Category Archives: Tikorangi notes

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 3 December

Latest Posts: Friday, December 3, 2010

1) Why there is only one plant clearly and unmistakeably labelled in our garden – well, signposted might be more accurate – Ficus antiarus and related matters. Abbie’s column.

2) The attractive flowers on the sarracenia are a surprise to those who think the insect catching pitcher is the flower. Plant Collector.

3) Hints and tips on garden tasks for the week.

4) A Green Granny’s Garden – more a light holiday read than a gardening book.

Rhododendron sinonuttallii in all its glory this week

Rhododendron sinonuttallii in all its glory this week

Tikorangi Notes: Friday, December 3, 2010
We hurtled from a very wet and cold September (or so I am told – I was in the south of Spain at the time) straight into a very dry and mild October and November. We usually joke that three weeks without rain constitutes a drought in this green and mild area we live in. It is now two months since we have had any significant rain and there is none in sight. The garden looks more like late February. This is not weather we are at all accustomed to getting and there is growing anxiety in the rural sector. Notwithstanding that, the late rhododendrons have been flowering on cue and the R. sinonuttalliis have been a wondrous sight over the past week or two. Fragrance, big, beautiful pure blooms and astoundingly large, bullate foliage – what more could one ask?

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 26 November 2010

Latest Posts:
1) The pretty bells of Tecomanthe Montana, a sub tropical climber from New Guinea.
2) Recommended garden tasks for the week as our unusually dry spell continues and talk of drought escalates.
3) Hints on staking and tying plants in Outdoor Classroom.

A barrow load of wine

A barrow load of wine

Tikorangi Notes:It was not a barrow full of monkeys but a barrow load of wine here last week. Over the past three years, we have been gently winding down the nursery, scaling it back to a more easily managed operation which would free us up to garden more. But, as Mark has observed often, it takes a long time to kill off a nursery and his patience ran out. He wanted at least half of one side empty so he could start his new vegetable garden and orchard. Can we get rid of the plants, he asked. So I emailed a few friends, colleagues and the garden openers from our recent Taranaki Rhododendron Festival. Free plants, I said. Just bring us a bottle of wine (dry white preferred) if you are going to take lots. They did. On the designated day, we were stripped out by about 10.30am and we were wheeling the wine over the house by the barrow load. Now work is starting at last on one of the new gardens we have planned.

 

Tikorangi Notes: Friday, 19 November 2010

Latest posts: Friday November 19, 2010
1) The romantic Moorish gardens of Andalucian Spain and the likely debt to it shown in modern, western gardens – Abbie’s column.
2) Manfreda maculosa – an herbaceous plant with a singularly dramatic flower spike topped with a rather anticlimactic flower.
3) Tasks in the garden this week include getting swan plant seeds sown without delay.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday November 19, 2010

Looking more cottage garden than rockery this week

Looking more cottage garden than rockery this week

A particularly good verbascum for our conditions

A particularly good verbascum for our conditions

Drought is a relative matter. About three weeks without significant rain here and farmers are already fearing drought while gardeners are worrying about the dry. A light volcanic soil does not help because it dries out quickly but our rains are usually so predictable that we never have to water the garden. I have been pottering in the rockery, excavating a highly decorative but dangerously invasive equisetum (horse tail rush). A mere ten months or so and it was already making an escape for it, including between the rocks. Plants that burrow underground and pop up some distance away can be unnerving but the speed at which this equisetum was doing it indicated downright dangerous tendencies. Strictly one for a pot, I think, and even then it may be on borrowed time. The rockery is looking more like a cottage garden at this time of the year. Most of the spring bulbs have finished flowering but the splendid large flowered yellow verbascum (name unknown) gives some presence and height in November. One or two plants are left to set seed each year and it conveniently perpetuates itself.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 12 November, 2010

The very pretty Tecomanthe montana

The very pretty Tecomanthe montana

Latest Posts:

1) Jovellana punctata has been particularly charming in flower in recent weeks.

2) In The Garden This Week – recommended tasks for home gardeners this week as the weather warms up in late spring.

3) Hosta combinations that work – our latest Outdoor Classroom.

Tikorangi NotesThe end of our annual garden festival saw us wandering around like zombies on Monday – talked out and exhausted. It is amazing how 10 days of standing on concrete all day and meeting and greeting can take its toll. The festival is so important to us, delivering up half our annual total of visitors in a quick burst. The weather smiled on us again this year –sun every day and mild temperatures. This is not to be sneezed at in a situation where we start to feel personally responsible for the weather as we host out of town and overseas visitors. The offshore visitors were noticeably dominated by Australians this year.

The Tecomanthe montana which we grow in our meet and greet area was perhaps a little later with its blooming but it had sufficient blooms open to attract attention from visitors, many of whom look at just the flowers and assume it is a lapageria. No, it is a climber from New Guinea and rather tender. The plant we used to have in the garden succumbed to winter cold years ago but this one is under cover and performs consistently every year. The same can not be said of Tecomanthe venusta, which is even more tender. It flowers just often enough to justify our keeping it, but never rivals montana in flower power.

Tikorangi Notes, Friday November 5, 2010

The wonderfully strident azalea mollis

The wonderfully strident azalea mollis

Latest posts:
1) My unlikely global observations on the takeover of polyester resin outdoor furniture by the corporate giants.
2) The fragrant delight of Rhododendron Loderi Venus, in flower this week.
3) Garden tasks for this week.
4) The final Countdown to our Festival which is in full swing this week.
5) A little late in the season now, but Lachenalia aloides is a tried and true, reliable performer in winter.

The park is at its prettiest

The park is at its prettiest

Tikorangi Notes, Friday November 5, 2010
As our annual rhododendron and garden festival enters its last few days, our park is looking particularly fetching. The azalea mollis are such an OTT plant family – often bold and strident in their statement of bright colour. In a garden where we love colour, scent and flowers (forget all this restrained good taste which says form and foliage is most important – in a large garden we want flowers and to be able to go out each day and see something else coming in to bloom), the azaleas are a seasonal delight.

Parking can be a mission during Festival

Parking can be a mission during Festival

But in this ten day period which delivers up a hefty swag of our annual garden visitors, the logistics of handling visitors takes precedence. We have a visitor carpark which is perfectly adequate for 51 weeks of the year but is often woefully inadequate in that 52nd week. Poor Lloyd, our ever versatile and adaptable garden assistant, gets to double as carpark attendant. While we can sink a relatively large number of people in our garden without a sense of being overcrowded, the need to manage vehicles and to get coaches and camper vans off our busy road tends to become a bit of a mission at times. I was a little taken aback at the coach driver who suggested that if we cut out the Prunus Pearly Shadows in the middle, we would make it much easier to turn the coaches, but we were even more amused by the garden visitor who commented about our carpark that it was just like Sissinghurst. In miniature, perhaps.