Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Begone edging plants!

Shocked to realise I had planted the Tiger’s Jaw (Faucaria tigrinia) in a row...

Shocked to realise I had planted the Tiger’s Jaw (Faucaria tigrinia) in a row…

Ahem. I risk annoying many readers this morning. I know this because odds on, many follow trend and do not think gardens are complete without tidy rows of edging plants. Noooo, I say.

There is a difference between hedges and edgers. Hedges are living walls, usually green, giving structure to a garden. Edgers are edging plants. The baby Buxus suffruticosa is commonly an edging plant. Edgers are designed to make a garden look tidy.

There is a school of thought that if you have tidy rows of edging plants, the garden will always look neat. I beg to differ. If you have a messy garden, you have a messy garden. If you have a messy garden with a tidy row of edging plants, said edging does not make the rest of your garden look neat. It will look precisely what it is.

When you have a garden bed already defined by sharp edging – whether a path, pavers, or a mowing strip – you don’t actually need edging plants to add further definition. That is unless you like gardening in stripes.

I looked at a photo in another publication last week. There was a border beside a driveway. The drive was paved and then edged in a concrete nib wall. But that double definition was apparently insufficient for the owner. The line was further defined by an unbroken row of variegated Agapanthus Tinkerbelle, with another row of matched low shrubs behind, punctuated by dot plants at regular intervals, used as vertical accents.

If you asked ten year olds to design a garden, what would most of them come up with? A bed in long stripes, I would guess. A row of one colour, backed by another row of a different colour and broken up by regular placement of upright lollipops or pillars. Just as the adult owner of the aforementioned garden did. Tidy. Tidy and suburban. It is so ubiquitous these days that it has become the norm.

Mondo grass – black or green, liriope, blue carex, fescue, dwarf agapanthus, dietes, lavender, rosemary, renga renga lilies, even hostas in shady conditions – what is with this need to plant them all in edging rows, I ask. It is all a bit too reminiscent of traffic island planting, in my opinion.

Would an edging of mondo grass really improve this bed of cyclamen which is already defined by brick edging and mowing strip?

Would an edging of mondo grass really improve this bed of cyclamen which is already defined by brick edging and mowing strip?

Yes, defining lines and shapes in the garden by ribbon planting the same plant is a tool, but only one tool and not a compulsory one at that. I had hoped that the advent of buxus blight with the unfortunate result of a whole lot of dying edging plants might encourage a rethink on their role by many gardeners. Alas that does not appear to be the situation, judging by the frequent searches I see for alternatives to buxus. Many people are simply looking for a suitable plant to use instead rather than reviewing the role of the little garden hedge.

Formal gardens are planted in stripes and blocks, everything measured so that the spaces are even. It is all about control and maintenance. That is the style. Informal or naturalistic gardens are at the other end of the scale. There is nothing so contrived or tightly managed as a row or an edging stripe. This style is more about emulating Nature, recreating but improving on what occurs naturally. Most of us choose to garden somewhere in the middle between those two ends of the spectrum. As such, we are in good company. That mix is the hallmark of some great gardeners like Vita Sackville West and Gertrude Jekyll.

I just can’t imagine that Vita or Gertrude would have forseen the translation into edgings of mondo grass or bedding begonias. They didn’t ever straitjacket every garden bed and every garden border in behind tidy edges of border plants. Woodland and cottage gardens were spared. Herbaceous borders were allowed to festoon outwards over the wide mowing strips, softening the hard lines. One of the lovely distinctive styles of many English gardens is their use of wide gravel paths (usually a honey coloured gravel rather than sombre grey) with voluptuous plantings allowed to overflow to the path and often gently seeding down.

I admit that I gave myself a shock when I headed out to photograph the Tiger’s Jaw (Faucaria tigrinia) plants which were opening their faces to the sun. It wasn’t until I lined up the photo that I realised I had planted them in a row at the front of that particular garden border. There was a good reason. They are very low growing and will rot out if larger plants flop over them. But a row! I shocked myself. It may just be the only edging row you will find our garden outside of the vegetable patch (excluding proper hedges) but we are in a minority among New Zealand gardens. Pretty much every one I go into these days is defined by the use of edging plants.

Consider grouping the plants, darlings, rather than planting them in single file. You may even like the different effect.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden lore

“A honeybee would have to fly around 100,000 kilometres and visit over a million flowers to find the nectar to make two kilos of honey. As it happens, they can only manage about 800 kilometres before they exhaust themselves and die.”

Niall Edworthy, The Curious Gardener’s Almanac (2006).

Green crops
It is your very last call for sowing green crops if they are to be of any value this winter. Green crops are a time honoured method of conditioning soils. They are a particularly useful tool on heavy soils. These can compact badly when left bare through a sodden winter and then turn to concrete when they dry out again. The roots penetrate the soil and keep it open, making it easier to work when it is time to dig again.

Green crops also slow the leaching effect of winter rains. They take up nutrients which would otherwise be washed away and release these nutrients in the spring when dug in to the soil. Think of them like a nutrient bank.

Recommended practice is to dig in green crops two to three weeks before you start replanting in spring – which means about the beginning of October. If you are not using all your vegetable garden in winter, green crops also look a great deal tidier than a forest of weeds and seedlings. Logic says that forest of weeds will also act as a green crop but you only get the full benefit if you dig the entire plant in later and you don’t want to be digging weeds with seed heads already formed into your ground.

Lupins and mustard are other winter options. Lupin is good for adding nitrogen. Mustard is reputed to kill undesirable nematodes by a form of natural sterilisation. Oats are the quickest growing option and will germinate the fastest. At this late stage, they are probably the best choice.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Plant Collector : Persimmons (Diospyros kaki, probably “Hachiya”)

The persimmon - worth growing as an ornamental even if the fruit is not to one's taste

The persimmon – worth growing as an ornamental even if the fruit is not to one’s taste

As autumn draws into winter, our old persimmon tree looks mighty spectacular, even if we aren’t huge fans of the fruit. The large leaves turn golden before falling and the fruit hang on like big orange-gold orbs for a long time. The tree itself is smallish at about 4 metres and never receives any care or attention.

The diospyros family is a large one, best known for giving us both persimmons and the heavy dark timber often called ebony wood. D. kaki is native to China but now grown in many other areas of the world. The commercial cultivars often originate from Japan although Israel has also adopted it as the Sharon fruit.

Being an old tree, ours is an astringent variety. A high tannin content means that any fruit less than very ripe indeed will pucker the mouth. The best parts are the gelatinous segments in the centre. The surrounding flesh can be a bit cloying but no doubt would make an excellent sherbet or sorbet. Nowadays most people plant the modern, non astringent varieties which can be eaten before reaching the soft stage of ripeness. “Fuyu” is the most common non astringent variety here and there is now a small commercial orchard industry. You can buy the fruit in the supermarkets and eat them while still crisp, somewhat like an apple.

Persimmon fruit must be a taste I have yet to acquire despite its international popularity. No matter. The tree fully justifies its place as an ornamental at this time of the year.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Garden lore

“… the truly formal garden is all about showing off your ability to groom and control. The more attention you pay to detail and maintenance, the better your garden will look, so don’t go there if you take a casual approach to chores. Consider rethinking the way you mow. The perfectionist will always mow lawns in straight lines parallel to the main axis.”

Xanthe White , NZ Gardener (May 2013).

???????????????????????????????

Pine bark
Pine trees produce a prodigious amount of loose bark and given the number of pine trees we grow in this country, pine bark has become a garden staple. Ground up and composted, it is now the major source of potting mix. As a renewable resource, it has done a great deal to save the peat and sphagnum bogs formerly raided for this purpose. Chipped to various grades, it is widely used as garden mulch. But, you need to understand that the reason pine bark is so useful is because it is remarkably inert and stable. It takes years to rot down so it does next to nothing to condition the soil even though it is an organic product. When a whole branch or trunk is chipped or mulched, it will break down quickly and add carbon content, but not straight bark.

So stable is pine bark that we use large flakes from our trees as an informal garden edging, stacked as you might stack thin pieces of old concrete. It lasts for years. If you are buying bark mulch, the mixes of bark and pine fibre will look more natural (and the fibre will break down faster, adding some nutrient to the soils). The chunkier bark nuggets look a little… clunky but will last for ages. The finer screened bark mulches will look smart in that urban landscaped look but can wash away in heavy rains. I have not seen the horror of died bark mulches that are favoured in Australia. Don’t go there. Your garden will not look better for being mulched in red, tan, blue or green pine bark.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Gardening crimes against nature

The banks of waterways should not be sprayed

The banks of waterways should not be sprayed

There is a wonderfully self-satisfied confidence in many gardeners that their hobby is good for the environment and that they are working with nature. On the contrary, too often gardening is in direct opposition to nature and many gardeners are guilty of environmental crimes. This has probably escalated considerably since the 1960s when all manner of nasties became available to the home gardener in order to control the excesses of nature.

Lawns are arguably the greatest gardening crime against the environment. Edwin Budding would have had no idea of what he was unleashing on the world in 1827 when he invented the lawnmower. It took until much later in the century before a motor mower appeared. Until then, all grass was cut by scythe and would have been grass, not lawn as we know it. Now we prize lawns that resemble lush bowling greens, but at what cost?

Take a demerit point if you remove all clippings from your lawn but then turn around and fertilise it regularly to compensate. At least buy a mulcher mower next time you replace your machine. If you mulch your clippings back into the lawn, you don’t need to buy fertiliser to give it a boost.

Take three demerit points if you put your lawn clippings out with the green waste or in your wheelie bin. There can be no justification for the public sector having to dispose of domestic lawn clippings.

More demerit points can be added if you insist on spraying your lawn with hormone sprays (which of course means you cannot remove the clippings to the compost heap but must find some other way of getting rid of them for the next six months). The most common spring time enquiry we receive about distorted leaf growth on deciduous trees, particular magnolias, is directly attributable to the use of hormone sprays on lawns. Quadruple your demerit points if you are one of the environmental vandals who insists on spraying your lawn to kill the earthworms beneath so they cannot spoil the effect with their worm casts. Shame.

Not taking responsibility for plants you may be growing which have the capacity to escape beyond your patch is a crime against nature. Too many of our weeds in this country are garden escapes – erigeron daisies, self seeding campanulata cherries, old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba), wild gingers, to name a few. Without ripping out every seeding or suckering exotic plant, gardeners have a moral responsibility to make sure they keep such things under control. Potting them up to sell at your local school gala or a car boot sale is not acceptable. Not at all. You are merely dispersing plants with weed potential.

Using plastic coated bubble slow release fertilisers in the garden warrants demerit points, no matter what your garden retailer may tell you. These were developed for container plant growing, not for general garden usage and, believe me, those plastic bubble coatings last for many years in the environment. If you are going to use bought fertilisers, then make sure you are using ones which are fully biodegradable. Better still, make your own compost.

Growing plants that you have to drench regularly with fungicide, insecticide or even simple copper sprays in order to keep them alive and healthy needs review. Get the message – these plants are not happy in your conditions. It is only a triumph to grow something difficult or different if you can give it conditions that make it relatively happy and healthy. Regular human intervention with a chemical arsenal is not good gardening practice. Once a year is neither here nor there but more often than that, and you should be asking yourself questions. I include copper in that list. While relatively benign, there is evidence that repeated applications over time kill earthworms, bacteria and other soil organisms which are part of the natural environment.

An array of edging tools - preferable to spraying garden edges

An array of edging tools – preferable to spraying garden edges

While on chemical sprays, I acknowledge we are growing increasingly conservative about their usage. In our gardening opinion, they are best as a last resort rather than a routine management tool. As such, I rail against the sight of sprayed edges. Invest in a repertoire of edging tools and get rid of the nasty brown sprayed look which is a crime against both nature and aesthetics. And when you routinely apply herbicide, you create a vacuum which nature will invade. In sunny areas, this will be with weeds and in shady areas, it is likely to be liverwort.

The same goes for banks on waterways. We should be avoiding all man-made chemical usage near waterways so err on the conservative side. A line trimmer or a scythe can be used to cut back and will leave cover rather than dead brown vegetation and then bare soil to erode. Pioneer farmers knew to plant trees along waterways to shade out weed growth.

Fortunately the horror that was the minimalist garden died out quickly after its heyday in the 1990s. That was the three large rocks, white pebble mulch with one sanseveria (unkindly known as mother-in-law’s tongue) and three green mounds of hummocky scleranthus. Contribution to nature? Less than zero. Demerit points? Top of the scale.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.