Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

A love affair with poppies

I am very partial to poppies. At least to some of them. My mother was an Iceland poppy fan. While she was an accomplished gardener, I doubt that she ever deliberately grew an annual in her life and the Iceland poppies (papaver nudicaule – from the Arctic regions) were the only flower I ever remember her buying in bunches. From memory, they are a cut flower that you buy in the bud stage, burn the stems and then they open in the vase.

I don’t wish to be disloyal to my mother but I don’t share her fondness for the Iceland poppies – the predominance of orange, salmon and yellow colours don’t do it for me. It is the corn poppies and the Himalayan poppies that are bringing me pleasure at this time.
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Buying some controversy

Isn’t it wonderful that the Fringe Festival was apparently so successful? Thousands of people turning out to see the gardens, all priced at $2 or less. I am not kidding. Anything that promotes gardening and gets people out enjoying gardens is great. And there is clearly a market for often low key gardens with added attractions such as the The Liquorice Lady and the Rawleighs salesperson, knitting and pickles for sale. A yearning, perhaps, for the nostalgia of the church fete or the early days of the Rhododendron Festival two decades ago.

But now that the Fringe organisers have proven they can do it, perhaps they should no longer be fringe and they should find their own time of the year. How much better to have two separate garden festivals at two different times of the year and have two bites at the cherry? There really is no reason why they should be run at the same time, the very same dates in fact.
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In praise of vulgar flower power

With the excess of open gardens and garden events this weekend, we thought of putting up a poster: “Caution. Endangered species. Garden Visitor.”

Some of us remember the heydays of the late 1980s and early 90s when garden visiting ranked very high as a preferred leisure activity. While other garden festivals throughout the country have flowed but mostly ebbed in the time since, our annual Rhododendron and Garden Festival has managed to hold on and to gain a pre-eminent position as a premier garden event despite the overall decline in visitor numbers.
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Gardening in Greece

Greek gardening. Now there is an oxymoron. Combine arid, poor, stony soils, six months with no rain at all during very hot summers and some islands with no fresh water – the range of plants that can be grown is pretty limited. That is not to say that people do not surround themselves with some foliage and flowers but it hardly warrants the term “gardening”.

In late September, the flowers were almost exclusively oleanders (I recall admiring these in flower in Gisborne one January), bougainvillea (I hadn’t seen the golden orange form before but I remain unconvinced that it is of great merit), hibiscus, jasmine and geraniums (99% the common red one). Second Daughter, who was travelling with me, commented that she had never liked the red geranium before she went to Italy and now Greece, but it is wonderfully evocative of Continental summertime. If my memory serves me right, prominent Taranaki gardener, Gwyn Masters, used red geraniums in terracotta pots in her Italianate garden created in a disused swimming pool. It helps to have the panache of Mrs Masters to avoid it merely looking cliched or tatty in our gardening environment.
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From London

The gardening instinct is a curious phenomenon. Gardeners will grow plants and create their own environment no matter where and how they live. While I am writing this column on Patmos, a Greek Island (ain’t email just one of life’s modern wonders?) you will have to wait, dear Reader, for my next column to receive yours truly’s impressions of Greek gardening. Today my thinking is on a late London summer.

I have been to London a number of times in recent years, but it is a long time since I have visited in summer when the trees are in leaf. And goodness, we could learn a thing or two from the greenery of parts of London. The city would be a cheerless brick and concrete jungle were it not for the trees. Big trees lots of them. I am dreadful at estimating heights but there are countless trees which measure three or four stories high against the multi-story houses. Trees which are even permitted to take up the entire pavement so that the pedestrian has to step onto the road to get around them. Street trees where the roots lift the pavement and tilt the front boundary fences of residences. Can you imagine the hue and cry and the pressure on the Council were a street tree to dislodge a concrete block boundary fence at home? These are all deciduous trees (oaks, alders, sycamores and the like) so leaf drop in Autumn will be a huge issue. Garden waste collection in Maida Vale, where I stayed, is on Wednesdays. Continue reading →