The Vireya Family

I recall some years ago having two conversations in a short space of time where people regaled me with tales of coming to buy plants from Mark in the early days of our nursery. Both shared a similar experience. “It was at least 20 minutes,” said one, “before I was confident that I was going to be allowed to buy a plant.” Readers who know and like my Mark will be smiling at this point, recognising the likely truth in these accounts. He, himself, sees humour in the retelling but retorts slightly defensively that of course he was right. There is no point in selling elite and difficult plants to people who will fail with them. It will only backfire all around. It is a philosophy of retailing to which I am forward to returning.

I have one plant here which I insist on an interview before allowing anybody to buy it. It is very slow to grow, scarce as hens’ teeth and likely not available anywhere else, expensive and I don’t want to waste precious plants on unsuitable people. It is a tiny vireya species, saxafragoides. After about five years, you get a little bun of a plant measuring around 7cm across. It is reported to be the most cold hardy of the vireyas (it is in fact the mother of hybrids Jiminy Cricket, Saxon Glow and Saxon Blush) and also the most tolerant of damp conditions. But not only is it very slow to grow, I have also not had great success with it in the garden, despite, I thought, giving it optimum conditions.

A decade or more ago, vireya rhododendrons were all the rage. A fashion plant of the day, it was predicted by some that these sub tropical rhododendrons would supplant the hardier, traditional rhododendrons in areas where they could be grown. Mark even heard one self proclaimed expert claim that vireyas were as hardy as maddenii rhododendrons. They are not. Nor are they as easy to grow well in the garden as many of us hoped. In fact as we go through the process of winding down the nursery, vireyas are the crop that we most often agree we will not be sorry to farewell out of commercial production.

Don’t get me wrong. We are vireya aficionados. They are a wonderful family of plants and we would not be without them. Our association with vireyas goes back to the mid 1950s when Mark’s father collected a form of R.macgregoriae in New Guinea and brought it back here to Tikorangi. In those days border control was considerably more lax. That plant still survives in the garden here and mass flowers every year without fail. It was the start of a father and son plant breeding dynasty which has seen more than twenty five different hybrids named and released on the market over the years and is still continuing.

Sweet Cherry

Vireyas are deceptive because they are very easy to put roots on, as we say. In other words, even home gardeners with no special facilities can have success with cuttings (although the aforementioned saxafragoides may be a challenge). They grow quickly (except for saxafragoides). Because they come from the equatorial areas where day length is pretty standard all year round and seasons are not defined by temperature change, they don’t have the set growing season that other plants show. So if plants are relatively warm, they will put on growth spurts most of the year. They also have the endearing habit of flowering randomly and often over many months. Indeed some are almost never without a flower and if you have enough plants in your garden, you can pretty well guarantee something in flower for twelve months of the year.

The down side is that they have pathetically little root systems and even well established plants can up and die on you when your back is turned. Being sub tropical, they are frost tender (any touch of frost will burn them and more than about three or four degrees of frost will kill them). With such small root systems, they are also extremely vulnerable to wet conditions and many soil fungi can take them out.

Readers who have lost vireya plants will be heartened to hear that it may not be their gardening skills at fault. In nursery production, we have always had a better cuttings take on vireyas than any other production line. But from then on, it is mostly an up hill battle. We always have a much higher death rate in the finished crop of vireyas than any other plant line we have grown over the past twenty five years. It can be very disheartening going through and pulling out the deaths. And we work harder to get bushy, well shaped plants than any other plant line. I figured this year that they are easily the most under priced crop we grow and were we staying in production, I would want a much higher wholesale price to justify the effort.

Compounding all this is that, of course, it is the highly desirable varieties which are the hardest to keep alive. Many if not most of the fascinating species are difficult. The named hybrids with big, luscious, scented trumpets are also more vulnerable whereas the utility toughies are more reliable but less coveted. Ain’t that always the way?

If you want to try taking vireya cuttings, select a stem of new growth which has hardened sufficiently to be firm. Make a clean cut across the base and then take a sliver off the outer green stem layer for about 2.5 centimetres from the base on two sides. It is very important to take it on both sides because this is where the roots are formed on vireyas. Reduce the cutting to two leaves only. If you have rooting hormone, it will increase success but you can manage without it. Stick the cutting in potting mix and place it somewhere warm but not in direct sun. You can cover it with a loose, clear plastic bag or a cut-off plastic PET bottle if you want to keep it warmer. Keep the potting mix damp but not saturated. You may see roots forming in about six weeks or so but they are best left undisturbed for three or four months.

Well grown vireyas are a delight and a great addition to the garden. But as a plant family, they are just not quite as easy and bullet proof as some of us hoped back in their hey day. They are great container plants and excellent for people who like to make a fuss of their plants but are certainly not an easy care option for the garden in the way that their hardier cousins are.

July 4, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

Given that the current round of very wet and dreary weather is forecast to continue for some days yet, we doubt that anybody is going to be doing much in the garden this week. We see our peers giving advice in other publications that this is the time to tend to your tools, oil the handles and sharpen the blades.

Bah, humbug. Good gardeners have generally learned to look after their tools all the time and not just in winter. Novice gardeners generally learn quite quickly that cheap tools are not worth having, especially as far as secateurs, spades, forks and trowels go. Buy quality and look after them. Don’t leave your metal wheelbarrow full of debris out in the rain or it will rust. We speak from experience here.

  • If you are suffering from cabin fever, get out your gardening books. You can at least use winter to gather fresh ideas and gain some inspiration.
  • When the weather is really bad, real gardeners have a shed where they hide away and sow seed and repot their treasures.
  • It is fairly early, but Mark has been pruning his grapevines which are under cover. Cut back all last year’s growth to one or two strong buds from the main trunk and thin out weak stems. Drastic but necessary. In moments of creativity or boredom, you can weave creations from the grape prunings. In the past, Mark has made some most attractive teepees for clematis by splitting giant bamboo lengths into four at one end only and weaving lengths of grape vines to hold the lower ends asplay. We need to refine the process of anchoring them to the ground (they tend to blow over) but they look a great deal more folksy than the cheap metal supports you buy which then rust out.
  • Think about a hierarchy of flowers. Doing a random net search on myself (as some of us do in moments of boredom), I found a new piece on the Yahoo d*hlia chat room accusing me of having no more class than a petunia. Moi? The irony of a d*hlia fanatic accusing me of having no taste or class does not escape me. But what did the poor petunia do to warrant having such aspersions cast upon it? While I quite like petunias, I did feel that my first love of magnolias might rank slightly higher up the social scale of flowers than the dreaded d*hlia.

Geoffrey Charlesworth wrote in 1988:

What do gardeners do in winter? They accumulate fat.

Oscar Wilde gave us memorable dialogue in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Cicely: When I see a spade, I call it a spade.

Gwendolen: I am pleased to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

In the garden 27/06/2008

We were certainly right predicting that the weather could well turn to custard straight after the shortest day and it is unlikely that anybody but the hardiest of gardeners is going to feel motivated to be outside until matters improve. You can however look at drainage patterns and areas of ponding which fail to drain quickly and resolve to take action. Only bog plants like wet feet for long periods.

  • In coastal areas at least, the depths of winter only lasts about six or eight weeks. We warm up remarkably quickly by the end of August and real enthusiasts will be preparing garden beds now for the spring planting of vegetables.
  • If you are planting fruit trees, remember that they will perform best if you give them optimum conditions of good soil, space, protection from wind and all day sun.
  • Now is the traditional time to sow garlic and shallots but if you have followed our advice earlier, yours will already be shooting.
  • If you have fires, save your ash for the garden (as long as you have not used any tanalised timber or burned any plastics or polystyrene) but make sure that you spread it very thinly. The ash from wood burners can be concentrated. You can put the ash through the compost heap but make sure that the ashes are cold first. Wood ash is a fertiliser which can be used on lawns and in the vegetable garden.
  • Winter is the time to prune deciduous trees while you can see the shape and the tree is dormant.
  • If you plan a brutal prune on rhododendrons, do it now. You will lose the flowers this spring but cutting back to bare wood means that as the plant comes into growth in spring, you will get a much rejuvenated plant. It can be a bit of a kill or cure method but if it is a strong plant with just tufts of leaves at the end of its stems, it will usually shoot again well.

Mark Twain opined that a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education. He may have written this prior to the popularity of broccoli and certainly prior to the appearance of broccoflower, both of which are commonly ranked even further up the social scale of vegetables.

A Garden with a View (in Italy)

I would like to say I am fresh back from the south of Italy, but fresh might be slightly overstating the case. Safely back perhaps. I have never been to this southern area before. We didn’t find anybody who spoke English in Palermo (Sicily), either local or traveller. No English at all and no understanding of any English which gave some impetus to learning a few basic words and phrases in Italian from the back of Lonely Planet Guide.

On a previous visit, Mark and I tripped around the lakes district in the north and saw grand established gardens in the Italian tradition. I had been anticipating similar evidence of great wealth in pockets of the south at least, but if they are there, we did not find them. Sicily, it must be said, has a much hotter and drier climate, more akin to its close neighbours in North Africa, which makes gardening difficult and it remains an area of considerable poverty.

I photocopied the relevant pages from renowned garden writer Charles Quest Ritson’s weighty tome, Gardens of Europe, and following his advice, we sought out Orto Botanico di Palermo (the Bot Gardens). I had thought to find a little more than we did in terms of style and presentation. They hold a notable collection of cacti and succulents which was displayed with all the panache of a working nursery. All plants were in matched terracotta pots serried along wire shelves. If you have a passion for cacti and succulents, there may have been much of interest but I find them distinctly less than riveting.

Plants in serried ranks at Orto Botanico

Plants in serried ranks at Orto Botanico

The glasshouses were sparsely furnished with more plants on wire shelves. There were some fine trees growing amongst the dry dust outside but most looked a little hard done by. A recent planting of cycads in the tough kikuya grass was just getting established, although there were more mature specimens of both palms and cycads. A most remarkable plant was a fig tree (ficus macrophylla). Now over 160 years old, it was of enormous proportions and clearly working on a bid for total domination. It puts roots out from on high (known as aerial roots) and when they reach the ground, they bed in giving a multi stemmed effect on a rather intimidating scale.

The ficus bid for total domination at Orto Botanico

The ficus bid for total domination at Orto Botanico

The avenue of false kapok trees (Chorisia speciosa) was attractive but overall I was a little underwhelmed by Palermo’s Orto Botanico.

On the mainland, we sought out Villa Cimbrone in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. It was a slight mission to get there. The public transport is frequent and cheap, but not for those of a nervous disposition. In this area, the roads are extremely narrow, bordered on one side by an unprotected drop of hundreds of metres to the sea, extremely winding with corners so tight that at times the buses have to reverse up and make more than one attempt to get around, all the while being challenged by speeding Vespas, Fiats and Smart Cars driven by fearless locals.

Villa Cimbrone was actually landscaped by an Englishman at the turn of the twentieth century on the site of a neglected Roman estate and is still hailed as a significant garden in the English-Italian style. Now a hotel, I can only say that it must have been grander in its early days. The Avenue of Immensity formed the central axis and it was certainly impressive. It was an extremely long and wide sweep which led us down under festoons of wisteria, flanked by pinus pinea and platanus orientalis, statuary and terracotta pots. It culminated in an open Doric temple leading to the Terrace of Infinity. This was a large belvedere balcony adorned by eighteenth century marble busts, with an astounding view of the Amalfi Coast and the hugely charming villages and citrus groves which tumble down the near vertical hills.

The Terrace of Infinity at Villa Cimbrone

The Terrace of Infinity at Villa Cimbrone

But that was as good as it got. The brochure claimed “an infinite variety of exotic flowers and plants” beside the Avenue of Immensity – but these were mostly agapanthus, with, from memory, some cleomes. The Seat Of Mercury, a large bronze statue of the gods’ messenger at rest, was set in a dirt bowl. The rose terrace was so poor it was ludicrous. Even allowing for the fact that it was only late spring, I could not believe that the roses were ever going to impress and row upon row of pink and red bedding begonias are too municipal altogether.

The gothic crypt (now a functions centre) was magic. I do like the gothic style. The cloister was attractive – a Norman-Sicilian-Arabian courtyard. The traditional Italian statuary fitted right in to the whole environment and gave me cause yet again to reflect that it is no wonder that it looks so out of place in New Zealand gardens where we lack the history and the tradition which anchors this ornamentation in context. But it is the architecture and the setting which are the redeeming features of this garden, certainly not current gardening practice.

In terms of gardening, the most charming sight I saw was a simple scene of wildflowers at the Palatine in Rome and that was clearly serendipity.

Serendipity at the Palatine in Rome

Serendipity at the Palatine in Rome

I did feel a little vindicated on another score. A month or two ago, I wrote a column debunking the myth of Marlborough’s vineyards being romantic and evocative of rural Italy, an opinion which caused a colleague to take umbrage. The vineyards, olive and citrus groves I saw in Italy bore no resemblance at all the sterile mono culture of Marlborough with its rows of tanalised posts and wires and not a single stray plant allowed to creep into the environment. Italy does not appear to have our obsession with Round Up so there is a profusion of growth and the vineyards and orchards are small, mixed and cheek by jowl. Instead of milled, tanalised timber, supports were crafted from branches which looked similar to our native manuka. While I may not have been impressed by the formal gardening efforts I saw on this visit, the agriculture and rural landscape were impossibly romantic and about as far from New Zealand practice as you can get. Given that Italy has been that way for a very long time, I suspect that their approach is considerably more sustainable than the green desert technique we favour in our own countryside.

June 20, 2008 Weekly Garden Guide

The good news is that with the shortest day looming, our day length has reached its minimum. The bad news is that the full force of winter does not usually hit until after that date so do not be lulled into a false sense of hope that winter may miss us this year. Be prepared for frosts which are bound to strike even coastal areas soon.

  • Continue the autumn/winter clean up around the garden and as you finish each area, lay a cover of organic mulch to suppress weed growth and add humus to the soil. Don’t waste the autumn leaves. These will rot down quickly in damp, dark conditions and form an attractive and reasonably nutritious mulch.
  • If you have not yet planted your garlic, do not delay. We remind you again to keep to New Zealand garlic and to avoid the cheap imported crops which can carry virus and will give poor yields.
  • Seed potatoes are in the shops now. The usual advice is to chit them, in other words to spread them on a tray and leave for a few weeks in a dark place to encourage the eyes to sprout. Potato enthusiasts in mild areas will be planting their early potatoes now in frost free areas. Compost will give an added blanket of protection from the cold.
  • Continue sowing vegetables such as winter spinach, brassicas and winter lettuce. It is better to sow seed into individual pots at this time of the year (egg cartons can be used for this) and to plant out the seedlings as they get a little size.
  • Broad beans can still be sown.
  • Dig yams now to avoid feeding the slugs. Yams are a member of the oxalis family. Store the harvest in cool, dark conditions.
  • Deciduous fruit trees can be pruned from now on.
  • Mark is pleased to report that he is still harvesting sweet corn and tomatoes. Those who followed his regular advice to put in late crops earlier in the season may also be enjoying summer and autumn bounty well into winter.

A quote this week from Sir Simon Hornby, a past president of the Royal Horticultural Society:

I hate rose gardens. I never know why people have them – they don’t have weigela gardens or philadelphus gardens.