Prunus Awanui

Prunus Awanui feeding the monarch butterflies this week

Prunus Awanui feeding the monarch butterflies this week

Prunus Awanui is pretty as a picture at our place. This flowering cherry looks like fine lace against the sky, a mass of softest, palest pink, small flowers with not a leaf in sight. We have it underplanted with Rhododendron Elsie Frye which is the same colouring but has considerably larger flowers (and fragrant) and when looked at from further away, we have a Magnolia Iolanthe framed in the view too. All tone in together very well. On a sunny day, Awanui is alive with monarch butterflies, honey bees and waxeyes.

It popped up in a garden where eagle-eyed local nurseryman Keith Adams thought it had potential. It has now become a market standard. It roots easily from cutting, remains healthy and is easy and reliable. With our high rainfalls in Taranaki, we are not the best territory for most flowering cherry trees which tend to be short lived as they develop root problems. Awanui does not appear to be so pernickety despite the fact it probably has subhirtella in its parentage. In good growing conditions, it can get quite large. Our tree is maybe nine metres across and six metres high and would have been larger had it been left to its own devices, but it is a light and airy tree and it flowers faithfully every year and looks completely charming. This is a plant that is generally readily available on the market in New Zealand.

September 11, 2009 In the Garden

  • We are getting quite dry here although there is rain forecast. Keep an eye on container plants which can dry out while your back is turned. If you have permanent plants in tubs, troughs, containers or pots and you haven’t done anything with them for ages, get onto any repotting straight away if you want them to survive summer. Today’s Outdoor Classroom is on this topic. If you don’t plan to repot them, give them a feed.
  • It is countdown on digging and dividing clumping perennials. Most of these are in growth now and will make a speedy recovery from being divided but it is best not to delay.
  • Daphnes and luculias can be pruned now. The Himalayan Daphne bholua can get pretty scruffy and will take hard pruning but go easy on the more common odora types. A light trim or thinning is more advisable for them. Look for fresh shoots or buds on the luculias and trim back to these without delay. Dichroas (related to hydrangeas but evergreen and often with a flower for the better part of the year) can be pruned back to a pair of leaf buds.
  • If you have a glasshouse, be very cautious with its ventilation now because temperatures can soar and it would be disappointing to fry the treasures you are housing so carefully.
  • Get onto planting out annuals if you want a display in spring. Leave it any longer and they will be a summer display instead.
  • The advice in my column last week on copper sprays was not a complete veto on their use, but a warning bell on their over use. There are times copper sprays are enormously useful and one of those times is to combat leaf and fruit drop on citrus trees.
  • Wandering jew (tradescantia) is on the move. Do not let this weed get away on you. If you use sprays, Amitrol, Grazon or Tordon Gold should deal to it. Glyphosate doesn’t touch it. If you shun sprays, there is no alternative to hand pulling every last skerrick of it and putting it to rot inside a black plastic rubbish bag in the sun. Any piece you will miss will grow again.
  • If you still plan to plant fruit trees this season, stop talking about it and do it right now. Full sun is the rule for fruit trees.
  • In the vegetable garden, it is full steam ahead with pretty well everything. Hardy crops and root crops can be sown from seed directly into the garden – peas, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, lettuce, spinach and silver beet. You may want to try a late crop of broad beans sown now. Slightly more tender crops are started in pots or trays for planting out in six weeks time. These include corn, cucurbits, most beans, tomatoes and all the summer vegetable delights. In warm, protected, coastal areas or under a cloche, you can start direct sowing dwarf beans.

Repotting container plants with Mark and Abbie 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.

New Outdoor Classrooms are uploaded fortnightly.

Magnolia Diary 11, 9 September 2009

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Magnolia Serene, the last of Felix's selections to flower each season

Magnolia Serene, the last of Felix's selections to flower each season

Our magic spring has continued with no wind. A magnolia flowering season with a bad weather factor of only two short lived storms is a good season here. Though I am told that in the south of the province, a series of severe frosts have taken out most of the season’s display. In the deciduous magnolias, Burgundy Star flowers on and is still looking good whereas Felix’s series (Iolanthe et al) are now past their peak. Iolanthe will continue on for weeks yet, but not in her full glory. Serene is still opening. This is one variety that we have been surprised has not had more recognition overseas. Good pink colour, flower form and size, flowers later but still on bare wood and a tidy, well behaved tree. Being liliiflora x Mark Jury, it has reasonable hardiness.

Lollipopped Fairy Magnolia Blush with Magnolia Iolanthe behind

Lollipopped Fairy Magnolia Blush with Magnolia Iolanthe behind

It is full on michelia season. Fairy Magnolia Blush continues in flower and the lollipop row on our frontage is looking good. They were planted in quite harsh conditions (compacted old driveway, in some cases) about five years ago but haven’t minded a bit. I give them a light clip twice a year to retain the shape but otherwise they are left entirely to their own devices.

Mark’s Honey Velvet is in full flower. This is a Magnolia dianica (syn: Michelia yunnanensis) selection and every nurseryman, woman and dog has their own selection made now, so easy is it to raise seed. All we can say about Honey Velvet is that it has a honey cream coloured flower (rather than white) of good size, wonderful bud set, longer flowering season than some and good dark foliage. And it does not appear to defoliate in a cold, wet spring as some of the dianicas do. Other than that, we can’t get too excited about what is just a species selection.

Honey Velvet, Mark's dianica selection

Honey Velvet, Mark's dianica selection

We can and do get excited about the michelia breeding programme and the increasing range of deeper flower colour and size we are starting to see as Mark continues down the track of ever more complex downstream crosses. We can see real progress here but that, alas, is all we can say publicly. It was a bit of a red letter day here yesterday as Mark decided that he was happy to give the go ahead on another deciduous magnolia. Mark has only ever named three magnolias in a breeding programme which has built on his father’s work and thus spans close to five decades now with many hundreds of magnolia plants raised. So to make the decision on a fourth one is no light matter. It is still a long haul from here through final trialling and production before it ever gets anywhere near the marketplace but all we will say officially is that this one is not red.

Magnolia diary 10, 7 September 2009

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We are trying to decide whether the magnolia flowering this year has been a little earlier or whether we have been wrong in the past when we talk about peaking in the first week of September. It is an open verdict but certainly our early reds peak in July and August. While we still have plenty in flower, the best has now passed for 2009. Leonard Messel and our white stellata flower on. While they lack any substance in flower form, they certainly make up for it in prolonged flowering and there is charm in their spidery simplicity.

Lotus, the unsung hero in the big white class

Lotus, the unsung hero in the big white class

Even the nursery plants of Lotus have flowered this year

Even the nursery plants of Lotus have flowered this year

Burgundy Star continues to look fantastic in our carpark area. On the tree, it certainly looks the purest red of any of our red varieties so far. But it is the whites we have been looking at in recent days. Manchu Fan flowers on and, for our money, is unsurpassed as the best performing white goblet type for small gardens. Mark went through the Esplanade Gardens in Palmerston North (about three hours drive south from us) last week and Manchu Fan looked equally good there. Manchu Fan is an American hybrid from Todd Gresham. But for larger gardens, it is Lotus that we have been having a second look at in the whites. It looked particularly good in the Esplanade too and it has been superb in our park. We have even had nursery plants setting good flowers this year. Lotus is rather the unsung sister of Felix’s series of lennei alba x Mark Jury hybrids, coming in behind Milky Way and Athene. We didn’t promote it as enthusiastically because while it has a perfect flower form, we thought it took longer to settle in to flowering and considered Milky Way to be a better commercial plant. Now we are thinking that we have underestimated Lotus and it is a quiet achiever that can hold its own in the big white class.

Mark calls it the Fab Ab series in our North Garden

Mark calls it the Fab Ab series in our North Garden

The current overall winner in the big white class are the seedlings in our North Garden that Mark has started referring to as the Fab Ab series. I am not sure that I wish to be immortalised as Fab Ab but we are certainly having another look at these big bold whites which are performing well year in and year out.