Clipping the michelias

Starting on the left – the annual clip

This is what it will like when done – freezing the size of the plants in time with an annual clip

We have a row of lollipop michelias at our entranceway and it is time for their annual clip. Yes, one annual clip is all they get and we are maybe three weeks late on doing them this year. I did not intend to start yesterday, having other things planned. Besides, clipping the michelias feels like a Big Job. Well, it does involve a ladder for the taller ones.

I timed myself yesterday. It takes me 30 minutes a plant to clip with secateurs and to rake up the clippings. That is not long for annual maintenance on what are significant feature plants. You could do it faster with a powered hedge trimmer or even hand clippers but you lose the precision. Besides, I don’t like using the hand clippers because each time they snap shut it jars my wrists and the residual carpel tunnel syndrome I nurse in those joints.

Aesthetically speaking, cutting with secateurs means there is no leaf damage whereas the speedier clippers or hedge trimmer will cut almost every external leaf which will then discolour on the damaged edges. It is also easy to reach in at the time and remove dead wood and do a clean-up of the interior of the ball using secateurs and the finished result is less… brutally shorn, shall I say?

Most michelias can be clipped hard, especially these hybrids of Mark’s. The two smaller ones here are an unnamed hybrid from his breeding programme while the taller ones are Fairy Magnolia Blush. I have planted two Fairy Magnolia Cream in the vehicle entranceway to the left which will, over the next few years, be trained to lollipop standards.

Michelias are magnolias, just a grouping within that wider family. That is why Michelia yunnanensis has been renamed Magnolia laevifolia by the experts. Our position of continuing to refer to them as michelias is on shaky ground botanically but we find it a useful differentiation in common parlance. It is a handy point of difference to the big leather-leafed Magnolia grandiflora types which are what most people think of when evergreen magnolias are mentioned. Our agents chose to brand Mark’s hybrids as “fairy magnolias” to mark out that difference.

Magnolia laevifolia  (aka Michelia yunnanensis) defoliating in wet, cold climate

The aforementioned species, Magnolia laevifolia, is a lovely plant in bloom but not always the best garden plant. It has a tendency to defoliate in a wet spring and we have certainly had that this year. This plant is not in our garden. I photographed it at Pukeiti. It is neither dead nor dying. Nor is it deciduous. It has defoliated in the wet and that is a characteristic of this particular species that is not to its credit. Not far along the same track is a fine specimen of Mark’s Fairy Magnolia ‘Blush’ which, we were pleased to see, shows no tendency whatever to defoliate, even in the hard growing conditions of Pukeiti Gardens.

This is what Magnolia laevifolia looks like at its best, seen here in my friend Lorri’s garden 

As a piece of advice for local gardeners, if you into clipping camellias – and we clip a few now as feature plants as well as camellia hedging – the time to do it is right now. If you leave it much longer, you will be cutting off all next year’s flower buds.

We have renamed the area of our garden we used to refer to as “the park’. It is now The Meadow

Finally, for a spot of colour, may I give you a host of golden primulas (not daffodils) in our meadow garden by the stream. It is just common old Primula helodoxa but so very pretty in its season.

Plant Collector: Malus ioensis ‘Plena’ – (Betchel Crabapple)

My first sighting of a juvenile plant in a Taranaki garden last spring

When I first spotted this pretty, young tree in a local garden last spring, I could not identify it but it sure was a charming sight. In Canberra a couple of weeks ago, there were SO MANY of these trees in bloom that I felt I had to track down a name. It is a flowering crabapple, a malus. The nurseries that supply Canberra are clearly making a killing on producing this cultivar (along with the pretty dogwoods). It is being used widely as a street tree on suburban road verges, it was strongly represented in the gardens at Parliament House that we visited and was featured in many, many (many) gardens.

It is a pretty blossom tree though it does flower as its fresh foliage has broken dormancy, so the display is not on bare branches. Crab apples fit a similar niche to flowering cherries (prunus), though many varieties will flower a little later. Unfortunately, with ‘Plena’, you don’t get the bonus of coloured crab apples later in the season, although it can be used as a pollinator for the fruiting varieties.

Malus ioensis ‘Plena’ , not a prunus as I initially assumed

I have not looked closely at the plants in New Zealand to see if they are cutting grown or grafted. The Canberra plants were grafted, usually onto a rootstock that had an attractive, smooth pale grey bark. The problem with the plants in the Parliament House gardens (no photos allowed so I can’t show you), is that the lower grey bark of the root stock for the first metre or so was not particularly compatible with the graft so the union – where the grafted variety meets the rootstock – was already a bit lumpy and not attractive. They were not as bad as the linden shown here, but neither were the plants mature so they may well get worse. If you like your trees to last the distance over many years, just be cautious about buying plants that have been grafted as standards well above ground level. The closer the graft is to the ground, the less obvious any incompatibility will be.

It is a very pretty tree and one I expect we will see become as popular in this country as in Canberra.

A very pretty and presumably well behaved street tree in Canberra

 

 

 

Plant Collector: the good and the bad of nandina

There are not many plants that I actively dislike but the dwarf, coloured nandina is one. You can tell I do not care for it because I gave no loving attention at all to taking this photograph of a plant on a random street frontage in town. Yet this plant is everywhere. One of those bullet-proof, easy-care plants which is alleged to have ‘year-round interest’ with its coloured foliage so a perfect fit for non gardeners who merely want plants to act as low or no-maintenance soft furnishings in the garden.

The taller version – Nandina domestica ‘Richmond’ seen here – has sufficient aesthetic merit to justify a place in the garden

Mark was as surprised as I was when I told him I had looked it up and there is only one species of nandina and that this boring little coloured mound which is rarely above knee height is the same species as the far more graceful and attractive Nandina domestica ‘Richmond’ that we grow. I can only assume that the common name of heavenly bamboo was initially applied to the more graceful, taller type of selections like ‘Richmond’. I guess, at a pinch, one could claim it has a bamboo look to it, though probably only to those who have never actually looked at the real thing. It is actually a member of the beriberidaceae family (think berberis). Apparently nandinas only berry in warmer climates and ‘Richmond’ is self-fertile so will berry without needing the pollinator that most others do. It is worth growing – easy, reliable and low maintenance yet with a grace and elegance to it, as well as seasonal interest with its berries.

The institutional look of utilitarianism

The dwarf forms lack all of these more desirable attributes except utilitarianism. The more you have, the more utilitarian your garden will look. I have photos of a private garden which has planted a score or more of them but it is too easy to identify the place from my photos and I do not want to upset the owners.  I can, however, offer you this photo of it being used in a public garden. It will not look much different in your garden at home. But it will be easy-care.

The dwarf forms seem to be available under a whole bunch of different cultivar names with some variation in leaf tones and berrying capacity. You can tell it will be a dwarf form by the descriptions of it as clumping, compact or dwarf with projected heights of 60 to 75cm. The red berries, if you get a berrying variety, will never be as showy on a 60cm mound with coloured leaves as they are on their taller sibling with its green leaves and the panicles of berries displayed prominently at eye level or above.

In the interests of disclosure, I will admit that we have one of the dwarf nandina in our garden, though not in a prominent position. Its days are numbered. Probably in single digits since I worked out how much I actively dislike it.

Togs, togs, togs. Undies! A post that is not about gardening.

When I headed across the Tasman two weeks ago, I anticipated a couple of extra degrees of warmth – so late spring rather than our changeable mid-spring. I was wrong. Summer seemed to have arrived already in both Sydney and Canberra and I did not pack sufficient summer clothes. However, it was not yet summery enough to make me think of swimming.

Sydney daughter lives on the fringe of wealthy but staid Bellevue Hill, where it meets the uber-trendiness of turmeric latte Bondi. It could not be more different to Tikorangi and our local town of Waitara so I always find plenty to look at while out walking and I usually carry my camera. However, when confronted by three confident young men wearing only the briefest of swim attire and striding along some distance from the beach, whipping out my camera was truly the last thing I thought of. I was almost flustered by this brazen display of masculinity.

Australia continues to embrace the briefest of brief swim attire for men, usually referred to as budgie smugglers. For recreational wear, New Zealand men long ago moved to the more modest baggy attire of surf shorts. I am fairly sure that only competitive swimmers and the occasional embarrassing older dad wear such brief togs in NZ these days. But then I do not think we have ever had an onion-munching prime minister who took some pride in being photographed publicly in these budgie smuggler togs. If you google Tony Abbott, you will find plenty of evidence and if you are not Australian, it is near incomprehensible.

I was relaying my surprise to my daughter and she found me this You Tube clip. I laughed and laughed.

It is simple, if you can’t see the sea, you are wearing underpants. Or if you are more than 300m from the water’s edge, you have entered the underpants transformation zone. These young gentlemen were certainly wearing revealing undies, in that case.

And even being a buff, gym-fit, Bellevue Hill, private school educated, stockbroker type of young man does not make wearing undies in public acceptable attire

Canberra’s candyfloss cornus

The cornus or dogwoods were simply amazing in Canberra last week. I have never seen anything quite like them. They do not flower like that here. These trees were a mass of bloom and you could clearly get them in shades of sugar pink to apple blossom pink and or simple white. Viewed close up, they were like stylised paintings in their simplicity. Lovely bark, too.

The blooming season is not long, I was told – measured more in days than weeks of peak bloom. But the sight is so glorious that I did not hear anybody complaining about the short season.

As far as I could make out, they were generally C. florida – or maybe some were hybrids in which case likely crossed with C. nuttallii in order to get bigger flowers. ‘Florida’ means full of flowers, not that it comes from the state of Florida. In fact, it hails from the more north eastern areas.

The cornus or dogwood family is quite large. There seems some debate over how many species, but probably in excess of 50. If you take a swathe across the temperate northern hemisphere areas from China, Korea and Japan over to North America, you take in most of the areas of natural habitat.

Why do we not see cornus looking magnificent here? Too wet. Too mild (lacking a winter chill and summer heat). Too windy. And our native puriri moth appears to wreak havoc on the cornus family. We can grow many things really well here. It is just that cornus is not amongst them.

Cornus kousa flowering in June (so early summer) in England

Cornus kousa from China and Japan appears to be more adaptable than the American species. Our specimen finally succumbed to root rot – we literally pushed it over – but on our June visits to the UK, I have often photographed C. kousa in flower and there are a number of selections that have been named along with hybrids between it and C. florida.

Cornus controversa variegata

It was another cornus – C. controversa or the layered ‘wedding cake tree’ which became a fashion plant in this country in the 1990s. It is likely we can attribute this popularity to one person. The wonderful Irish gardener, Helen Dillon did a lecture tour through the country around that time showing slides of her garden (I am pretty sure we are pre-dating power point here) and she had a terrific specimen of Cornus controversa variegata. Everybody wanted one and even we produced some plants commercially though we never planted one out here. The trouble is that it needs to be in the open and full sun in order to develop the characteristic tiered growth habit but with a white variegation, it can often look a little burned and crispy in our bright, unfiltered sunlight. The light is much softer in southern Ireland.