Magic carpet

Snowdrops on a hillside

July may be the bleakest month of winter for us but it is also snowdrop time and these little charmers brighten the greyest of days. You can never have too many snowdrops in my opinion, and the varieties that do well with us are building up to a satisfying level. By definition, that is when we have enough to move them out of optimal garden or nursery conditions and start establishing them in carpets.

It is our interest in what we call “romantic gardening” – others refer to it as “naturalistic gardening” – that we derive as much, if not more pleasure from plants naturalised in meadow conditions as we do from cultivated, tightly maintained garden beds. It is a blurring of the edges in gardening, exploring how far we can replicate the simple charm of wildflowers but in a managed situation.

Lachenalia aloides and grape hyacinths (muscari) at the base of Pinus muricata

It is not as easy as it sounds. Many of the charming bulbs in their natural environment have conditions which are much harsher than here. Winters that are very cold and often dry mean that most growth stops, as do summers that are hot and dry. But in our dairy-farming heartland, soft conditions keep grass growing all year round and that growth will simply swamp most bulbs. It has taken us some years to learn to manage this. Selecting bulbs that will cope in our conditions has been trial and error.

Bluebells and hooped petticoats (Narcissus bulbocodium) planted at the base of a eucalypt

It also takes eleventy thousand more bulbs than you think it will. Even bulk buying a couple of hundred bulbs is not going to create much of a carpet in the short term. To get a quick result using large bulbs like daffodils or bluebells, planting at one every 10 square centimetres means 100 per square metre. I worked this out because I was planting a little mixed area. Using dainties like erythroniums, dwarf daffodils, snowdrops, crocus and rhodohypoxis, it took about 4 of these small bulbs per 10 square centimetres – or 400 per square metre. That is a large number and may explain why we don’t see many bulb meadows in this country, beyond well established fields of daffodils dating back many decades. Obviously, if you plant at greater spacings, you can cover a larger area but you will wait longer for the carpet effect.

Colchicum autumnale flowering at the base of a metasequoia

While planting around tree trunks is not the same thing as naturalising bulbs in a meadow situation, it proved to be a good place to start for us. We have many trees in fairly open situations where it is possible to establish easy bulbs beneath. Most bulbs need sun so these need to be trees with a higher canopy to allow light below. Planting amongst the exposed roots of established trees ensures the bulbs don’t get mown off or trampled as they surface and generally they get established with little competition. It is also an effective way of controlling some of the invasive bulbs like ipheions and ornamental oxalis.

Scattering seed is hit and miss and slower to give any results but much easier. We were delighted this year to see Cyclamen hederafolium showing its colours where Mark had scattered fresh seed several years ago. He had given up hope that it would work but lo, there are rewards for patient gardeners and the older we get, the more patience we seem to be developing.

Bluebells planted on the margins, drifting through our park area

Bluebells are easy and we have used them in swathes around shrubs in the area we call our park. Because they are flowering at the same time as the full flush of spring grass growth, we have to keep them to the side of areas we need to mow. Bluebell, and indeed snowdrop, woods that we have admired in Britain are carpets beneath deciduous trees. Our woodland areas are heavily dominated by evergreens so we don’t get enough light to replicate those carpets here. That is why we have to opt for the margins instead.

The triumph of experience has been getting grassy banks with dwarf narcissi and snowdrops naturalised. To do this, Mark spent some years establishing the native grass, microlina. It is finer and less vigorous so doesn’t swamp the bulbs and can be controlled with minimal cutting – just a pass over with the weedeater from time to time. It is not quite the same as a bulb meadow, but we have learned to work with what we have here.

Carrying a tray of Nerine pudica, in case you are wondering (which I admit I planted in the rockery, not in meadows)

First published in the July issue of New Zealand Gardener and reprinted here with their permission.

Winter whites

Ripples on the ice formed on a farm trough

July is our bleakest winter month here. We feel the cold, especially this week with three sharp frosts in a row which is unusual for us, but the daytime temperatures rarely drop below double figures (Celsius). The ice photo is from a water trough on the coldest part of the property. Mark was very taken with the patterns.

Early Pearly – the loveliest of sasanqua camellia flower forms

But cold is a relative thing and a winter here in Taranaki remains full of flowers. I was playing around with white camellia blooms because I had been reminded of our love affair with white flowers in this country. The ‘any colour is fine as long as it is white” syndrome, perhaps. I am sure gardeners in parts of the world which spend many weeks or months or under snow might find this national obsession with white flowers puzzling. I suspect it may derive from a sense of social envy – Sissinghurst’s white garden has a lot to answer for here in the antipodes.

As I progressed on my white flower assemblages, often having to pick the flowers because it has been raining or windy, I began to feel positively bridal despite the winter chill.
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The Montanoa bipinnatifida has passed over and the monarch butterflies have moved onto an obscure michelias species that is flowering. The frosts have dealt to the Dahlia imperialis alba this week and Luculia ‘Fragrant Pearl’ is passing over, but there is plenty of white in evidence. Yes, it is a dead harrier hawk above – killed on the road but passed on to a Maori weaver to use the feathers. In the basket starting at the back is one of the gordonias. They have been particularly good this season. Then the small flowers are Camellia transnokoensis which we rate highly as a small leaved, miniature flowered species which we are using as hedging. We replaced some buxus hedging with this camellia. For, Mark reasoned, how much better to have a hedge that has pretty flowers which make a contribution to the ecosystem by feeding birds and insects. Next is another species, Camellia gauchowensis, Camellia sasanqua Mine No Yuki, Early Pearly and at the front Camellia drupifera.

Camellia transnokoensis

Picked in the rain today

Daphne bholua

At the top we have Mark’s new Daphne Perfume Princess – not pure white by any manner of means but the overall display is more white than coloured. Next to it is one of our favourite species, Camellia yuhsienensis, whose flowers are like the michelias of the camellia world. Below is the Himalayan daphne, Daphne bholua , which has the sweetest perfume of any daphne we know but suffers from scruffy growth and badly behaved habits of suckering and seeding. Next is Rose Flower Carpet White (does it ever stop blooming?) and then the pretty bloom of Superstar – another white camellia which we rate highly on garden performance and weather hardiness – at least when compared to most larger flowered whites.

Galanthus - the winter snowdrops
We may not get a long season from the galanthus and they certainly don’t peek through the snow here, but the simple charm is constant. Galanthus elwesii and Galanthus ‘S Arnott’ are the most reliable performers in our conditions. Although we grow some other varieties, these two are our mainstay.

067 Finally today, I headed out into the chill to find the white evergreen azaleas, the very first of the new season’s michelias (deliciously fragrant) and white hellebores. By this time, I found my eyes being drawn to colour and red blooms were demanding my attention. I would find a monochromatic garden soon palled but the colours will have to wait for another day as I end with the simple perfection of Camellia Superstar below.

Superstar (6)

The Avocado Thief

Avocado tree

Behold an avocado tree. A tree, I admit, that demonstrates a case of allowing a twin trunk to develop though I am told that is permitted with avocados. It is a tree which has had the best ever crop of Hass avocados this year. It has truly been a mast year. We are a bit marginal when it comes to avocados and they tend to crop biennially. There is no crop next year so we are making hay (or guacamole, to be precise) while the winter sun shines.

Exhibit A

Exhibit A is the pile of avocado pits around the place. These tell us that we are not alone in harvesting the crop. In fact given the predations of waxeyes, starlings, blackbirds, rats and possums, it is a miracle that we still collect fruit by the bucket load. Possums are a major pest in this country and Mark and the dogs do a round each evening checking for them. Mark conducts an autopsy on the stomach contents of each possum he shoots – mostly to check who is eating the buds of the magnolia trees at this time of the year – and noted last week that one appeared to be full of guacamole.

Exhibit B

But exhibit B fingered another avocado thief. None of the aforementioned raiders stashes partially eaten fruit all round the place. We had noticed that new dog Dudley was looking particularly glossy and plump. The natural avocado oils are clearly kind to his fur. Mark has taken to doing a circuit twice a day to pick up whole fruit that has fallen in an attempt to beat Dudley to the draw but any time the dog disappears from view, it is a fair bet that he can be found near the avocado tree.

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Dudley is a four year old fox terrier, surrendered by his previous owner to the SPCA for re-homing. He came to us in January – clearly a well-loved townie dog used to being fed tidbits any time his previous owner was eating, allowed on any furniture and accustomed to sleeping in his owner’s bed. He was a little timid at the space here and confused by the changes in rules. But now he has taken on the role of estate dog as though he were to the manner born. He is a whizz on rats, a keen possum dog, happy to assist with moving the four beefies that comprise Mark’s little cattle herd, patrols the boundary to ensure that Sam the neighbour’s dog does not make incursions and he is more than happy to deal to the perceived surplus of avocados.

To the manner born

“The Holy Grail of horticulture”

Daphne Perfume Princess

As a people, we New Zealanders tend to be a little more reserved than our Australian neighbours across the Tasman. So I post this link to their prime time Channel 9 last night with a slight sense of unseemly boasting. But to have somebody of the stature of Don Burke declaring Mark’s Daphne Perfume Princess to be the Holy Grail of horticulture and the best new plant to be released in Australia in the last 50 years is high praise indeed.

We knew the story was going to air. We had been sent photos – Don donning a knight’s costume in a theatrical take on the search for the Holy Grail. Indeed, we had raised our eyebrows at Channel 9 wardrobe department’s selection of a knight’s costume owing to the fact that we think it was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table who were in search of the Holy Grail, not so much the Templar Knights of the Christian crusades…. But no matter, Don carried it off with panache.

Mark’s comment is that the ultimate challenge for a plant breeder is to take a really well known, common plant and to make it better. We hope he has achieved this with Daphne Perfume Princess. Others certainly think so.

Farewell to a friend

Ever curious, Charles headed cross country at A Place for Plants

A year and a week ago we were touring summer gardens in England. We started in Suffolk again because that is where Charles and Gill Notcutt live. Today we heard that Charles has died.

On that last trip, Charles met us at Beth Chatto’s garden for lunch. While he was much more a tree man than a flower and garden man, I still recall his great pleasure at the delight and inspiration Mark and I felt in the dry garden there. He then said “follow me” and drove off in his Audi while we climbed into our very modest little rental car. What followed was an alarming pursuit through the back roads of Suffolk as we tried to keep Charles’ car in view because we had no idea where we were going. It was to Rupert and Sara Eley’s “A Place for Plants”. From there we went to Charles and Gill’s home where they hosted a dinner party in our honour.

This Suffolk pub, and I could find its name if I needed to, served the best ever hit chips with lunch

This Suffolk pub, and I could find its name if I needed to, served the best ever hot chips with lunch

The next day he took us to Blooms of Bressingham, we had lunch at a Suffolk pub which served the best hot chips Mark and I had ever eaten (nobody, we discovered, can do chips as well as some English pubs) and then went on to The Old Vicarage Garden in Norfolk. The next morning we said goodbye and headed north to Yorkshire.

These are such lovely memories to have and even at the time, we knew it may be the last time we would see Charles. Others will record his contribution to British horticulture through Notcutts’ nurseries and garden centres and various trade and professional bodies. It was how we first met him in the early nineties. He was also extremely active in contributing to his local community of Woodbridge, even serving as mayor in recent times.

It is Charles the man that we remember. He had an exceptional zest for life, such wide ranging interests – a modern Renaissance Man – underpinned by great kindness. We held him in the highest regard and felt privileged to have him as a friend in our lives.

RIP Charles. Our lives were made richer for having known you.
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Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Magic carpet

Winter whites

The Avocado Thief

“The Holy Grail of horticulture”

Farewell to a friend

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