Garden Lore

“Of al the floures in the mede,
Thanne love I most thise floures white and rede,
Swiche as men callen daysyes in our toun…
Allas, that I ne had Englyssh, ryme or prose,
Suffisant this flour to preyse aryght!”

Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue to The Legend of Good Women ( c 1380-1386)

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Composting matters

It came as something of a surprise to Mark when I commented that the sticky labels on fruit and vegetables do not break down in the compost. I discovered this a while ago when I emptied out the black compost bin we use for kitchen scraps and it was full of these sticky identifications in mint condition. I was reminded again when I found one in the rose garden. It will have travelled there in the compost and have been at least a year from the first stage when the fruit it adorned was eaten, but the label still showed no signs of breaking down. There must be some sort of coating on them. I try and separate them from the compost waste now and very irritating it is too. I am unconvinced that such stickers add anything to modern life.

The other ingredient that came out of the black compost bin in the same state it went in was the humble egg shell. Well, plural. By the hundreds. After seeing their ability to maintain their original form despite a long time in a somewhat sludgy environment, I now try and crush them before I put them in the scrap bucket. They are basically calcium so a good addition to the soils, unless you are gardening on chalk.

Contrary to the advice often given, we add all our citrus peel to the same waste bin. With our own orange trees, there is a lot of it. The compost worms just work around the peel and it gradually breaks down of its own accord. Worms are not so pernickety after all.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Plant Collector: Chaenomeles

022Not quinces, as most people think, but chaenomeles or japonica apples. At this time of the year, the hanging golden orbs are a most attractive feature. I like to bring a bowl indoors because they are scented, in an aromatic apple-y sort of way and they last for many weeks. The plant itself is a deciduous, scrubby shrub, maybe 2 metres tall and, after many years, 4 metres wide. It has burglar deterrent possibilities with its ferocious spines but is not a thing of natural beauty beyond its attractive fruit in autumn and its lovely single, deep pink japonica flowers in spring. It will have been a named form that was purchased but the name is lost in the mists of time. It appears to be a hybrid – a cross between 2 of the 3 different species, selected for both flower colour and fruit and is most likely to be in the Chaenomeles x superba group. We have other forms that flower well but don’t fruit in the same manner.

Chaenomeles are native to Japan, eastern China and Korea. Unsurprisingly, given their long thorns, they are related to roses and in the roseaceae family.

The fruit is far too astringent to eat raw. I have been given a jar of japonica jelly but it was not memorable. Apparently they are very high in pectin so I may try boiling some down to use as a base for orange marmalade. I tried making chaenomeles brandy one year and it was fine, but we are not so keen on liqueurs in this household. I would rather drink the brandy without the year steeping with sliced chaenomeles and sugar.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Perennials for late summer colour

Annuals are plants that are done and dusted in the same year. Biennials flower in their second year, set seed and die. Perennials simply last more than two years. It is some herbaceous perennials that give us most colour in the late summer garden, at a time when many gardens can be looking a little jaded, dull and green.

Kniphofia - worth a second look

Kniphofia – worth a second look

Kniphofia might have had a better lot in the life of NZ gardens if we called them by some of their other common names. Knofflers sound so much more whimsical, torch lilies more exotic but alas we usually refer to them as the less attractive red hot pokers and treat them as low grade roadside plants. Not all kniphofia are the same – there are tall ones, short ones, yellows, bicolours, deciduous, evergreen and finer foliaged options. Don’t overlook them for late summer colour.

Sedums - good bee and butterfly food

Sedums – good bee and butterfly food

Sedums are not the world’s most exciting plant, in my humble opinion, but they put on a great late summer display and feed the bees. You can delay the flowering by snipping off the early growths – called the Chelsea chop. It forces the plant to set new growing and flowering stems which tend to be a little more compact, avoiding that tendency to fall apart. I see sedums have technically been reclassified now as hylotelephium but my chances of remembering that are not great. The white one shown here is S. (or H.) spectabile ‘Stardust’ while the pink one ‘Meteor’. These die back to ground level in late autumn and benefit from digging and dividing every few years.

Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' flowers for a long time through summer without needing deadheading

Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’ flowers for a long time through summer without needing deadheading

There is a delightful simplicity to daisy flowers and Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’ is no exception. From a flat mat of tiny leaves hugging ground level, it then grows to form a loose mound covered in the prettiest of soft yellow flowers over many weeks at this time. It is perfect for full sun, especially where you want a plant at the front to gently festoon over the edge. There are a host of different coreopsis, originating from North American wild flowers. Some are more perennial than others which are often treated as annuals. ‘Moonbeam’ is fully perennial and easy to increase by division.

This aster is a lovely colour but it needs lifting and dividing every year or two

This aster is a lovely colour but it needs lifting and dividing every year or two

I have a love affair with blue and lilac flowers so this aster never fails to please me. Despite its hugely cumbersome name of Aster novi-belgii ‘Professor Anton Kippenberg’, it too has its roots in the North American wild flowers. If you trace both the coreopsis and the aster back, they are in same family of asteraceae. It is easy to grow, so vigorous in fact that I find it best if it is lifted and divided every two years. It responds with renewed enthusiasm and gives even more flowers than when left congested. In winter, it dies down to a flat mat of foliage.

Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff'

Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’

Dahlias. I wrote about raising dahlias from seed last week and there is little doubt that our late summer gardens would be poorer for their absence. This is an oldie but a goodie – the Bish, or Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ with pure red flowers and attractive dark foliage. NZ plant breeder Keith Hammett has done a lot of work with dahlias and we are lucky in this country to have a wide range of new varieties to choose from as well.

Showy not subtle, the cannas

Showy not subtle, the cannas

I admit cannas, often referred to as canna lilies, are not my favourite plant. I find their flowers a bit scruffy and the showy foliage a bit over the top but there is no doubt they make a splendid display where something big and bold is desired. Should famine strike, you can apparently eat the rhizome or harvest the young growth. In winter, it all dies away to absolutely nothing visible, to return again the following summer.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden Lore

“I fear I am a little impatient of the school of gardening that encourages the selection of plants merely as artistic furniture, chosen for colour only, like ribbons or embroidery silk. I feel sorry for plants that are obliged to make a struggle for life in uncongenial situations, because their owner wishes all things of those shades of pink, blue or orange to fit in next to the grey or crimson planting.”

Edward Augustus Bowles My Garden in Spring (1914)

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Garden Lore: arum lilies

Arum lilies are something of a scourge in this country. These are the remains of a selected white splashed-green flowered form called ‘Green Goddess’. I have just done what I hope is the final clean up in my eradication efforts. You can imagine the hollow laugh of disbelief from Mark when I informed him that ‘Green Goddess’ has an Award of Merit from Britain’s prestigious Royal Horticultural Society. It is clearly not a weed there, no sirree.

The common weedy arum here is from South Africa and is Zantedeschia aethiopica, although Z. italicum is also a problem. The issue is that these plants just do too well here. They are tolerant of a very wide range of conditions and, being toxic, stock won’t touch them so they can multiply even on grazed land. Not only do they spread by seed but you can see from the root system why they can be difficult to eradicate. The rhizome below ground has numerous offsets and every one has the potential to grow to a separate plant.

I eradicated by digging carefully and thoroughly gathering all the baby offsets. Don’t risk composting them. Either dry and then burn them or put them out in the rubbish for deep burial at landfill. Never, ever dump them on the roadside. I have just done what I hope is the final follow-up to root out the remaining stragglers after 3 years. If you want to go the chemical way, the Weedbusters website recommends metsulforon-methyl with glyphosate and penetrant (to make it stick). Or Escort is what Mark recommends – that is the metsulforon-methyl bit.

The smaller growing, coloured zantedeschias that are often known as calla lilies are generally derived from different species and do not show the same weedy inclination, being prized as cut flowers and making excellent garden plants. However, they are apparently all equally toxic so take care when handling them as their sap can burn.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Plant Collector: Dietes grandiflora

062There is nothing unusual about the dietes flowering at the moment, but don’t let the fact that it is much favoured by amenity landscapers put you off. The reason it is seen so often in shopping centre garden plots is because it is tough and easy care.

It is a South African wild iris. Originally it was thought to be a moraea – commonly known as peacock irises – but that family grows from corms whereas the dietes forms rhizomes. Its flowers link it to moraeas, its rooting structure to the iris. Apparently the word dietes means ‘having two relatives’. ‘Grandiflora’ just means large flower.

The foliage is narrow, upright and pointed and it is evergreen. For most of the year, it just looks anonymous and not very exciting but it has such pretty flowers at this time. These are short lived but, as with many other irises, there is a succession opening down the stem. If the blooms remind you of an exotic butterfly, you may be pleased to hear that it is sometimes referred to as a butterfly iris. It flowers best with sun. While the plant will grow in relatively shady positions, you won’t get anywhere near as many blooms so try for full sun or somewhat dappled light.

As a garden plant, unless you want your place to look like a supermarket carpark, veer away from mass planting in favour of interesting combinations. I think it looks wonderfully effective planted with the tractor seat ligularia (Ligularia reniformis) but any contrasting big, luscious foliage is going to work.
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First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.