Category Archives: Tikorangi notes

The winter solstice, Matariki and the start of a new gardening year

The winter solstice – midwinter. The time when we have the longest night of the year and the shortest period of daylight. In exact terms, this means that our daylight will be 9 hours 25 minutes and 11 seconds long today in Taranaki. Tomorrow will have two seconds more of daylight. I looked it up. Close to nine and a half hours of daylight in midwinter is still quite a lot compared to many locations but it is our shortest day.

For the northern hemisphere, the start of the new year comes within ten days of the winter solstice whereas for us, New Year comes as we enter mid-summer.

It is perhaps little considered that the calendar we all use dates back to Julius Caesar in 45BC, refined to its current form in 1582. Certain things are fixed in time including the length of the individual months and dates for equinoxes and solstices because these are derived from earth’s position in the solar system.

The arbitrary date of New Year being January 1 is not fixed by such external considerations. It is a convenient convention, that is all. The world does not come to a halt because Chinese and Indian peoples have long continued to celebrate the start of a new year at different times. So too Maori, who linked the start of a new year to Matariki – the rising in the sky of the star formation known as the Pleiades and the start of the new lunar year.

It just so happens that Matariki usually occurs within ten days of the winter solstice in New Zealand, though it is a little later this year. Here in the south, the indigenous people observed astronomical patterns and arrived at a time for new year that corresponds almost exactly with the time determined in the northern hemisphere. It is six months out of step as far as the calendar goes but synchronised with the seasons.

Apparently, Matariki was widely celebrated until the 1940s but dropped from favour until its relatively recent revival. There is now a growing focus on Matariki and there is certainly a logic underpinning it that is ours, all ours, independent from the dominant northern hemisphere cultures.

I do not expect to see the first bloom of the season on our Magnolia campbellii for another 10 to 14 days but, to coin a phrase from television cooking shows, here is one I prepared earlier. July 4 in a previous year.

This was a revelation to me because I have long declared that the opening of the Magnolia campbellii in our park signals the start of a new garden year. And the first blooms appear more or less in time with Matariki. North meets South meets the Far East because our form of pink M. campbellii originated from Darjeeling in India. In the wild, most M. campbellii are white but in Taranaki where we live, the most common colour is pink.

Magnolia campbellii is always the first magnolia of the season to open for us. Our tree was one of the first plants Mark’s father, Felix, put into the south sloping paddock behind the house in the 1950s.

And another I prepared earlier – Magnolia campbellii at the Anglican church in our local town of Waitara, though a little later in July when it reaches full glory

The first bloom opening ten days or so after the solstice is very specific to our plant which is in the coldest part of the property. Even just two kilometres away, my friend’s plant had already opened its first bloom on June 16 and I photographed the same plant by St John’s Church in the local town of Waitara with a few blooms open on May 15. Waitara is clearly significantly warmer even though it is all of seven kilometres from us.

The winter solstice heralds the worst of winter. We drift slowly into winter and after the shortest day of the year, we get maybe four to six weeks of dreary weather through to early August, but never unrelentingly so. To see the opening of the magnolias means that, in the depths of winter, we are already seeing the palpable arrival of spring.

In terms of shaking up our world view, this map is fascinating. It shows the traditional world map that we all know in pale blue with the actual size of countries in dark blue. The difference is stark and comes down to the Mercator projection, devised in the main to assist marine navigation back in history – in 1569, in fact. Some of those northern countries are… well, quite a bit smaller than we have been led to believe.

It could, of course, equally be shown like this. It is only convention that puts the north at the top of maps and globes, nothing whatever to do with physics, geography or logic. The equator could have been chosen at the top or the South Pole and, prior to the early 1600s, they often were.

But what is missing from this world map?

Amusingly, one of the map issues where there has been something of a change of heart in these times of pandemic is when New Zealand is left off world maps entirely. If you do a net search, this is more common than you might think and has been a source of considerable indignation. Now that we are more or less Covid-free (slightly less than more this week, but those five cases are all border-related), there is strong support on my social media for the idea of dropping NZ off ALL world maps. Many of us do not want to make it easy for people from other countries to find us at this time in history.

Seven days from the winter solstice – Tikorangi this week

IMG_7033

The white form of Dahlia imperialis

The last tree dahlia of the season is in bloom. Dahlia imperialis alba plena is the towering giant of them all, way up in the sky, not blooming until well into winter so particularly vulnerable to frosts and winter gales. I took this photo yesterday to show those in other climates the intensity of winter light that we get here on sunny days. It is different to those who garden where the winter sun hangs lower in the sky. We are not tropical; I don’t want to mislead. It is almost mid-winter and can be quite chilly. However, it is a lot less depressing to the spirits when you live somewhere with this clarity of bright light, even on the shortest days of the year.

IMG_7045

Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ shimmering in the late afternoon light

IMG_7040We are now well into what Piet Oudolf refers to as the ‘fifth season’ and the new Court Garden brings me much pleasure, especially in the late afternoon when the sun is dropping lower and shines through the miscanthus grasses. I have used a lot of miscanthus running through the garden in waves and the plumes shine in the light and wave gently in any breeze.

IMG_7031IMG_7039I have finally found a place where this large yellow salvia can grow with sufficient space and it is a late autumn – early winter highlight. We have never had a name on this variety so if any readers can identify it for me, I would be grateful. It stands a good two metres tall so it is a large plant to accommodate. *** Now identified as Salvia madrensis, thanks readers.

Tips and techniques for the week:

IMG_6920

Stipa gigantea after a major thinning exercise

  • I took a before photo of this block of Stipa gigantea in the new Court Garden but I appear to have deleted it when I was filing photos. It looked fine at the end of its first year but I knew it wouldn’t stay looking fine and it was already too congested to allow the plants to fountain out and show their natural form. Last week, I took out well over half the plants and gave them away. I did have to lift some of the remaining plants to centre them to their own space but I am much happier with it now so it was worth the effort. I haven’t grown this stipa before and hadn’t realised how much space each plant needs. I am hoping this can now be left alone for a few years at least. It has a white field daisy growing between which I have learned I can get two, maybe three successive flowerings from spring to autumn if I cut it back to the base rosette at the right time.

    IMG_7050

    Layering up the prunings at the back, more or less out of sight

  • Out of the ‘I thought it would be a straightforward job that would only take a day and a half at the most but actually took four full days and still isn’t quite finished’ school of thought, I spent this week clearing the wilderness of boundary plantings that separate the caterpillar garden from the boundary with the neighbours’ wool shed and yards. People with big gardens will understand that you have areas which get planted and then mostly left to their own devices. It is one of those jobs you finally tackle when preparing to open the garden to the public again. Nobody will notice I have done it, but they may well have noticed had I not. Over the years, it had become largely impenetrable with self-sown camellias, layered hydrangeas, native seedlings, especially kawakawa and various mounds of vegetation where I had emptied the wheelbarrow of prunings that I didn’t want in the compost heap. It amazes me how far I can get with a sharp pruning saw. Because there was so much of it, I dragged all the debris to the back and layered it by the boundary fence. At some points, it is quite a bit higher than in this photo. It can gently rot down there, adding humus and carbon to the soil and is a lot lighter on labour than carting it all away to compost and mulch. It is a technique we are using quite extensively now and is a tidy, unobtrusive way of dealing with excessive amounts of garden waste. That said, it is a big garden technique, rather than one for small town gardens.

    IMG_7047

    On track to be an undulating, curvy hedge like a moving caterpillar

  • I have started a major clipping round on the hedges in what we call the Caterpillar Garden. The hedge is Camellia microphylla, already nearing the end of its flowering season. The plants were pretty neglected -raised from seed and cuttings many years ago and then left to kick around the old nursery until we were ready to use them. We planted them two years ago and the hedges, laid out in the shape of the basket fungus, are still a bit patchy. Mark’s plan is to clip these hedges into mounded, free-form shapes like an undulating caterpillar in the style we associate strongly with UK designer, Tom Stuart Smith. I am doing the first clip this season and have told Mark it is his job to come through and do the final clip of the top to get the mounding shapes he wants.
    OCcamellias 014

    The straight-edged, hard clipped approach

    Most of our clipped hedges here are very straight sided with the top meeting at right angles. Lloyd does them with a string line to keep the lines straight and the hedges a uniform width. He has a good eye for these things. But after spending a fair number of hours clipping and shaping the caterpillar hedge, I can tell you that it is a great deal easier and more pleasurable to work with a more organic shape and form than that military regimentation of the sharper-edged hedges. Informality is much more forgiving than formality.

Invasive plants

I don’t know its name. I am guessing it is a species.

Remember this pretty aster I showed in March? I loved its profusion and lightness. So did the bees and butterflies love it. But I was worried that it was too large and too dominant immediately by the path so set out to reduce its bulk and spread. That was illuminating. The initial divisions that I had planted were now so dense I had to cut them into squares to get them out but that was fine. What worried me was how far and how fast it was s p r e a d I n g. It had probably colonised its way out about a metre all around by sending out long runners below ground. The runners will put up a small rosette of leaves maybe every 20cm but they keep running and they are certainly aren’t going to let the roots of other plants deter them. Nor indeed were the stone edging or compacted path a deterrent.

That is about two years of growth in the pink tub and on the path and just from one patch.

By the time I came to the second clump, I decided on total elimination and that turned into quite a major operation. The first clump, I just tried to reduce and thin somewhat but I am pretty sure I may have to carry out more drastic action next year.

I am trying some in a confined drum and will see how that works. It is such a lovely plant in leaf and flower that I want to keep some of it but I really don’t want it invading large areas. Come to think of it, it may be the same aster that took over the Missouri Meadow at Wisley, choking out most of the other plants.

We inherited several old tanks with holes in the bottom that I am now using to contain plants that look dangerous

We are extremely cautious about invasive plants in our garden. Make that our country, not just our own garden, because garden escapes of invasive plants are a major problem in the wild. I like to shock overseas gardeners by telling them that it is actually illegal to grow the giant gunnera where we are in Taranaki. It became a noxious weed on the coastal cliff tops near Opunake where eradication was such a huge issue it was banned altogether. Our soft, warm-temperate climate makes plants which may be called ‘vigorous’ or ‘strong growing’ in harsher climates downright invasive pests here. And it is not just gunneras. Agapanthus, flag iris, campanulata cherries, the bangalow palm (Archontophenix cunninghamiana) , erigeron daisy, pampas grass, perennial sweet peas, Fuchsia boliviana  – our country is littered with plants that are a great deal more prized overseas but either discouraged, banned from sale or banned entirely in some areas here.

My gardening friend from Christchurch, Robyn Kilty recommended Calamgrostis ‘Overdam’ as a possible alternative to C. ‘Karl Foerster’ which had become dangerously strong growing here. I looked it up and found I can indeed buy it but the description from one producer included the terrifying words ‘may be invasive’. Make that ‘will be invasive’ in our conditions. Where Robyn gardens in Christchurch, such plants are not a problem with their cold winters and hot dry summers which restrict growth. There is no such brake on their growth here.

Some plants invade by seeding too freely. To some extent, that can be controlled by dead heading if the plants are lower growers. We dead head most of our agapanthus here and I dead head the likes of crocosmias. Or choosing sterile varieties can eliminate the seeding problems, especially when it comes to trees.

This white daisy – name unknown – is vigorous without being invasive. If cut back hard, it flowers a second and even third time which is very obliging of it.

Some plants invade by putting out runners along the ground which then make roots. Wisteria are a prime example of this and believe me, you do not want to plant wisteria unless you are willing to restrict them and prune them at least once a year. Somebody once told me that the largest plant in the world is a wisteria which has layered its way along. I have no idea if that is true but I wouldn’t be surprised.

And some plants, like the aster (and indeed the calamgrostis) invade by determinedly spreading their roots below the ground. They are way more problematic though you can resort to spraying with herbicide if you use it. The underground spreaders tend to be very strong indeed, choking out the competition and getting their roots intertwined with anything in their way.

I have kept six plants of Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ to see if I can contain them by root pruning them once a year with a sharp spade. I think I discarded 18 of them and digging those out was a major effort, I tell you, after only one year in the ground. I had to barrow in quite a few loads of soil to fill the holes that were left.

Mark is going to try some of the aster down in the park meadow where the competition from other plants is greater and the area is mown twice a year so that may curb the rampant growth. If it doesn’t, he will have to reach for the herbicide.

A profusion of aster that looked as though it had the potential to turn into a takeover by aster

To dead head or not to dead head, that is the question

Phlomis and Stipa tenuissima in the morning light of autumn

I have never done so much dead heading in my life before. Not that I mind it, you understand, more that I am surprised to find it becoming part of my routine. The need was not anticipated. But neither have we ever had extensive areas of summer perennials before. This week, I achieved what was a milestone for me – the completion of the revamped Iolanthe Garden as a perennial meadow (I use the word ‘meadow’ loosely, here.) That gives us close to an acre (0.4 hectare) of new summer gardens finished.

It has been heavily influenced by the New Perennials movement, led by its uncrowned monarch, Dutch designer, plantsman and gardener, Piet Oudolf. Anything and everything you read about this modern approach to perennial gardening will refer to its lower maintenance requirements and leaving the plants and all the seed heads to stand well into winter, that there is beauty in that black and brown decay of autumn and winter until everything is cut down to the ground – usually in February, so very late northern winter. Besides, all those seed heads feed the birds and save them from starving when food supplies are desperately short. Oudolf has coined the term ‘fifth season’ to describe that period in late autumn when low light levels, frost, dew and sometimes snow light the blackened tips of plants to make them sparkle. There are many beautiful photographs on line capturing this phenomenon.

You can have too much of a good thing – Verbena bonariensis and fennel

It is different in New Zealand. Boy is it different. Only the coldest parts of the country have that winter hiatus. Most of us have flowers and seasonal interest all year round. A large proportion of the plants we use are evergreen so never die down to ground level. There is food for the birds all year round and they are not in danger of starving. Besides, most of those seed and grain eating birds are the introduced ones (sparrows!). Our native birds tend to favour fruit or partaking of nectar. Our light levels don’t drop in winter. A midwinter’s day can be as clear and bright as midsummer.

And we have a problem with garden escapes becoming weeds. That is the big issue that has me out there dead heading. Much and all as I love Verbena bonariensis, I don’t want mountains of it everywhere. The same goes for crocosmia be it yellow, orange or red, kniphofia (red hot pokers), some of the asters, tigridia (jockey caps), eryngium, dietes, fennel, nicotiana, verbascums and quite a few other plants we are growing. Even Gloriosa superba sets so much seed it is threatening to become a weed. There is nothing for it but to get out there with my snips and bucket to reduce the seed heads.

Amaranthus caudatus – not unwelcome in this situation but a surprise arrival in the compost

There is a slight problem with disposing of the seed heads. Even though we make hot compost, too many seeds come out the other end of the process and live to germinate and grow another day in another place around the garden. This unexpected display of amaranthus arrived in the compost I spread in this area. I have learned my lesson. Now I stow the seed heads in deep shade on the wilder margins of the property where few will germinate because they don’t see the sun.

A sampling of seeds that need removing. I contemplating setting it up as one of those quizzes for bored readers to identify but I would rather be out gardening. Top left tigridia and fennel, bottom left nicotiana, eryngium and dietes, centre crocosmia, top left aster, bottom right Lilium formasanu,. kniphofia and Verbena bonariensis.

The skills come in knowing which plants need total removal of seed heads (kniphofia and tigridias, for example), which plants need the removal of most seed heads to restrict their self-seeding (such as eryngiums, fennel, crocosmia, verbascums and Verbena bonariensis) and which plants don’t need to be dead headed because they are either welcome to seed down (I am not sure than I will ever have too many echinaceas) or because they don’t seem to cause a seeding problem (phlomis and the grasses). Then there are a few plants that I will dead head because that encourages them to flower again (roses, though I don’t grow many of those these days, and some of the daisies).

There is no substitution for observation and experience. We can not just take gardening practices from other climates and assume it will be the same here. If I have another 20 years, I may be able to come up with plant lists that are specifically designed for our conditions. For anyone thinking that maybe it would be better to concentrate on using our native plants, consider the fact that most of our sunny perennials are alpine. In our lowland conditions, native perennials are shade loving foliage plants with a heavy emphasis on ferns.

I want some eryngiums to self seed but not all of them

Two footnotes: the acclaimed film about Piet Oudolf, called ‘Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf’ is available free to stream this weekend only. We plan on watching it this evening, as long as I can work out again how to get Chromecast working. Where is a teenager or young person when you need one? It is being streamed from https://www.hauserwirth.com/?fbclid=IwAR2YXqr5-VDT2TwThnzWxVF2lzS4HXMVCV-l9166HQsVlTqqktF-QYsMTm4

And we are opening the garden and unveiling the new summer gardens for ten days this spring during the annual Taranaki Garden Festival, October 30 to November 8. As part of that, I am considering offering workshops on new directions with sunny perennials and managing meadows in our climate. Numbers will be strictly limited so look for details when the programme comes out.

May your lockdowns go well, or at least harmoniously. The end is in sight for us in NZ, with the strong possibility that we can eliminate the virus and return to some sort of Covid-free normality – as long as our border stays closed. Just don’t try injecting, drinking or otherwise consuming disinfectant – you may then be Covid-free but actual scientists tell us you will also be dead.

Farewell poor Felix. We knew thee well.

The Prunus campanulata, that is. We farewelled the person – Mark’s Dad – back in 1997. The magnolia named by Mark for him continues to thrive here and we have several specimens planted around the property, including the original plant. The prunus – we have just the one and it may not pull through.

A definite lean. In fact it has fallen over, though the root system is still in the ground.

I noticed two days ago that the tree had a major lean. On closer inspection, it became clear that only the brick wall was holding it up and I was a bit worried about whether it could bring down the wall. Mark set about removing the weight that was pulling it to one side. He will cut the tree back hard and we will look at putting a prop in place but we doubt it will survive.

Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is the reddest campanulata that we know of

Prunus campanulata ‘Felix Jury’ was named by the nursery Duncan and Davies for Felix, because he was the originator of this selection. It is simply not done to name a plant after oneself. It is still the deepest carmine red bloom on the NZ market and is much beloved by our native tui. Being a smaller growing, upright form, it has been popular as a garden plant. Unfortunately, it is not sterile so it sets seed which makes it problematic in areas where campanulata has become a noxious weed. We do a lot of weeding out of seedling cherries here because the birds spread the seed far and wide.

We will try and keep a plant going as part of the Jury collection. Hopefully this tree will stay alive until late spring so Mark can take some cuttings off it. The optimum time for taking cuttings from deciduous plants in our conditions is December.

Native tui feeding from a campanulata cherry but it looks too pink to be ‘Felix Jury”

I do not think I have ever told the story of the naming of Camellia ‘Julie Felix’. It would have been very poor form for Felix to name it for himself but he really liked it. Enter Julie Felix, the American-born folk singer who made her name in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was touring NZ and doing a concert in New Plymouth. Felix thought that naming the camellia Julie Felix was a subtle play on names that would suit his purposes. Besides, though he took no interest in music, he liked her songs.

“You can’t do that without her permission,” protested his wife, Mimosa. She was a great woman for the telephone was Mimosa, so she tracked down that Julie Felix was staying at the Devon Hotel in New Plymouth and tried to call her. Whoever took the call – almost certainly the Devon receptionist – wouldn’t put her through to the singer’s phone so Mimosa explained (no doubt at great length) that she was trying to contact her for permission to name a camellia after her. “I am sure that will be fine,” said the person at the other end, very kindly.

So there we are. Permission was sought for this name and consent was give – by the receptionist at the Devon Hotel. I doubt that the singer ever knew there was a camellia bearing her name although it never was named for her. In a typically convoluted fashion, Felix was naming it for himself.

Ironically, I can’t even find a photograph of it, even though we have a big plant close to the house. I must set that right this winter when it comes into bloom again. It never achieved the status of his better known camellia cultivars like ‘Water Lily’ and ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Mimosa Jury’. But Felix clearly rated it highly.