Tried and True – Camellia Mimosa Jury

The floral perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury

The floral perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury

We have a familial connection here – this camellia was bred by Mark’s father, Felix, and named for his mother – but that is not why it is a tried and true plant. It is the perfection of the bloom which is its appeal, along with a much higher degree of weather hardiness than most pale, formal camellias. The regular arrangement of the petals, in similar lay-out to a water lily with no central stamens visible, is what makes it fall under the classification of formal (these rules are written down, I tell you). The soft pink colouring is particularly pretty. When the blooms are spent, they fall to the ground rather than hanging on as brown mush – a characteristic which is called self grooming.

Mimosa Jury has been around for some years now – there are established specimens locally in New Plymouth in St Mary’s Cathedral grounds. Left to its own devices, as has been the original plant behind our house, it grows tall and columnar, making an excellent hedger or accent plant. It also makes a brilliant clipped specimen. The neighbours have a perfect big lollipop Mimosa Jury as a feature. They have kept it tightly clipped and pinched out so that it is a solid ball of healthy foliage which will hold the perfect blooms out to display. In our opinion, this camellia is probably the best that Felix named and it is no wonder that it has stayed so popular over a period of years. Other formal camellias have bigger blooms but usually sustain much more weather damage and do not have as many flowers over a period of many months.

Tikorangi notes: June 25, 2010

Latest posts:
1) The formal perfection of Camellia Mimosa Jury – the cultivar bred by Felix Jury which we rate as his very best.
2) Mark’s Monarch Rescue Centre and other garden tasks for the week.
3) While we certainly don’t have gardening conditions that resemble its native habitat of sand dunes, Aloe thraskii shows a tolerance of wide range of condtions.
4) Outdoor Classroom this week is a step by step guide to pruning hydrangeas. Macrophylla hydrangeas.

Daphne bholua

TIKORANGI NOTES
When Daphne bholua, the Himalayan daphne, first became available here, it seemed liked the best thing since sliced bread and we gathered every form we could find. While it remains a valued plant in our garden, it has not proved to be such an all-round wonder plant as we had hoped. After a few years, it can look pretty scruffy and its habit of being slightly semi-deciduous doesn’t help because it doesn’t drop its spent leaves early enough. Added to that, it sets seed so freely that it pops up throughout the garden to the extent that one can see some element of noxious weed about its ways. And it suckers all round the parent plant. But of all the daphnes, it must have the loveliest scent and a single plant can waft that fragrance metres away. And when that happens on calm days in the depths of winter, all is forgiven.

In the Garden: June 25, 2010

The Monarch Rescue Centre

The Monarch Rescue Centre

  • Mark’s monarch rescue mission has resulted in a branch of about 100 suspended chrysalises which resembles a shish kebab. It moves around warm positions in the house but alas the successful emergence of healthy butterflies is at an all-time low. I don’t think even Mark is sufficiently obsessed to set up a long term rehabilitation and care centre for disabled and deformed butterflies, though he admits he has certainly thought about it.
  • You can still plant broad beans in the garden, along with garlic and shallots but generally, veg gardeners are now looking forward and preparing for spring plantings. If you have a favoured position, you can get the first sowing of carrot seed in but make sure you cover the row with a board or narrow strip of nova roof in order to keep heavy rain from compacting the finely tilled soil and washing the fine seed away.
  • • Potatoes will be coming into the garden centres. You need sheltered, frost free positions that get maximum warmth for really early crops, which tends to mean coastal area only. But anybody can be preparing now by chitting the taties – putting them in a single layer in a darkened location to encourage sprouting. Not all potatoes are the same and if you keep track of the different varieties, it is fun to buy a pick and mix selection to compare later. We are disappointed to find hollow centres in most of our large Agria this year (an otherwise splendid potato) which did not occur in any of the other varieties in the same location.
  • The great winter pruning operation should be starting. Deciduous trees, shrubs and climbers are generally winter pruned. Some, like rampant climbing roses and wisterias, need pruning to keep them under control. Some, like hydrangeas, apple trees, forsythia and many clematis or roses are pruned to maximise flowering and to keep a tidier plant. Some are only pruned occasionally as required, to remove twin trunks in a deciduous tree for example. In a small garden it is probably just as easy to work your way around the garden. In a big garden, it may be easier to work by genus – wisterias today, fruit trees or roses next week.
  • Winter is also the time to do a clean up spray on deciduous plants. Lime sulphur will clean up lichens and mosses and is widely used, as is copper at winter strength.
  • We are somewhat proudly still eating fresh green beans and corn on the cob harvested most days from the late plantings. The corn has lost its autumn sweetness but it is still fresh corn. The bean plants defoliated at the first hint of frost but the beans are still reasonably tender and good. They are a triumph of successional planting through spring and summer. Mark and dogs are almost getting a possum a night from the avocado trees. Apparently these critters love them just as much as humans. Even the dogs have developed a taste for avocado snacks.

Flowering this week: Aloe thraskii

Aloe thraskii - quite happy in our marginal conditions

Aloe thraskii - quite happy in our marginal conditions

One of the tree aloes from southern Africa, A. thraskii is putting up its heads of yellow flowers now. I am not a fan of spiky plants in our garden but I am willing to make an exception for some of the handsome aloes. Thraskii is sometimes referred to as the dune aloe (it grows naturally in coastal dune areas) or the palm aloe (on the grounds, perhaps, that if you were nearly blind and galloping past on a runaway horse you may think it resembled a palm?). What is special about thraskii for our purposes is that despite its hot, coastal origins, it is pretty tolerant of higher rainfalls and even the odd light frost. Planting it in free draining soils is even more important if you are growing it in higher rainfall conditions. We have undertaken some reorganisation of the area around our thraskii, which is now about 15 years old and over 2 metres high and I have issued an edict that I would like it moved. Fortunately, aloes can be moved relatively easily but I do notice that nobody has sprung into action yet. This could be because each leaf is thick, heavy and edged in saw-tooth prickles and could make a suitable weapon for guerrilla fighters. Maybe we will just let it flower first. Its yellow tubular blooms hanging from the flower spikes coming from the centre of its top knot are not as spectacular as some of the other aloes, but they are still pleasing on a dreary winter’s day.

Outdoor Classroom – Winter pruning Hydrangea macrophylla

The common hydrangeas grown here belong to the macrophylla family. These give us most of the traditional mop-tops along with the flat heads of many lace-cap varieties. Less common hydrangea species (the ones with oak leaves, cone flower heads, evergreens and the like) often have different pruning requirements.

1) It is not essential to prune hydrangeas. They will still flower if not pruned but you will usually get many small flowers on a bush which grows ever larger. Pruning takes place to keep the bush smaller and tidier and to encourage bigger blooms.

2) Most hydrangea stems will have a series of buds in pairs visible down their length. The fat buds are flower buds. The thin, small buds are leaf buds. Ideally you want pairs of fat buds, because that will be two flower heads but sometimes you find one fat bud paired with a small leaf bud. You will only get one flower from that spike.

3) Using secateurs, prune back to the lowest pair of fat buds. If that is still much taller than you want, trim back to the lowest single fat bud.

4) After you have reduced the height of each stem, look at the clump and take out any really old, thick, woody stems and any spindly weak ones. You can also take out stems which are headed sideways and those with no flower buds if you want to keep your bush more compact.

5) Because most hydrangeas flower on last year’s growth, if you cut too low down and without taking any account of the difference between leaf buds and flower buds, you will have cut all this summer’s flowers off. You can cut off near to ground level if you want to rejuvenate an old plant and it will shoot again but you will have to wait 18 months for flowers. We have pruned for flowers on this plant.