Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

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 →

Buyer Beware or Out of Control Lawnmowing Contractors

Our trade magazine, Commercial Horticulture, keeps talking about the New Zealand do it yourself ethic having been replaced by “Do it for me”. You can see this in the explosion of lawnmowing contractors, section maintenance people and landscapers. Even I will admit that not everybody derives the same pleasure from gardening and being creative with plants that we do here.

But I had somebody in recently who told me a horror story which may serve as a cautionary tale. Uncertain what to do with her large section which had some mature plantings, she engaged the services of somebody who called himself a landscaper. She thought she had made it clear what she wanted – a pretty garden which complemented her period villa. Alas she came home from work one lunchtime to find he had chainsawed out all her trees, including her mature apples and plums. She was simply devastated. This cowboy “landscaper” planned to create a minimalist garden in their place – rocks and spiky things and grasses.
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Glam Gardening with a Nod to Things Italianate

Anything La Bella Italia is the New Cool.

Glam gardening is the fashion of the new millenium.

I decided this, dear Reader, based on rather slender evidence but everywhere I look, I see confirmation of these two conclusions. Time was when anything from France was the height of sophistication and style but these days it is Italy that is in vogue. Italian gardening, Italian cooking (anything with olive oil and sun dried tomatoes), to Italian shoes and handbags, to clipped cypresses and tiled entranceways – all add up to Italian style. And we want it, indoors and out.
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