Category Archives: Tikorangi notes

Tikorangi notes: August 13, 2010

Magnolia Lanarth

Magnolia Lanarth

LATEST POSTS:

1) The wonder of Magnolia Lanarth in flower.
2) Hints for tasks in the garden this week as we race headlong into spring.
3) Beware the bangalow palm – our deep reservations about the weed potential of Archontophoenix cunninghamiana (Abbie’s column).
4) Tried and True for autumn colour where space allows – tree dahlias.
5) Counting down to our annual Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival.

Magnolia campbellii in full flower this week

Magnolia campbellii in full flower this week

TIKORANGI NOTE:
Magnolia time here is our absolutely favourite time of year. At this stage, the spectacular performers are M. campbellii and Magnolia Lanarth, with Vulcan just starting and some of Mark’s unnamed seedlings putting on an early show. With the dwarf narcissi also at their peak (the snowdrops are largely over), there is something particularly delightful about the big and small pictures running simultaneously. The big-leafed rhododendrons in our park are opening, the earliest michelias are flowering and our garden visitor season started this week with an early visit from a local garden club. The pressure is on to get the garden groomed up and the planting out up to date. The pressure of spring is upon us.

Tikorangi notes: August 6, 2010

Our plant sale starts today. It is of limited duration (from today until Monday 9 August and then again the following Friday and Saturday) but there are good bargains as we try and clear space in the nursery.

Latest posts:
1) August 6, 2010: Illicium simonsii is flowering now with dainty little blooms which resemble unlikely water lilies cast from wax.
2) August 6, 2010: Hints on garden tasks for this week – don’t beat the gun on planting out summer vegetables, a recommendation for white sapotes and what you should not be doing with your wheelie bin.
3) August 6, 2010: Into the fraught territory of lawn renovation – our latest Outdoor Classroom.

Tikorangi Notes
As the galanthus start to pass over, the dwarf narcissi are opening, along with the early magnolias. The cyclamineus types are a favourite here – resembling a floppy eared dog with its head out the car window, perhaps? Twilight, shown here, is one of Felix Jury’s most successful cyclamineus hybrids – not so reflexed in the petals but a pleasing form and colour and it increases at a most satisfying rate. More magnolias open each day but we are still a couple of weeks off having the display entering its most spectacular phase. The fragrance of the earliest flowering michelias (all white at this stage) is already noticeable, hanging in the air. The worst of winter is over and temperatures are on the rise.

Tikorangi notes: July 30, 2010

Latest posts:
1) July 30, 2010: Agapetes serpens – aptly described by somebody else as a vegetable octopus, we love the fact it feeds our native birds despite its origin in the Himalayas.
2) July 30, 2010: All Gardeners Dream – Abbie’s newspaper column.
3) July 30, 2010: In the garden this week – tasks and hints from pruning to making little slug bait stations to lichen.
4) July 30, 2010: Around the province, gardeners are counting down to our annual garden festival at the end of October – the latest update.
5) July 27, 2010: Camellia Diary 4. The sad story about camellia petal blight in NZ.

Towering 20 metres up in the air - our queen palms

Tikorangi Notes:
We enjoy our queen palms (Syagrus romanzoffiana), now of rather towering stature at about 20 metres high and half a century old. But their falling fronds can be a bit of a menace and there is certainly no way of getting up to groom those hanging about waiting to fall. You would not want to be underneath one because they weigh a surprising amount at the base and crash down with considerable force – taking out a large wodge of a camellia below recently. Mark has been moved to comment that there are rather a lot of vegetable time bombs planted very close to houses and apartments in Auckland, often by landscapers who all too frequently lack the

Falling from 20 metres, the fronds can be somewhat alarming.

plant experience to know what their selections are capable of when mature. Palms, you see, take up little space, are easy-care and wonderfully evocative of the warmer temperatures of the tropics so have been all the rage in urban gardens for some time now. As they keep reaching for the sky and growing in stature, the potential for falling fronds to cause damage increases – you certainly wouldn’t want your house spouting to be caught by a falling frond, let alone your car. But the average life expectancy of a garden plant in this country is, I have been told, a mere 10 years (before being chopped out and replaced by the latest fashion) so the chances of many palms reaching sufficient maturity to cause problems are not great.

Tikorangi Notes

Latest Posts:

1) July 23, 2010: The yellow Lachenalia reflexa midst English snowdrops – the delight of the early bulbs.

2) July 23, 2010: Recommended tasks for this week in the garden – our winters do not last long here.

3) July 23, 2010: Heucheras are a tried and true plant, readily available from every garden centre in an ever increasing colour range but they do need a little attention if the clumps are to grow larger, rather than smaller.

4) July 23, 2010: Outdoor Classroom – the hows and wherefores of long overdue pruning of elderly apple trees. Our step by step guide.

Naturalising the snowdrops takes some special efforts here. The rhododendron leaf belongs to a sino nuttallii

Tikorangi Notes: July 23, 2010

While there is considerable anticipation looking at the early magnolias laden with big, fat furry buds (sleeping bags for mice, our children used to describe the furry casings in years gone by), it is the tiny vision of the English snowdrops with which we are currently delighted. We can understand why these pretty, dainty little flowers give rise to such passion in dedicated collectors (are they called galanthophiles?) We are hardly good snowdrop territory here so we confine ourselves to the few varieties which will keep performing happily in our mild conditions. Managing to get some drifts established in a meadow situation is no mean feat. Meadows are not easy here. Our grass growth is so rampant we mow the lawns all year – weekly for most of it and fortnightly in the depths of winter when the growth slows. It is a bit much to expect bulbs or wildflowers to compete with such vigorous growth. In order to get this bank of bulbs started, Mark has had to discourage the stronger grasses and encourage a much slower growing, less competitive native microlina grass which won’t swamp the little treasures.

The galanthus only flower for a few weeks, but for that short time they are one of the most charming of all seasonal bulbs.

Tikorangi Notes: July 20, 2010

The first flowers of the season are opening on Magnolia campbellii

The first bud on Vulcan to show colour

Tikorangi Notes

Magnolia season is just starting. Of all the plant families we love, the ten weeks or so of deciduous magnolia flowering is the highlight each year. Magnolia campbellii in our park has opened its first few flowers. These flowers are quite some distance up from the ground. Vulcan is just opening the first red bud in the nursery but has yet to show colour on the trees in the garden. A few of Mark’s early season seedlings are opening and he is waging daily war on possums and rats which can attack the flower buds of plants, particularly those planted near our bush. Not to be left out, the earliest michelias are also opening the first flowers. This signals the time we re-open the garden to visitors at the start of August when the magnolias are really coming on stream.