1) If you have a plant with silver leaves, it has nasty sucking insects called thrips. You can’t turn silver leaves to green again and the new foliage will get affected unless you do something to alter conditions. You can spray with an insecticide, though we prefer to advise alternatives. Open up around the plant to increase air movement (thrips don’t like drafts) and feed and mulch the plant to encourage increased vigour. If it keeps getting infected, take it out and replace it with a healthier option. There are rhododendrons which are better suited to warmer climates and are more resistant to silver leaves.
2) If you have a plant which has not set flower buds, the most common cause is too much shade. Because they set flower buds on their new growth (which is coming now), open up and let more light in as soon as you can. The other cause may be incorrect pruning.
3) Rhododendrons are surface rooting – in other words they go outwards not downwards. A healthy plant has a big mass of fine, fibrous roots which resembles old fashioned carpet underfelt. Mulching is good practice to keep these roots cool and nourished. Never plant them in wet spots where water can pond. They will die very quickly.
4) Deadheading is to stop the plant putting all its energy into setting seed. You don’t actually have to deadhead unless the plant is a seed setter, though it does make them look better.
5) Feed now as the plant goes into growth, if you feel it needs it. Rhododendrons prefer soils on the acid side (which our volcanic soils are here).
6) Moving plants around your garden needs to take place in autumn and winter, not now. Hard pruning of rhodos takes place in late winter or very early spring, not now.
Flowering this week: Rhododendron Bernice
Rhododendron Bernice - very local in origin and name
Over the past fifty years, the quest here has been to breed rhododendrons better suited to growing in warmer climates and not inclined to the nasty silver leaves caused by thrip (a common leaf sucking insect). In its time, Bernice was an advance in colour and size in the maddenii group of rhododendrons. Its parents are polyandrum (which gave some scent and increased flower size) and Royal Flush Townhill (which contributed the colour genes). It has flat trusses of bell-shaped flowers and can give the impression of a wall of bloom with almost no foliage showing. Over the decades, we have seen many varieties come and go but Bernice has stood the test of time and remains one of our top picks for a brilliant performer right on cue every year.
Pronounced Burniss, not Ber-neice, as I can say with authority because this, arguably the best performing rhododendron Felix Jury selected, was named for his wife’s best friend – Bernice Kelly. Mrs Kelly was an old Waitara identity whom I recall well as a down to earth character who physically made the concrete blocks for the cottage she and her husband built. These days there are pensioner cottages on the site, but the memory of Mrs Kelly lives on in the rhododendron named for her.
23 October, 2009 In the Garden This Week
- Every vegetable gardener knows that Labour Weekend is a signal for the great plant out. Sensible gardeners in colder areas will be cautious but in most of coastal Taranaki it is now fine to put in the first sowings of corn and to plant out all the summer veg such as tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines, pumpkin and melons. Main crop potatatoes and kumara can go in, along with peas and carrots. This just may be the biggest weekend of the vegetable year. It is not critical that these vegetables all get planted this weekend but give priority to melons, kumaras and aubergines, if you like them, because they need long growing seasons.
- Thin out earlier sowings of vegetable seed. One lesson we have learned from the micro-veg/mesclun fashion is that all these fresh, young thinnings are delicious in salads and stirfrys.
- We are currently eating our fennel bulbs and yet again we are reminded of just how versatile and easy this vegetable is. Its aniseed taste is very mild when eaten raw (grated in salads or salsas) and all but disappears when roasted or sliced for stir fries. The fennel we are eating at the moment was planted at the end of February this year, but you can sow a crop now.
- A reminder that it pays to keep an eye on self seeded annual flowers and to pull out inferior specimens before they get too far down the track. I particularly dislike the crosses we get between old fashioned blue pansies and yellow pansies – they show as a yukky blue and brown combination with no merit. If you don’t keep an eye on your self seeders, in time they will become dominated by the lowest common denominator. We saw it happen over a period of years in a planting of beautiful electric blue meconopsis poppies in Dunedin Botanic Gardens. With the red form in the same bed, over time they ended up with an awful lot of murky maroon colours and far too few pure blues.
- Daffodil bulbs can be protected from the dreaded narcissi fly by removing foliage and piling on a layer of mulch. The flies lay their eggs in the top collar of the bulb and gain access down the foliage stems. Daffodils need 65 days of growth, which is a very precise figure. If you can recall back that far, as long as your daffodils were in growth by mid July, you can safely remove the foliage now and put them to bed for summer.
- While the Great Vegetable Plant Out takes priority for most people (this is your summer and early autumn harvest you are planting), in the ornamental garden, it is getting perilously close to the last call for planting out woody trees and shrubs and any pruning and shaping. It is also the optimum time for feeding and for getting mulches onto garden beds. No wonder spring is such a busy time in the garden.
- Writing of the Labour Weekend plantout, I relocated Mark, a good North Taranaki boy, to Dunedin for three years in our early life together. Corn is a very marginal crop there because the growing season is too short and he carefully started his corn plants in baby pots and planted them out at Labour Weekend, as one does. It snowed on the Tuesday and his poor little corn plants all died. We moved back north.
Pruning vireya rhododendrons: step-by-step guide with Abbie and Mark Jury
A step by step guide by Abbie and Mark Jury first published in the Taranaki Daily News and reproduced here with permission as a PDF.
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Sculpture in the garden
The large chicken netting peacocks in the meadow at Hilliers were both whimsical and charming
Would we consider having an exhibition in our garden during Rhododendron Festival, the sculptor asked. It is pretty last minute but we replied in the affirmative, though rather regretting the missed opportunities in the official programme which had long since been printed.
We have tended to be a bit iffy and sniffy about sculpture in gardens and it wasn’t until we saw it at Hilliers and at Wisley in England that we found a perspective we could live with.
The key issue is quite simple. In our eyes, gardens are about plants and they should be the stars. Even garden design is primarily a vehicle to carry the plants and to enhance the viewing experience. Drop a sculpture into a garden and in most cases the created object made by a human becomes the dominant feature. The plants and garden become the backdrop. That is fine if sculpture is your interest and you merely want a pleasing outdoor venue to display a collection. As long as the piece is placed well, the garden setting can enhance it considerably. But the reverse is rarely true and takes a great deal more skill.
Gardens are more usually dominated or taken over by the sculptural statement. If you doubt this claim, walk around a garden which has a significant sculptural installation. Do you look at the sculpture or the garden? I bet your bottom dollar that you look at the sculpture first (and longest) and the garden setting second but the detail of the garden slips into the background.
- Sputnik shapes in a bed of vinca at Hilliers
When we visited Hilliers famed gardens and arboretum near Winchester earlier this year, there was a sculpture exhibition in place. And even we, pretty dedicated as we are to the plants and gardening side, looked in the first instance at the sculptures. Don’t get me wrong. We really liked some of them and it was here that we figured that our personal tastes lean more to the organic forms which represent shapes in nature. This was a large exhibition with many artists involved so it lacked the cohesion and vision which are part of a solo display. It was also temporary and that was when we decided that there is a world of difference between permanent installations and short term exhibitions. The latter can add a great deal of interest to the experience of the visitor (which is why we said yes to the sculptor who approached us) without the commitment of permanence.
- Ephemeral whimsy in willow at Wisley
The RHS Wisley gardens just outside London had some charming, large, woven willow creations placed strategically in parts of the garden which were otherwise a little empty, almost barren. There is something about the ephemeral nature of woven willow which ages gently and will in time disappear entirely, making it fit easily to the surroundings. The whimsical nature of these works added appeal. But these were hardly Serious Sculpture or High Art – large woven toadstools and pieces of fruit don’t quite rank up alongside massive Henry Moore pieces.
In the end, garden sculpture is about personal taste and our personal tastes lean more to smaller scale, environmentally sympathetic whimsy which can gently blend in to our garden, rather than dominate. Others prefer much bolder pieces which shout out a statement and where the garden and environment curtsey to the power of the piece.
From what I can see from his list, Rangitikei artist Steuart Welch from Cannock Forge is bringing to us pieces from both ends of the spectrum – big bold statement pieces which require a truck to move and some which represent the whimsical aspect of his nature. We are really looking forward to seeing the effect of placing such strong pieces in our garden and learning first hand how to tread that line between enhancing a vision and dominating it. The works will remain in place throughout our Rhododendron Festival until the second week of November.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 