Gardening books that stand the test of time

Over the past decade or so, a fair number of new publications of New Zealand gardening books have come across my desk for review. Precious few remain on the bookshelf. After being critical of the recent offerings for the Christmas market, I wondered at the manner in which NZ publishers are reacting in the face of competition from the internet. With all the information in the world available on one’s computer screen with a click of the mouse, I would have thought that the future of the reference book was as a highly credible, accurate, reliable, expert presentation of related information in one place. After all, one has to wade through a vast amount of dross on the internet and weed out unreliable information. It is often easier and a great deal more convenient to reach for the traditional book, but only if you trust its contents.

Reference books often used to be peer reviewed before publication to iron out errors and to identify problem areas. Wide ranging topics often had multiple authors, each working in their own area of expertise. Authors had solid credentials and there was a general expectation that information be accurate. Books were produced on the assumption that they could last for years, maybe even decades, and good ones would be reprinted. It took time to produce a new book.

Not anymore. The NZ gardening book today is more akin to the glossy magazine. Here today and gone tomorrow but looks good in the short time it is in demand. Who cares about the rest of it as long as the customer is seduced into buying it right now?

In both NZ books and magazines, the advice being dispensed so freely in visually appealing ways is too often coming from commercial interests which want to sell product to the consumer. And it is not always accurate advice, let alone best practice. Bring back independent, non aligned advice and information, I say. You know – the sort of information we used to get from books. I like to think that readers are neither dumb nor gullible. Would that NZ publishers thought the same way. Alas, they have redefined readers as consumers.

This train of thought led me to look at the books which we reach for regularly. We own a lot of gardening books. The dross goes to charity. Many of the specialist ones are particular to our interests but there are a few more general ones that we use regularly and which have stood the test of time and I am happy to recommend for any gardener’s bookshelf. Some will only be available second hand – try Touchwood Books who offer a mail order service.

1) Bulbs for New Zealand Gardeners and Collectors by Terry Hatch and Jack Hobbs. First published by Godwit in 1995, it may look a little dated and it is not the most comprehensive bulb book available. But it is accurate, written for NZ conditions and covers the bulb material available here. We trust it.
2) The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs (Redwood Press). The version we have has no pictures but is still the best comprehensive listing of trees and shrubs we know. There are good reasons why it has had multiple reprints and editions.

3) Grow It Yourself Vegetables by Andrew Steens (Batemans, 2010). It is not the smartest looking of the latest crop of vegetable books and the sow/harvest diagrams are an unreliable afterthought, but the text is practical, helpful and reliable. According to Mark, the real gem if you can find it, is Vegetable Growing in New Zealand by J A McPherson and F J E Jolie. It was published by Whitcomb and Tombs and we have the sixth edition with no date but it retailed for three shillings and sixpence.
4) Koanga Garden Guide by Kay Baxter (Body and Soul, 2007). Simply the best and most comprehensive guide to organic and sustainable fruit and veg gardening that we have found. It is self published and a little rough around the edges (the edition we have lacks an index which makes it harder to use), but serious gardeners will read it cover to cover and take heed. What is more, they will keep going back to it which is a measure of a good book.
5) Like a shining beacon of hope, came New Zealand’s Native Trees by John Dawson and Rob Lucas from Craig Potton Publishers this year. A comprehensive, high quality and credible publication which is likely to remain on the bookshelf as a key reference for decades to come. We never did get the definitive two volume edition of Eagle’s Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand (latest version is 2007 from Te Papa Press) – equally credible and enduring but more expensive.

6) We still use the 1993 Perennial Gardening in New Zealand by Christine Dann (Bridget Williams Books), particularly for identification.
7) The old (and I mean really old) Department of Agriculture publications on fruit trees – the bulletins and their 1973 book “The Home Orchard”. Treasure these, if you find them. Technically they are still very good on basic fruits though they are way out of date now with modern options and new cultivars. Use them for information on planting, pruning and general care but with the proviso that the excessive and toxic spray regimes can be totally ignored. They have their origins in the Chemical Ali times and we have since moved on.

I cannot think that many of the New Zealand gardening books published in recent times will still be on the bookshelves in decades years to come. Even fewer will be a resource of first choice. What happened to professional pride?

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

In the Garden: Friday December 16

A fortnightly series first published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.

The antique stone mill wheels are fine as garden decoration

The antique stone mill wheels are fine as garden decoration

Ours is a garden that is very light on ornamentation and we prefer it that way. The last thing I want for Christmas is a garden ornament or colourful display pot. The three stone antique millwheels are fine, but generally we like to feature glimpsed views or plants as focal points rather than statuary or any type of installation. We are lucky that we garden on a sufficiently large scale to be able to use the glimpsed view, even the odd borrowed vista. It is a bit more problematic in a tiny, town garden with a view of next door’s washing line. But using plants as a feature point is possible no matter what size the garden.

Before....

Before....

One of the delights of having a mature garden with old plants is that there is plenty of raw material for clipping and shaping. We don’t want to follow the Italian example and clip and shape everything, but the occasional large, cloud pruned specimen can be as strong as any man-made focal point. Camellias are wonderful for clipping and shaping because they will sprout again if you make a mistake and they grow densely if you clip every year. Some of the michelias also clip well when they are well established, as does loropetalum and the classic yews. The skill is in making

... and immediately after

... and immediately after

sure that not everything is turned into a lollipop (the easiest shape to clip), or a cake stand (which is just a vertical stack of lollipops). Mark favours the flatter topped mushroom shape or layers of clouds. We had four standard lollipops flanking our sunken garden but they had become too dense and rounded. Some radical cutting has seen them become much lighter mushrooms instead, giving a visual accent rather than completely dominating the area. He doesn’t rely on doing it all by eye, instead using lengths of bamboo to measure height and width. We don’t mind a bit of variation – these are living plants not artificial structures that can be like identical soldiers – but we want a sense of overall unity.

Top tasks:

1) Summer prune the wisterias. Turn your back for a moment and they can make a bid for world domination, or so it seems. I just tidy up the long, wayward tendrils at this time of the year and do a structural and shaping prune in winter.

2) Continue deadheading and light summer pruning of the roses. Because we never spray our roses here, I prune frequently to encourage fresh growth. They get a traditional winter prune so the summer effort is more like a nip and tuck. I rely on keeping the roses growing strongly and pushing out fresh leaf buds to keep enough foliage coming to replace what succumbs to black spot. I try and remove all spent blooms and damaged foliage to the wheelie bin, to avoid them harbouring pests and diseases on the ground at the base of the roses.

A large cloud pruned specimen of Camellia sasanqua Mine No Yuki

A large cloud pruned specimen of Camellia sasanqua Mine No Yuki

Plant Collector: Tetracentron sinense

Tetracentron sinense

Tetracentron sinense

The Tetracentron sinense growing in our park is a pretty special tree for us. We rate it as a small tree – after five decades it is still only about six metres high and with a graceful, arching habit of growth. It is deciduous and the fresh spring growth emerges pink which seems appropriate for heart shaped leaves, but only briefly before it turns green, though keeping the red stems.

Sinense means it comes from China, on the western reaches where it borders with Nepal. It is a relatively late discovery, dating to 1901. As far as is known, there are no other members of the Tetracentron family (which makes it monotypic – meaning one of a kind). Our tree grew from seed collected in the 1950s. Frank Kingdon-Ward (often incorrectly referred to as Kingdom Ward) was an intrepid British plant collector and, like many of his forbears, financed some of his expeditions by selling subscriptions in return for seed. Mark’s father, Felix Jury, subscribed though we don’t know now how much he contributed. He received the tetracentron and a rhus which we could have done without.

It flowers in summer with relatively insignificant yellow catkins, though loved by bees. In our climate we don’t get autumn colour and I can’t find any mention in the literature so I would guess nobody else does either. I did find wildly varied accounts of its ultimate size – up to 40 metres in fact which is enormous. I can’t think that our specimen, rated by international experts who have seen it as a large example, is ever going to get to that stature. However it is apparently rare in the wild (sightings are recorded) so perhaps the heights are more a case of guesstimates.

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

Grow It Yourself – leeks

Dedicated leek growers (not all of Welsh descent, I am sure) know that if they want a good sized harvest, plants need to be a finger thickness by Christmas. But it is not too late to sow seed now – the plants will just be a bit smaller. Leeks have a long growing season of up to 6 months and because they are a winter plant, they can then hold in the cold ground until you are ready to pick them.

Leeks are not fussy or particular. They grow easily in most soils. Because they belong in the leafy vegetable group, they thrive on nitrogen based fertilisers. This means they are going to be quite happy growing where you have recently dug in a green crop or if you have an area where you have previously added animal manures.

If you are going to sow seed, get it in as soon as possible. As the seeds germinate, you can use the thinnings as salad veg (they are a little like chives with an oniony tang). Final spacing needs to be about 10cm to achieve full sized leeks. If you are using seedling plants, you have a few more weeks up your sleeve and you generally plant them at final spacing. They are likely to need watering for the first few weeks while they get their roots out.

With vegetable gardening, you work one to two seasons ahead. Planting for winter now means you can avoid the hefty prices of bought fresh veg and have a change from interminable frozen peas. And leeks are an easy option. You just have to plant them in good soil and keep them relatively weed free (to stop competition) and in winter they should be waiting for you.

The DIY Christmas Tree – mark 2 (for 2011)

Last year’s Christmas tree constructed from toetoe plumes (overseas readers may like to think pampas grass) was a tour de force, though I say so myself. On the downside, it did moult badly and I can recall quite a mess as we manoeuvred it out of the house after the event. Though the same can be said for the traditional pine tree too, and pine needles are a great deal more difficult to vacuum up. The step by step instructions for this model are still available.

The tree this year does not lend itself to last minute creation. It needs a sturdy frame to hold the shape. Fortunately we have one, most kindly given to us by a friend.

We saved the grape vine stems from the winter pruning round and kept them under cover. It takes quite a few and I only just had sufficient. Any flexible, long whippy growths could be used – willow, soft canes or wisteria come to mind.

Build in layers by simple weaving. I tied the first rows in place temporarily, to hold them in place. By the following day, they had set in place and no longer wanted to spring out.

Because the top of the frame was very narrow, the grape vines were not sufficiently flexible. I swapped to fresh wisteria vine for the peak. It will dry to a brown shade but will be covered by the angel anyway.

I trimmed any large ends which spoiled the shape. If I had more grape vine, I would have packed the weaving tighter as I went, but I didn’t so I couldn’t.

The finished product is in place and decorating can start. It is possibly the easiest tree ever to decorate, because the ends of the vines make handy little hooks all over the surface. Rather than adding Christmas lights on the outside, we are lighting from the inside of the tree using a table lamp.