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) by the house but left unchecked, it would become a tree. Similarly, I have plunged a pot of rosemary to check its growth and also because the position near the back door was in heavy soil which this Mediterranean type of shrub would not enjoy. The pot gives it hotter, drier conditions.

Plunging is essentially container growing in the ground.

Points to remember:

  • Plunging does not eliminate the need for all watering in summer. It merely reduces it. Plants still require watering every pots every two or three days in hot, dry weather. Making sure there is a gap between the level of the potting mix and the top lip of the pot makes watering easier and any water which drains straight through is still going to be available in the surrounding soil.
  • It is important to remember that plunged pots are still container plants so they will need repotting from time to time and they will need feeding in between. All container plants should be repotted in fresh mix every two years with slow release fertiliser.  That fertiliser can last about nine months. Topdress after that as required.
  • If plants start to look deeply stressed with yellow leaves and poor performance, it is likely that they have either run out of food or they are root bound. If the plant starts to drop leaves and look utterly miserable, check that it has not blocked the drainage holes with thick roots. When this happens, the pot becomes a reservoir for water and the plant starts to slowly drown. It will die if left unattended.

Managing meadows or drifts of bulbs

The bulbocodiums are the highlight of the narcissi world this week

The bulbocodiums are the highlight of the narcissi world this week

We are bulb fanatics here. It doesn’t matter how large or small your garden, there is always space for bulbs. They mark the progression of the seasons in a wonderfully detailed manner, often little pictures of ephemeral delight. We have been charting the narcissi here this year, tracking which ones flower for long periods of time and which ones give us a succession of blooms to extend the season as others are just finishing. We don’t grow many of the big, show daffodils, preferring instead the dwarf and miniatures, both species and hybrids. It is the bright yellow hooped petticoat type that are the showiest at the moment (bulbocodium citrinus). The best early variety, flowering over a long period, has been Peeping Tom. The single best mid season variety has been the cyclamineus hybrid, Twilight.

Now the erythroniums or dogs tooth violets are opening, as are the veltheimias (big bulbs which resemble lachenalias on steroids), the early arisaemas are through the ground and the bluebells are coming into bloom. Early to mid spring is peak bulb time and that is because we do best with South African bulbs whose growth is triggered by the autumn rains. It is not that the autumn rains are significant here. Most of us get winter rain, a great deal of spring rain and some summer rain too. It is more a case that the autumn rain bulbs are in full growth during our rather wet winters so they don’t rot out as readily.

Bulbs are easiest to manage in pots and in designated areas such as a rockery. Sometimes I combine the two and plunge the pot to sit flush with the soil level in the rockery (a good technique for confining invasive bulbs as well as keeping track of vulnerable treasures). They can be a bit problematic in garden beds and borders where it is all too easy to find their location by severing them with the spade.

Not perhaps the most obvious candidate for Mark's hillside of naturalised bulbs - pleione orchids

Not perhaps the most obvious candidate for Mark's hillside of naturalised bulbs - pleione orchids

But the real challenge here is to extend the meadow drifts of bulbs and that has taken a great deal of thinking and planning. It all comes down to grass growth. Areas of the country which are suitable for intensive dairy farming tend, by definition, to have more fertile soils and an abundance of grass growth for most of the year. Most bulbs naturally grow in opposite conditions – often dry and poor ground – and are triggered into growth by seasonal change. Romantic woodland drifts occur in open, deciduous forests where enough light gets through during winter to allow the bulbs to flourish while in summer, a canopy of foliage creates shade which reduces rampant grass growth which can choke the bulbs. After years of experimentation, the lessons we have learned include:

1) Only plant bulbs in areas which won’t need mowing during their growth season. This can be easier said than done with bulbs which coincide with the spring flush of the grass. We have been working on extending the bluebell drifts but have taken care to site the bulbs closer to the trees and shrubs, so to the side of the main mown areas. They still look as if they are drifting naturally but it is a managed drift.

2) Don’t use bulbs which are going to need frequent lifting and dividing to keep them flowering well. For this reason, we have pretty well given up on the big daffodils. They look great for one or two seasons but in our conditions, it is all downhill from there to the point where they can be mostly foliage with very few blooms. They do better in harder conditions.

3) Control the grasses. Mark (the husband) has gone to considerable lengths to eliminate strong growing grasses from his bulb hillside in favour of the weaker growing, fine native grass, microlina. We can get away with only needing to weedeat the microlina occasionally so the bulbs are not disturbed and we can manage a succession over several months.

4) It takes a lot of bulbs to get a drift. Many hundreds of bulbs, not tens. We multiply ours by dividing existing clumps but also gather our own fresh seed each year to increase the numbers.

5) The most successful bulbs so far are: bluebells (also pink bells and white bells), colchicums or autumn crocus, cyclamen species (hederafolium, coum and repandum), proper English snowdrops (galanthus) and some of the dwarf narcissi. Pleione orchids and assorted lachenalias (especially the more desirable blue ones) take a bit more work but are worth the effort. All except the pleiones disappear entirely below ground when they are dormant.

6) Large bulbs which grow with their necks above ground include the belladonna lilies, crinums and veltheimias. These can never be mowed over or walked on so have to be placed in areas which don’t generally grow grass. This means they are not suitable candidates for meadow drifts.
There are those for whom gardening is all about controlling nature and those for whom it is about emulating nature and managing it. We fall into the latter category. Meadow bulbs and drifts of spring delights are an important ingredient for us.

Managed drifts of bluebells

Managed drifts of bluebells

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

Trees for Small Gardens

The handsome Queen Palm (Syragus romanzoffiana) comes with a warning

The handsome Queen Palm (Syragus romanzoffiana) comes with a warning

While I am a big garden specialist, gardening across hectares, not square metres, I have spent enough of my life selling plants and dispensing advice to understand that trees are problematic on the tiny urban sections that have become the lot in life for most people. I still think trees can be an option in small gardens or courtyards where a bit of height and form can give stature to an otherwise closed in space.

Worry about width, not height. I call it the footprint – how much space it takes up. Many people think that Magnolia Leonard Messell is a good option for small gardens because it only grows about 3 metres high. True, we have a specimen that is coming up to 30 years old and it isn’t much more than that – but man alive, it must be getting on for 5 or 6 metres wide. That is a lot of space. In fact it is about the same footprint as our large specimen Magnolia Iolanthe and nobody in their right minds would plant that in a tiny garden.

Magnolia Burgundy Star - a good choice where space is very limited

Magnolia Burgundy Star - a good choice where space is very limited

By contrast, Magnolia Burgundy Star is very narrow and upright. After fifteen years, the original tree here is about 5 metres tall but it is not much more than a metre wide. This means it can give height and presence without casting deep shadows and taking up room.

Prunus serrula - exquisite bark and narrow, upright growth

Prunus serrula - exquisite bark and narrow, upright growth

Flowering cherries tell a similar story. If you only look at the projected height so keep to lower growers like Prunus Shimidsu Zakura or sweet little weepers like Falling Snow, you are highly likely to get caught out by the width of the canopy over time and end up either brutally hacking into it or facing removal. Prunus serrula won’t give you the mass of fluffy flowers but it has wonderful bark and an obliging habit.

Palms, you may be wondering. Some upright, single trunked varieties like the bangalow (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana) or the more desirable Queen Palm (Syragus romanzoffiana) grow splendidly tall while taking minimal space. They are much favoured by landscapers for confined areas. However, they should come with a warning. They become too tall to groom so you have to let the spent fronds fall naturally and the sheath at the base of the frond is so heavy that it will break anything in its path, potentially ripping the spouting off your neighbour’s roof or causing panel damage to any vehicle in its path.

Conifers are often favoured – the narrow pencil cypress is the traditional look. Personally, I think they are a bit funereal and sombre, but others disagree. Conifers are not an area in which I have any expertise but you need to make sure that you have a variety which is not prone to red spider mite and be cautious if you think you will trim – many conifers don’t appreciate trimming and you can end up with unsightly bare patches.

Key pointers for choosing trees for small gardens:
1) Choose one that grows from a single trunk. Multi trunked and branched specimens take up a lot more room.
2) Keep to very narrow, upright growth. Shun anything with danger words like spreading, cascading, weeping or arching in the description. Think pillar-shaped (known as fastigiate).
3) Be cautious about a specimen you will have to prune regularly to keep under control. Anything over 2 metres high means you need a ladder and probably a pruning saw and loppers. It is better to plant the right sort of tree in the first place so that trimming requirements are minimal. By my definition, if it is under 3 metres, it is a shrub, not a tree.
4) Remember that it is not in the nature of trees to grow rapidly to the height you want and then to stop getting any taller. Trees that grow quickly will usually keep growing well beyond that. Small tree usually means slower grower. If it matters to you, pay the extra and buy an advanced grade specimen.

If you can find a tree with lovely bark or a seasonal flower display, then it is so much more interesting. Apropos of this, I came across a wonderful book recently by Waikato authors and tree-lovers, John and Bunny Mortimer. “Trees and their Bark” was published in 2003 but, being self published, I don’t think it received the attention it deserved. It is a delightful book, very readable with plenty of colour photos, by authors who know the topic inside out. It is still available and what is more, it is being remaindered at a ridiculously low price. I would not pass it by – it is worth having in the bookcase even if you are not in a position to plant trees. You will find the Mortimers listed in the Hamilton phone book or the white pages on line – there can only be one Bunny Mortimer.

Bunny’s pick for a small tree which can be grown on tiny sections is psuedocydonia which she feels ticks all the right boxes. You may have to get a copy of their book to find out more about it – it certainly has very striking bark as well as quince-like, fragrant fruit following on from japonica flowers. The only problem is finding it. You will probably have to grow it from seed.

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