Category Archives: Tikorangi notes

Tikorangi Notes: Friday October 29, 2010

Latest posts: Friday October 29, 2010

1) Sumptuous nuttalli rhododendrons are coming into flower, particularly the appropriately named Floral Legacy.

2) Countdown to Festival – the penultimate episode for this year as our annual Taranaki garden festival starts today.

3) Our tips for garden tasks this week.

4) Outdoor Classroom this week is about rhododendrons – common problems and suitable remedies.

Even at 7.30am, the lilac flowers and adjacent apricot azalea are a delight this week in our driveway
Even at 7.30am, the lilac flowers and adjacent apricot azalea are a delight this week

Tikorangi Notes: Friday October 29, 2010

Mark's hybrid arisaemas are a real feature

Mark's hybrid arisaemas are a real feature

Today is the first day of our annual garden festival – an event which delivers a hefty portion of our annual visitors in a busy 10 days. All around our province, gardens are groomed, swept, weeded and trimmed in preparation and garden owners are waiting to meet and greet. At this time of the year it is mostly the maddenia and nuttallii rhododendrons in flower for us, along with the deciduous azaleas. Mark’s arisaemas make pretty unique bedding plants throughout, the rhodohypoxis make carpets of colour and the roses are just opening.

Tikorangi Notes: Saturday 23 October, 2010

Latest Posts: 23 October, 2010

1) Rococo gardening in Portugal – the garden at the Pink Palace in Queluz.

2) A lilac that is happy in our mild climate with acid soils: Syriniga palibiniana from Korea.

3) Our hints for garden tasks for this week.

4) It is only one week out from the single biggest event on our garden visiting calendar in Taranaki – Counting Down to Festival.

The fluffy pink pompoms of Prunus Pearly Shadows
The fluffy pink pompoms of Prunus Pearly Shadows
Rhododendron Bernice flowering this week

Rhododendron Bernice flowering this week

Tikorangi Notes: 23 October, 2010
With under a week to go until the start of the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival next Friday, the pressure is on to complete the garden preparation. Expectations are high when it comes to standards of presentation and grooming here. With various factors mitigating against meeting our deadlines this year (an appalling early spring of wind and rain, the odd bout of illness and injury, not to mention my disappearance overseas for three weeks), we have been grateful for extra assistance from some able friends this week. The plants are unconcerned by the flurry of activity – rhododendrons and azaleas opening every day, Prunus Pearly Shadows is a picture, the Scadoxus puniceus are eyecatching and everybody asks about the arisaemas (Mark’s hybrids). It promises to be as colourful and fragrant a display as ever.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday October 15, 2010

Latest posts:
1) Hippeastrum aulicum is flowering in abundance in our woodland gardens.
2) Garden tasks for the upcoming week as we hurtle along in spring.
3) Choosing a wheelbarrow – the latest in Abbie’s Outdoor Classroom series.
4) Two weeks until our annual Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival – the pressure is on as we count down.
5) Tried and True – ligularia reniformis (widely referred to as the tractor-seat ligularia).
6) A hot, dry autumn in Spain and Portugal – the first of Abbie’s columns on her recent jaunt to those countries.

 

Rhododendron polyandrum - big and very fragrant

Rhododendron polyandrum - big and very fragrant

 


Tikorangi notes: October 15, 2010
I went away for three weeks and came home to find that I had entirely missed the erythronium flowering for the year, the magnolias are all but over, the michelias are past their peak, but the pleione orchids and rhododendrons are looking great. This is R.polyandrum, one of our favourite species. The fragrance is divine and it is one of the breeder parents of a whole range of cultivars bred by both Felix Jury and Mark, bringing healthy characteristics, flower size and its delicious scent. This is one of those plants where the scent can hang heavy in the air metres away from a large specimen. Others might think it can be a bit open, leggy even, but we don’t mind that because it has splendid peeling bark and we like the open habit rather than a heavy, dense shrub which sits solid on the ground.

Tikorangi Notes: Tuesday 14 September 2010

The original Magnolia Iolanthe is a sight to behold in full bloom

The original Magnolia Iolanthe is a sight to behold in full bloom

There will be no updates for the next three weeks owing to the fact that I am flying to Spain and Portugal today and Mark, who remains behind here at Tikorangi, is computer illiterate. New posts are all scheduled for www.abbiejury.co.nz and will appear each Friday as usual, but linking through to each from this site was one task too many to complete before I left.

In the meantime the garden is open daily and the magnolias and spring bulbs are looking splendid. Mark will be available for plant sales on Fridays and Saturdays as usual but he is less enthusiastic at other times unless by appointment. I plan to be far away eating tapas and drinking sangria in a country I have not visited before, although the thirty six hours it takes to reach Madrid from here has to be endured first.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday September 10, 2010

LATEST POSTS

1) There is clearly no Dutch blood running in my veins. I am not generally a tulip fan but I am happy to make an exception for the Cretan species, Tulipa saxatilis which has just come into flower.

2) Taking a second look at camellias as garden plants despite the ravages of camellia petal blight – Abbie’s column (and de facto instalment on the Camellia Diary).

3) Garden hints for the second official week of spring – but we know that spring is well advanced here.

4) Counting down around the province to our annual Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival.

Big clumps of Hippeastrum aulicum are just coming in to flower in our woodland
Big clumps of Hippeastrum aulicum are just coming in to flower in our woodland

Eighty feet of fallen Lombardy
Eighty feet of fallen Lombardy

TIKORANGI NOTES:

The sad sight of a very tall Lombardy poplar lying on the ground has preoccupied us this week. We were standing in the shed last Friday watching a sudden wind hit our huge pine trees and as it was calm on the other side, we briefly thought that maybe one of the dreaded little tornadoes that can wreak havoc here was hitting us. Mark was wondering if he should shut the roller doors of the shed – is it better to close a building off or to allow air flow in a tornado? Fortunately it was not a tornado but it was quite fierce, very shortlived and so noisy that we didn’t even hear the tree fall. We found it the next day, upon the ground. All 80 plus feet (about 25 metres or so) which can make quite a mess. The toll included a big Loderi Rhododendron King George and about half of the Magnolia campbellii which is fifty years old. It has opened up our view of Mount Taranaki a little more but we are sad about campbellii and King George. We don’t care about the poplar which is no loss, but now we are worried about the remaining two poplars of similar stature.

Half the campbellii - killed in action
Half the campbellii – killed in action

Shame the poplar is no good for firewood
Shame the poplar is no good for firewood