Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Why we resigned from the New Zealand Gardens Trust

Latest update, published April 27, 2012, looks at matters related to garden assessment and NZGT. Not, as has been suggested, because we have not “moved on”, but because, fundamentally we still believe in the concept of NZGT. It is just the implementation with which we have issues.

And from May 2009:
We were enthusiastic founder members of the New Zealand Gardens Trust, contributing $2000 to get the scheme underway and promoting it in every way we could. Now we are ex members.

1.      We do not agree with the way the Trust operates. This is an organization which appoints itself, (existing trustees chose new trustees with no input from the membership), meetings are closed, the AGM is held in what amounts to a closed meeting and there is little, if any, consultation with members.

2.      There is a failure to separate the governance role (which should rest with the trustees) from the operation of the Trust. The paid executive officer is also a trustee. The chief assessor is also a trustee, another assessor is the deputy chair of the Trust, a third person was until recently both a trustee and a senior assessor. This affects the ability of the trustees to objectively review Trust activities, including the processes of garden assessment.

3.      Garden assessment is a points based system – get enough points and you too can be rated as nationally significant. Without clear definitions, there are now gardens which carry ratings which describe them as being “significant” when it is not at all clear what is significant about them beyond the fact that they are well presented and tidy.

4.      Garden assessment so far has often been adversarial and lacking accountability, even to garden owners who are paying for it. There are other methods of garden assessment which set standards without alienating participants. We want to see a garden assessment system which nurtures and encourages, rather than burning people off. It was the discourteous and arrogant treatment meted out to the owners of a particular garden which was the final catalyst for our resignation. We no longer wished to be part of an organization which could treat its members so carelessly.

5.      We opposed the concept of Gardens of International Significance from the first moment we heard of it in April 2008. International reputations are earned on the international stage and not awarded to ourselves. This new category was introduced with no consultation of members. The method of selecting the first four allegedly internationally significant gardens lacked robust process and was not even by assessment to meet new criteria. International significance appears to be a Trust response to a top heavy nationally significant class but it is not an appropriate action, in our opinion. In fact, we would describe it as frankly embarrassing. Even worse is the indication on the new NZGT website that provided you can afford the $1125.00 fee, you too can self identify as a potential internationally significant garden and request an assessment. (Note: The pricing structure has apparently been changed recently. For us, it was never about the money in the first instance and this change is still mere tinkering to keep some people happy while the fundamental problems have apparently still not been addressed.) How long before there are so many Gardens of International Significance that we see the Trust needing another category – Gardens of Universal Significance, perhaps?

6.      There appears to be little understanding from the Trust Board of visitor numbers to gardens around the country and even less monitoring of actual benefits derived from membership of the Trust. A bottom line for us is that NZGT endorsement was not delivering up sufficient extra visitors to pay for the annual subscription.

7.      We tabled concerns in writing to the trustees in May last year. We never received a reply. When we resigned, we mentioned those concerns again but all that happened was that we were taken off the website at lightning speed and we received a letter which said nothing of note. Even though we were a founder garden, even though we have actively promoted the Trust, even though we have a reasonably high profile in this country and overseas, not one trustee picked up the phone to talk to us about our resignation.

8.      We still think that the concept of the New Zealand Gardens Trust is a good one but there is too large a gap between the concept and the current reality.

Glyn Church from Woodleigh Gardens comments:
I totally agree with everything you say about NZGT. We resigned from NZGT for the same reasons.

Nicki and Clive Higgie from Paloma Garden comment:
We’re very disappointed NZGT accepted your resignation (horrified there was no communication from them to you!) for we feel any scheme for garden visiting in New Zealand is totally deficient without your garden being included.

We remain members for now, as we’d really like the scheme to work. At present we feel it’s uneconomic for us: we’re not gaining financial benefit from membership but we feel the potential’s there.

With regard to the trust’s failure to separate governance from management, we agree with you. While trustees have so far done a wonderful job, it’s not desirable to put them in that position of performing both governance and operational roles, as trustees and assessors (or CE) at the same time.

The structure of any trust must allow for full member participation, total transparency and accountability.

As for garden assessment, it’s very difficult to award tangible points to intangibles. We feel a workable model’s been put in place and, personally, have few complaints. But at the end of the day, in any system, a points system or whatever, assessors’ personal taste, personal experience (or lack thereof) and even just the garden’s geographical position can have a large influence on results. An example of the last point is that a Japanese garden, even of international standards, should never, in our opinion, be assessed as having international significance in New Zealand .
Regards
Nicki and Clive

Organics, baking soda and cooking oils

Over the counter organics or out of the kitchen cupboard

Over the counter organics or out of the kitchen cupboard

Organics are hot these days. More like the new religion, perhaps, which attracts converts who are often long on passion and conviction but at times distinctly short on logic and reason. This is not to say that there is not a great deal that is good and beneficial about organics. But we do not subscribe to the mantra that just because something is organic it is necessarily superior. A bit of rigour and enquiry never goes astray.

Regular readers will know that we have been advocating moving away from the use of chemical fertilisers and sprays in the home garden situation. The chemical arsenal that many people used routinely in the relatively recent past (the age of the 1960s to the 1990s) should be a cause of some shame in terms of what home gardeners inflicted on the planet, and still do with lawns. Such practices have been substantially tamed by modern advancements with safer chemicals and hugely increased controls on what is available over the counter. Inconvenient this may seem to some, but we regard it as a jolly good thing.

For those who prefer to avoid routine application of chemicals, there are two approaches. One is to try and continue gardening in exactly the same manner but substituting organic sprays to control pests and diseases previously managed with chemicals. The second approach is to take a much broader view (wholistic, the crystal gazers may call it) and to try and select plants which are more resistant to such problems and to manage their growing conditions so that they are less vulnerable. It is this latter approach to gardening which we have been advising as preferable and implementing ourselves (without the crystal gazing). But for those who wish to keep doing things the same way as previously, Tui have just brought out a range of certified organic products – an insecticide, a fungicide and a liquid fertiliser. They kindly sent me samples which had me whooping with delight. I notice that the wine writer for this paper has written about receiving samples and I am sure other writers must see samples but they are a bit lacking in the garden department.

Ours is an establishment which has more respect for science than many. While my own background is a little sparse, not for nothing am I the daughter of one scientist, the mother of another and married to someone who took science to a considerably higher level than I managed. So we tend to be a little analytical.

I looked at the label information on Tui’s Organic Eco-Fungicide. It is potassium bicarbonate. This necessitated a quick Google search followed by an email to scientist daughter to try and unravel the difference between potassium bicarbonate and sodium bicarbonate. The short answer is that the bicarbonated bit is the important part and that the potassium and sodium are generally interchangeable. Some of you will have already deduced what this means – Tui’s eco fungicide is 95% baking soda and the label does not say what the other 5% is. I did not do a price comparison between Tui’s product and the supermarket option. If you are serious, you can do it yourself. Baking soda is a bit of cure-all product and its anti fungal properties have long been acknowledged. The important information to know is that the recommended dosage is a level teaspoon per litre. The only downside is that to be effective, you will likely have to spray considerably more frequently than with the horticultural chemical alternative.

On to Tui’s Organic Eco-Pest to treat insect infestations. It sounds good – for the control of two-spotted mite, aphids, whitefly and scale and for helping control powdery mildew. I tried it out on whitefly which were infesting a container plant and it dealt to them. What is it? Canola oil, mainly. It is just over 85% canola oil in the form of an emulsifiable concentrate. I do not think you can concentrate the canola oil so the concentrated reference must be to the unspecified surfactant which enables the canola oil to be mixed with water. The label claims that Eco-Pest contains three powerful plant oils but the other two must be in very minor traces because they are not mentioned by name.

Purists may question the choice of canola – it is of course the food oil most likely to be the result of some genetic modification (lots of GE work done on rape seed production). As with the Eco-Fungicide, this product works but will need more frequent application than heavier duty non-organic sprays. It is not a magic bullet or a great new find. You can substitute with a home kitchen mix of a light cooking oil (there is no reason why rice bran or soya oil will not work just as well) with a squirt of dish washing detergent. Tui recommend diluting at 5ml per litre (that is about a teaspoon) for insects and 10ml per litre for scale.

Eco-Fert came as a little 100gram pot of concentrated seaweed extract which is mixed with water to make a massive 200 litres of liquid fertiliser. Recommended application is weekly or fortnightly. I haven’t tried this yet because liquid feeding is not part of our regular routine here so I will have to think what to experiment on. Liquid feed is the plant equivalent of human fast food. It does nothing to alter the soil structure but it will give plants an immediate boost. Seaweed has long been recognised as a good all round fertiliser. I can’t recommend a cheap alternative from the kitchen cupboard for this product but logically it sits alongside compost teas and worm farm liquids.

Tui’s products are marked as being registered with BFA Organic. Organic certification is a bit of shaky territory internationally (not all certifying bodies are of equal credibility). I had to Google BFA Organic. I had been guessing British Food Authority or similar, but no. It is Biological Farmers of Australia and I can not comment on credibility beyond noting that some might think that all farming is, by definition, a biological activity.

So Tui’s products are tried and true natural remedies packaged to meet the modern convenience market. There is nothing wrong with that but you are paying for convenience, not for extensive research or exciting new discoveries which are kind to the planet. The interesting aspect is the recognition by Tui of an important market which has emerged and the extent to which organics is becoming mainstream.

Avocados and figs in Taranaki

As I prepared guacamole this week, I realised I have never written about growing avocado trees in Taranaki, despite this fruit being one of our own mainstays. With a lull in the vegetable garden, we are relying on avocado and parsley to give the daily green intake. So herewith the short introduction to growing your own avocados.

1) Avos are frost tender and don’t like the cold so you need to live in a warmer, coastal area to grow them successfully in Taranaki (apologies to all those of you who live inland).

2) Buy a grafted, named variety. While it is easy to grow the seed, it is unlikely that a seedling will fruit satisfactorily, if at all. We have by far the most success with Hass.

3) Avocados are trees. Small trees up to five or six metres but definitely not shrubs or bushes. Give them space to grow and full sun.

4) Drainage is critical. Avocados are very sensitive in the roots and particularly vulnerable to phytopthera. Plant them in a position with brilliant drainage.

5) Be prepared for the fact that some years you will get a very poor harvest, or even no crop at all. The fruit takes around eighteen months to mature to picking stage but is most vulnerable at the time of fruit set when an untimely frost or spell of really bad weather can mean that no fruit is set.

There are brilliant years in between which make up for it when you have avocados for breakfast (a slice of Vogel’s toast spread with a thin layer of marmite and topped with avo), for lunch (sliced over leftovers or served with anything and everything) and for dinner (guacamole or in salads). The tree will pay for itself in one good season. Any surplus fruit, we notice, is gladly received by those around us, especially at this time of the year as the price is rising in the shops and the quality of the fruit is getting better. The oil content of the fruit rises over time and the current fruit was actually set in spring 2007. Be wary of fruit that is picked when immature. We harvest from our two Hass trees from Christmas to August or September. If it were not for the battle with the rats and the waxeyes, we could harvest for even longer.

So the bottom line on avocadoes is that it is well worth growing your own if you have the right position and conditions. Naturally that is predicated on the assumption that you enjoy eating them or giving them away.

There is still an open verdict on figs here. I adore fresh figs and I have never understood why you can buy them on every fruit stall in London but never see them for sale here. It wasn’t until I found some at the roadside stall where I buy my free range eggs that I had even thought of picking them green and letting them ripen off the bush. But of course you must be able to. All those figs I have bought in London can not have been tree ripened. They are not exactly a local crop there and as they become soft and squidgy when ripe, they must be shipped over from warmer climes in a firmer, green state.

I am looking at our Brown Turkey Fig with new eyes. It sets an early crop which reaches full size but the birds always beat me to the harvest. They are quite happy to eat the green fruit. And the second crop fails to mature. Now I am thinking that we need to manage the bush better and it should be manageable.

Most fruiting figs are large deciduous shrubs which clump and sucker. The leaves can be reasonable decorative, especially when they turn golden in autumn but overall they are not aesthetically pleasing plants. If you think about where they grow in the Med and North Africa, you will realize they want maximum warmth and sharp drainage but they don’t need high fertility soils and mollycoddling.

It being a shrub, rather than a tree, I think we should be able to net the fig next year to keep the birds at bay. And it seems to me that we need to actively thin out some of the foliage and the crop of fruit to encourage better ripening and more size to the figs. Added to that, I shall maybe sacrifice my belief in tree ripened fruit and experiment with picking earlier and ripening in the sunroom. Our fig is planted in full sun, up against a dark coloured water tank but you are likely to achieve more success if you have a warm concrete wall close to the sea.

Unlike avocados, you can grow figs easily from cuttings or suckers so you may not have to buy one. Over time, no doubt we will see more selection taking place in this country to choose cultivars better suited to our conditions but let’s face it: mild, humid, wet and fertile Taranaki is never going to emulate Mediterranean conditions so maybe we had better be grateful for any fresh figgy crops. Apparently fresh figs are absolutely divine served with Parma ham and blue cheese (I learned this from National Radio and the morning recipes) but I have not yet had sufficient to warrant laying in the Parma ham. I live in hope.

Death to the Orangeberry Plant

My rubus pentalobus is under a death sentence. What, you may wonder, is rubus pentalobus. It has taken me some time to get a grip on its proper name and I may soon forget it again but most of us know it as the orangeberry plant. It is a ground cover plant, marketed widely in recent years with a key selling point of producing edible fruit.

I am guessing that in its native Taiwan it may produce more fruit but it has the reputation of being very reluctant in this country. I was optimistic with the second season and a solid mat of it in a hot, sunny position. It put up a good number of small white flowers in spring but these translated into precious few orange berries in summer. And berries might be slightly overstating the case. Certainly they were orange but at little larger than a glass pin head and held singly, berries seemed an unjustifiably generous descriptor. Indeed, Mark just looked incredulous when we spotted the first fruit. It is difficult to describe the taste. I think the entire crop was two each so the best I can say is fruity, in moderation.

But it is not the ever so slightly disappointing harvest that had me donning the black hat to pronounce the death sentence. No. What the rubus lacks in fruiting capacity, it more than makes up in vigour. Knowing that it could be a little rampant, I used it in a defined border where I wanted the unity of a single ground cover to set off a little collection of topiaried camellias. It was confined by concrete edging on three sides and a box hedge on the fourth. Not that the rubus was going to let that stop its inexorable advance. The moment I turned my back, it would leap the concrete edging and get its roots into both the lawn and the gravel paths. I could cope with that, but its inclination to weasel its way through the buxus and even climb started to ring alarm bells. Ground covers that can moonlight as climbers are a worry. Added to that, after only two years, the ground is such a mat of congested roots that it is near impenetrable and the rubus is even threatening to overpower my valued camellia specimens. Spending several hours every couple of months trying to thin and contain the plant does not seem worth the effort to me.

I will not be digging the rubus to pot up and sell. That seems altogether irresponsible. Though if anyone has a large clay cliff they wish to retain, a precipice perhaps, a landslip or maybe a large stretch of coastal erosion which they were thinking of retaining with concrete slabs, this plant may be just the ticket. I would guess that it has the potential to turn up on Regional Council’s banned list sooner rather than later. We will be resorting to gyphosate to carry out the death sentence. The tangled mass of rampant root makes digging it out difficult. You have been warned. Keep this plant controlled and under close supervision.

A bonsai camellia under threat from the thuggish rubus pentalobus.

A bonsai camellia under threat from the thuggish rubus pentalobus.

Like his father before him, Mark has a deep distrust of plants with weed potential. Maintaining a large garden is a delicate balancing act at the best of times without allowing rampant colonisers to escape. There are no annual forget-me-nots here. Charming they may be, but they did not earn their common name lightly. Let them into your garden and it takes years to stop them seeding everywhere. Rampant seeders, subversive clumpers, overpowering thugs – no matter how pretty, such plants are not welcome. We have tended to add violets into the category of invaders with their inclination to spread and their resilience. Indeed, despite my best efforts in several places in the garden, clumps of violets keep staging a come back. And down in the paddock is a clump which Mark refers to as Grandma’s violets. In fact I think they are a relic of his great grandmother’s garden from the late 1800s. Now we think the violets will make a more acceptable ground cover than the rubus. Their invasive tendencies are not too serious. In 120 years, the rubus would have colonised the better part of Tikorangi whereas Grandma’s violets have just gently survived all competition and kept going. Their flowers are prettier than the rubus, too. I think they have earned a recall.

The Oracle of Jury

Mark was very taken by a succinct description of what makes a good garden – “I look for plenty of plant interest and good design to lead me through.” He was watching the County Organiser assessing for Britain’s Yellow Book scheme at the time, screened on Sky television. The quality of the gardens applying for assessment can be very patchy but the calibre of the County Organisers who manage the gardens for their region is usually high.

It is not that long ago that garden design ruled supreme and plants were mere soft furnishings. In fact the designers held such prestige that they felt completely justified in advocating mass plantings of a single variety as The Only Way to good design and completely dismissing gardens which preferred variation in the form of many different plants, often planted in groups of one. Patchy, spotty, formless, some would sniff. There was little expectation that designers and landscapers would know their plants. Indeed even architects could confidently wade into the area of garden design, bringing their knowledge of space, proportion, building materials and good design but knowing next to nothing at best (and often less) about plants.

Prior to the landscapers and designers seizing the prestigious higher ground in gardening, we had quite a lengthy era when the gardens of the common populace (which takes in most of New Zealand) were all about plants and very little about design. The zenith of garden design here was captured in what is now referred to as Kiwi Hosepipe Style. That, of course, is where the gardener laid out the garden hose to get a natural looking curve or a more radical series of undulating curves which gave the lines to follow with the spade. Many readers will still have gardens firmly anchored in that tradition. In those earlier days, garden prestige lay far more in being able to proudly display rare or unusual plants, a value we took on from Victorian England where plant hunters were revered for their efforts in delivering up ever more novelties for collectors at home.

The simplest explanation is that it is only in recent times that many property owners have had sufficient money to pay others to realise some outdoor dining and entertaining visions on their behalf. When there was a great deal less disposable income, the DIY ethic was deeply ingrained. The hard landscaping required by most good design was way beyond the budget of all but the wealthiest and there was little done in most gardens. But the home gardener certainly compensated with a detailed knowledge and practical experience with plants which would shame many modern gardeners.

So what is really interesting about the County Organiser’s comment, with which I started, is that it married the two aspects of plant interest and good design as being necessary in a garden of any quality. Not only that, but good design is not treated as an end in itself but as a tool to facilitate movement through the garden space.

There are precedents for this marriage of design and plants and one of the most illustrious comes in the form of two significant Britons around the start of the twentieth century. Edwin Lutyens was an architect who also turned his hand to garden design. His houses were truly beautiful, as was his mastery of windows and light. So too were his garden designs a gifted use of space and proportion, very formal and completely dominated by plenty of magnificent stonework and bricks in walls, terraces, steps, water features and all the rest. He also gave us the Lutyens outdoor seat which is now probably mass produced in Asia but at its best is a classic and well proportioned piece of furniture.

But, and it is a huge but, having designed a magnificent formal space, he did not then fill it with clipped topiary and only five different plants laid out like soldiers on a parade ground. No, he handed the space over to his colleague, the revered gardener Gertrude Jekyll who then set about filling all the spaces and softening the hard lines with a riot of flowers and colour through the seasons. Jekyll is famous for her work on herbaceous borders with big drifts of colour and texture put together with the eye of an artist, but she was also a plantswoman using a wide range of plant material to enliven and blur the hard edges of the otherwise somewhat sterile formal design.

The Lutyens Kekyll partnership would not have come cheaply. No DIY going on there. But 100 years on, we have seen the preserve of the fine garden extend well down the social and financial ladder so that it is no longer the preserve of the wealthy upper classes. The democratisation of gardening, we might call it. Firstly through the most fundamental skills of learning how to grow and show plants to advantage, secondly through learning to value the aesthetic of good design and ways to manage this on a much smaller budget and hopefully now into the era when we successfully bring together both the plant interest and good design in the domestic garden.

So should anybody ever advise you to simplify the plantings in your garden, you may wish to smile serenely and consider, according to the Oracle of Jury, that advice is just so last century. If your advisor knew more, they may well say that your plant combinations are not good enough – that is the way you put all your many and varied plants together in the garden. Or they may mean that the design and flow within your garden is not good enough to carry the collection of plants you have amassed. But it is a cop-out or a non-gardener’s solution to say that all will be rectified by drastically reducing the number of varieties of plants you grow. Really good gardens are a blending of many interesting plants grown in good combinations and held together by excellent design. It is all a bit like love and marriage and the horse and carriage.