Category Archives: Abbie’s column

Abbie’s newspaper columns

Orchids a-plenty

It is magnolia season and I have been photographing magnolias to share on a Facebook page I belong to, mostly populated with Northern Europeans which is how I learned yesterday morning that Mark’s Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ is performing well and bringing delight to a magnolia enthusiast in Ukraine. That seemed a little poignant. But this lovely yellow orchid has been sitting in my photo files waiting for its week to star so it is the turn of orchids to feature in this busy spring season.

I can’t recall seeing this yellow one flower before. Our garden apprentice, Zach, is a keen orchid man and I asked him if he had moved it to its current location, fed it or done anything to encourage it to burst into bloom and he thought not. It may be that after Cyclone Dovi, we have more light in this area and that spurred it on. It is lovely.

Brown shades are not my favourite but it earns its keep every year

Cymbidiums have long been imbued with an aura of luxury because of their role in floristry but have, perhaps, been somewhat overlooked as garden plants in areas where they can be grown. The flowers last for many weeks in excellent condition and then die off fairly gracefully. Of all the orchids we grow, they have the longest season in bloom and are very showy, even if they lack the more delicate charm or curiosity of many other members of the same family. And they are easy-care. We have had most of ours for decades and the only attention they ever had was to stake flower spikes when necessary. They are getting a bit more love from Zach who is dividing larger clumps to spread around and giving them a bit of compost from time to time but they still rate as low maintenance plants.

This one is growing in the fork of a tree and gets completely ignored until it comes into flower each year

Our style is to work them into woodland plantings in conditions of high shade and go for the natural look. I have seen them used in mass plantings and I am guessing that is an expensive option because it involves buying mature plants with spikes forming from a commercial grower. The problem with sourcing plants from a commercial grower is that their main market is floristry and the flowers can look a bit over the top in a garden – a bit too large. That is fine if it is the look you are after but it is not our preferred look.

This one is small, dainty even for a cymbidium. Bigger is not always better.
For context, it is in the bottom right of the photo, in Zach’s most recent orchid and fern construction to add some height in a formerly dull end-point of a border

We are not experts in orchids. Aficionados – and the incredibly complex family of orchids attracts its own devotees who often develop an extraordinary in-depth knowledge of different orchid species and groups – tend to be collectors who lavish a great deal of time and love to growing their orchids in pots, often under cover. But they aren’t often gardeners. Our interest in orchids is pretty much focused on what we can grow in the garden here. Over time, that has come down to a limited range as we have learned what will thrive and lost what does not.

Calanthes

Cymbidiums are the current stars, along with calanthes. We only have four different calanthes and I am sad I lost the pretty lilac one but we have A Lot of those four different ones, particularly the pale yellow one which I am told is Calanthe ‘Higo’ (C. sieboldii x C. aristulifera). As Zach and I stood admiring them, he commented that they look way better in the large drifts we have, that a single plant in a pot is not particularly remarkable. What a difference 50 years of allowing them to multiply in the garden can make. The calanthes last for several weeks in flower and having different ones means we will have them flowering from now through until the start of November.

Pleiones

Pleiones are another ground orchid. They are just starting to put up flower spikes so I had to find a photo from previous years. They are much more delicate in texture, their season is pretty short and they need more care and management to keep them thriving because their bulbs sit half in and half out of the soil and die off after flowering. But they are one of the prettiest orchids and worth the effort. Ours are all in white and shades of lilac and purple. There are lovely yellow ones and we built them up into the hundreds but they did not last in the garden. The yellow ones need more of a winter chill than they get here. We will give plants some care but not the level of mollycoddling required to lift them each season and reproduce the chill factor by refrigerating them and then planting them out again.

Dainty Bardo-Rose dendrobiums which we have in shades of pink, lilac, lemon and white

Dendrobiums can be fantastic garden plants and the Bardo-Rose hybrids are just opening their first flowers. They are another easy-care woodland option but much daintier and more refined than the cymbidiums. Later in  spring, will see the Satyrium corrifolium which is happy in the rockery and demands only admiration and no care, followed by the Dactylorhiza (maybe maculata) which is slowly and quietly in retreat – which is probably a reflection of our warmer winters in recent times.

I have just discovered that we have around 120 native orchids, almost all of which are so modest (read: tiny and often green or greenish flowers) that they might be described as visually insignificant. At least one of the native earina species appears naturally over trees all through the garden but only orchid devotees will find it thrilling to see. I went to photograph one but it is not in flower yet so must close with more cymbidiums.

Of matters related to fertility and sterility

Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ by our driveway. It is a handy, small tree with good colour but beware its seeding ways.

I received a phone call on Friday from a garden centre in another area. The caller wanted me to confirm that Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ was sterile. Their regional council had asked them to remove their plants from sale because they seed everywhere but their supplier had assured them it was sterile.

Reader, Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is NOT sterile. The woman on the other end of the phone was perfectly pleasant and thorough and said she would immediately remove the remaining plants from sale. All credit to her.

I feel like I am shouting into the abyss when I say that Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is not and never has been sterile. I have even written to a nursery and garden centre to advise them of this fact when I saw them advertising it as sterile. I was ignored. They are still advertising it as sterile. The original plant was raised here by Felix himself and it was Duncan and Davies Nursery who named it for him and put it into production. So it is a Jury plant but not one that we have any control over at all in the market place and Felix was never paid for it.

Our native tui, feeding from ‘Felix’

Times were different 50 years ago. We didn’t realise that campanulata cherries would become invasive weeds which are extremely difficult to eradicate because if you just cut them down, they grow again. The seed is spread far and wide by our native birds who eat the small cherries that form after flowering and excrete the inner pit or seed as they fly. Back then, they were just a pretty, flowering tree providing valuable food to tui, who adore them, in late winter. Now they are on the banned list – as in banned from sale, not banned entirely from gardens – in a number of areas and for good reason.

Once and for all: PRUNUS ‘FELIX JURY’ IS NOT STERILE.

If it was sterile, there wouldn’t be a problem because none of the seed is fertile so it can’t spread. The only Jury-bred campanulata hybrids that are sterile are ‘Pink Clouds’ and ‘Mimosa’ and they are sugar pink, not the carmine red of the campanulatas.

Prunus ‘Mimosa’, named by Felix for his wife. I took this photo to try and capture the korimako, our native bellbird, in the very centre.
I only add this photo because in the top left quadrant, you may spot the orange wings of a monarch butterfly feeding on ‘Mimosa’

We haven’t cut out our campanulatas and seeding cherries… yet. We derive a great deal of pleasure from watching scores of tui making the trees dance with movement as they feed and then fly on to the next tree. Mark is making mutterings about them. I think it likely we will keep the trees in the areas we actively garden; we are vigilant weeders and constantly pull out seedlings at a very early stage. We can manage them. But the ones on the margins and in wilder areas where we don’t spot the seedlings until they are too large to pull out by hand may get the chop in the next few years. It will be a big job because not only do they get the chop but the stumps have to be poisoned to prevent regrowth.  

I would be thinking twice before planting one and, were we still in the nursery trade, you can be sure we would no longer be selling them. Times change, knowledge grows and we need to recognise that and respond.

‘Felix Jury’ again

Spring has sprung

“Spring has sprung

The grass has riz

I wonder where the boides is.“

I had to do a little search on that bit of doggerel from my childhood and it appears there are multiple versions – although this one is the most common – and it may or may not have originated from Ogden Nash. But here we are; spring has indeed sprung. A visiting friend last weekend got out of his car and stood, momentarily transfixed by all the bird song he could hear so that was a nice way to start a visit. We don’t need to wonder where the boides are because they are here.

With Daffodil Day officially scheduled for the last day of winter next Thursday, all I have to offer today is a host of golden narcissi, that your heart, like William Wordsworth’s, may fill with pleasure and dance with the daffodils.

Ralph is no respecter of the garden but he does add a certain ambience to the ‘Peeping Toms’ beneath the old apple tree.

I see the pink and white Onixotis triquetra has been reclassified by some as a wurmbea but I am not sure I can cope with that; it is seen here with cyclamineus hybrids and our native brown carex grasses. We favour the early flowering dwarf narcissi and those within the cyclamineus group are hands down the best performers in our climate.

While we have many narcissi in more cultivated areas of the garden, it is the clumps that have naturalised well on the grassy banks of the park that make our hearts sing the most. There is something magical about seeing bulbs naturalised in more casual settings. This one is ‘Twilight’, a most successful cultivar bred by Mark’s dad, Felix Jury.

We favour early flowering varieties because they are pretty much over and dying down before the narcissi fly is at its most active. And we opt for the dwarfer types because we like their more delicate, somewhat refined appearance and they generally hold their heads up better. The larger the flower, the heavier it is and they are much more vulnerable to being beaten down by early spring storms.

The snowdrops are all but over, the magnolias are not yet peaking. This week belongs to the golden narcissi.

Found! Maybe the worst plants of the year.

I found one of the worst plants I have seen a long time in a Sydney garden centre. Vile, just vile. Variegated bougainvillea. ‘Novelty plants’ say I, sniffily.

The plant retail market has always had a penchant for novelty plants. I am guessing many customers cry, “Oh that is unusual! I must have that!” They are the plants that tend to be one season wonders in retail, although sometimes you may come across a survivor in a garden. Too many of them are variegated forms of a perfectly good original and most of these variegations are chance discoveries rather than the result of a controlled breeding programme. To this day I remember a nasty variegated oleander in Spain – yellow and green foliage with flowers that may have been kindly described as Paris pink when contrasted with dark green foliage but just looked dirty pink against the yellow foliage. There was a new spirea everywhere in the UK on one trip maybe 15 years ago, sporting the same unattractive colour combination. It clearly made a strong impression on me at the time because I have never forgotten how unappealing it was. Similarly, I still rate the Rhododendron ‘President Roosevelt’ as the most hideous rhododendron I have ever seen and we used to specialise in rhododendrons in the nursery.

Judging by the extra rows of the white one, Australian gardeners are as enamoured with white flowers as New Zealand gardeners. In this case, I think that is a mistake.

Gardeners in climates with lower light levels are a great deal more enamoured with variegated plants than we are here because they can light up a bleak scene and add colour. In our bright light, those variegations burn readily, unless they are in deep shade and a green and white (or yellow) leafy plant with brown edges and splotches is not attractive at all.

Not just vile, in my opinion, but insipid too, in white. And my money is on those white bracts burning in the Antipodean sunshine.

I am unconvinced anyone needs these variegated bougainvillea and I am pretty sure Australian gardeners will have as many problems with sunburned variegations as we do here in Aotearoa NZ. They have similar clarity of light and very bright sunshine. Mind you, I did a quick search on variegated bougainvillea and I see they are not uncommon and attract some fans around the world with selections which are considerably more awful than these.

I am fond of bougainvilleas but they are not a good long-term option for the faint-hearted. Our one specimen is huge and showy but r a m p a n t. It needs drastic action to restrain it once a year and this is a job that I am glad Zach has taken over because the many thorns are very sharp. Fortunately, it decays quickly so we can prune and thin, stacking the lengths at its base and they rot down to very little over the following year. Ours is so old that it largely holds itself up so at least we don’t need to tie it to a frame.

Bougainvilliea in Xishuangbanna in southern China
And in Sermoneta in Italy

I like to photograph bougainvilleas around the world because, like jacarandas and poinsettias, they seem to be a universally popular plant in areas where they can be grown. I still think the cerise one we have and the red are the showiest and cleanest. I first saw a pale orange-yellow form in Greece – popular on the isle of Kalymnos from memory, but I can’t find photos of it in my files. I wasn’t sure I liked it much; it looked a bit insipid. We saw triple-grafted plants in a nursery in Bali – three colours on one root-stock and they were an interesting novelty for container growing. I had forgotten it came in white as well until I saw it in the Sydney garden centre last month and all I can think is that yes, it is possible to take a spectacularly showy plant and turn it into the most insipid option of all!

Those variegated bougainvillea are unlikely to ever be as charming as this one, also in Sermoneta.
and in Fiumucino near Rome airport.
Golden in Melbourne, though it might ensnare passing pedestrians.

‘Doing the broms’

I have been ‘doing the broms’, as we say here. That is the once-a-year thorough workover in the Rimu Avenue. We have complex subtropical woodland planting throughout this area, but in square metreage terms, bromeliads are the dominant plant. This always brings back the memory of the rude old biddy who got into the garden for free on account of being brought here by a neighbour up the road. “I loathe bromeliads,” she declared as she stood in the middle of the Rimu Avenue. “Well you won’t like this part of the garden then,” I replied crisply, getting out of their company as fast as I could. When it comes to insults, I am like an elephant – I never forget.

More a symphony of texture and form than bright colour for much of the year
It is not entirely bereft of bright colour. The Hippeastum aulicum are glorious at this time of year and clivias in yellow, orange and red will follow

This avenue has long been one of our most admired areas. First started in the late 1950s, by Mark’s dad, Felix and then doubled in length 40 years later by Mark, it is probably unique in terms of an interesting, remarkably sustainable and low maintenance woodland garden adapted to our climate. Because it is completely frost-free, we can grow true subtropicals beneath the towering canopy of rimu trees (Dacrydium cupressinum) which are now over 150 years old. All up, it is an area somewhere over 2500 square metres, maybe even near 3000.

The Rimu Avenue is roughly 100 metres in length and variable in width

It is undemanding in terms of maintenance. During the year, we will remove dead branches and larger debris that falls from above. It is largely free of weeds, being in shade and having been gardened for so many years, although we are forever removing seedling prunus, nikau palms and wretched bangalow palms. Since we cut down the seeding bangalow (Archontophoenix cunninghamiana), the incidence of those seedlings will phase out in a few years.

We like a highly detailed garden and, while this area may be low maintenance by our standards, it remains diverse and detailed.

Once a year, I start at one end and work my way to the other end, picking over every plant. Yes, it is a big job and it takes about two weeks of intense labour but the difference is rewarding and it is not heavy work. When I say two weeks, it is probably 60 hours which represents just over an hour a week across the year to maintain a major area of garden. I admit that does not include Zachs’s time as he works along the margins or Lloyd’s time removing my mountains of debris. So maybe this annual exercise equates to an average of two hours a week, except we do it in one hit.

Lloyd must have dealt with about 20 times this volume so far. it is a prodigious amount.

When I say mountains of debris, I mean that Lloyd is removing about two packed wool bales a day of my prunings. We used to dump it in our bush across the road to rot down in its own time but this year, Lloyd has been putting it through the mulcher and then using it in compost which is more labour intensive, but we get to use the end result. You can never have too much weed-free compost.

Before
and after

It is the bromeliads that generate most of the waste. Almost every bromeliad only flowers once and then the centre dies off – although the dying process can take more than a year or even three. While this is happening, the plant puts new shoots or pups out from the base of the old crown, or adjacent to it, and it is those new growths that will flower in the future. You can leave them to their own devices and the oldest parts will eventually die, dry and become dislodged but the clumps can get very congested and messy. I go through and remove the crowns that flowered last year.

Before
and after

The strategy to removing them is to take the time to look at each variety to see where the new shoots are coming from. Some appear from inside the bottom layer of leaves so if you just cut through the base of the rosette, you are cutting off all the replacement young growths. Every variety is a bit different but that is also what keeps the task interesting. They will all be shooting from somewhere near the base if the time is right to remove the old crown.

And the last before
and after.

Even though we have been doing this for years, it never fails to amaze us just how much volume is removed and yet the remaining planting never looks bare. It just looks fresh. It is one of the more rewarding garden maintenance tasks on our gardening calendar.

Those are monstera – the fruit salad plant – climbing up the trees. A long way up.

It wasn’t just the bromeliads. Zach and I removed huge amounts of Monstera deliciosa which had become monstrous indeed. We are fine with them climbing up; they add to the tropical look. Spreading outwards was another issue and removing most of the stems from the lower two metres opens up the views through which gives the feeling of more depth and distance in the garden. As he hauled out large amounts for mulching, many with aerial roots, Zach was musing how appalled plant sellers on Trade Me would be to see the wanton destruction of plant material they could sell at exorbitant prices!