I remembered the adage that old gardeners never die, they just turn into compost. All I could think was ‘not with our modern burial techniques, they don’t, especially if they have been embalmed’ and I wondered if my memory was correct. I typed in ‘old gardeners never die’ and Google gave me several variations.
‘Old gardeners never die, they just run out of thyme’ – a bit twee or naff, I thought.
‘Old gardeners never die. They just spade away and then throw in the trowel.’ This seemed a bit wittier.
‘Old gardeners never die; they just very slowly turn into the most magnificent compost. But what a marvellous, active brew it is!’ That is the full quote I was thinking of.
Mark says he thought old gardeners never die, they just turn into garden gnomes. This is a family joke because, as his father became older and older, he did indeed start to remind us of a gnome. As we grow older, I have reflected more on how we made it possible for Felix to stay in his home and garden until he shuffled off the mortal coils well into his 80s.
We do not see a Ryman Healthcare Village beckoning to us in our future, even though I see many advertisements targeting our demographic with what are meant to be enticing visions of a care-free ‘village’ lifestyle with folks of a similar age bracket. Not too many of them look like gardeners to me.
How to manage a completely flat area surrounded by neighbour’s fences and to give an illusion of space and distance. On the left is a bold planting of simply splendid red astelias by the house.
I need to ask Shirley which red astelia her magnificent four plants are. Mark and his father spent years working on breeding red astelias – one of our native plants – and, despite all their efforts, Shirley’s plants are better and more of a statement than any we have growing here.
No, if I am lucky enough to live long, I want to be like Stratford gardener, Shirley Greenhill. I called in to see Shirley and her garden during the garden festival yesterday and she is indomitable. Shirley has been a stalwart of the Taranaki garden scene for more decades than many of us can remember. Her previous large garden is still cited as being particularly lovely, cool climate gardening on varied terrain managed with skill and charm. As an ageing widow, she reluctantly decided to move to something more sensible, more manageable, on a town section that has largely flat terrain with an easy-care modern home.
A river of rhodohypoxis is no mean feat to keep going. I should have asked what takes over from the rhodohypoxis in this area after they have peaked, because I am sure there will be something.
Shirley set about turning this ‘sensible choice’ into her own and she has certainly not taken the low maintenance option to her retirement garden. She loves plants and she loves gardening, even though she has had to scale down to a much smaller area. It is not that small though, by retirement standards. She has a lifetime of experience in active gardening and she loves many different plants and a high level of interest in her garden. I imagine there is something of interest to look at in every week of the year. If I lived a little closer, I would ask to visit to see and track it through the seasons.
Making use of every piece of available space with just a pocket handkerchief of lawn remaining
It is not the best coloured wisteria I have seen, being neither blue nor white, but it is a very good example of managing to keep one of the word’s more rampant plants confined to a small space and still keep it flowering abundantly.
I didn’t want to embarrass Shirley by asking to photograph her but there is a charming clip of her on prime time TV show, Seven Sharp, from October 26. It is available online here for another 20 days and she features from 17.10 minutes on. If I reach the age of 88 and am still active, effervescent, and clearly in full possession of all my mental faculties, I will feel blessed indeed. What a role model for those of us who are now entering that stage of being aware that we have more years behind us than we have ahead.
No space for lawn but the considered placement of clipped shrubs and some moderately bold choices of larger trees and shrubs gives presence to the low underplantings of assorted treasures.
I bought the very last copy of her self-published book, “I am in the garden” – a charming memoir which I felt deserved a place in our bookcase. Shirley tells me she is working on a second book in a similar vein because she just loves writing. My latest visit to her garden is a memory that I want to hold on to.
Shirley’s outdoor dining set amused me because it is a clear example of what so many of us have found in this climate of regular rainfall and high humidity – if you leave your furniture outside all year round, the lichen takes over. I always console myself with the thought that lichen growth is apparently a sign of good air quality.
Despite my intentions, life has got in the way and I have not been out and about visiting gardens and artist’s studios open on various trails this week in Taranaki as much as I thought I would. But I did get to three gardens on Thursday, which is about my limit for a day.
How to completely screen your neighbour’s house from view when it is very close – at Three Elms
First up was Three Elms, in New Plymouth which exceeded my expectations. The owners, Shane and Lisa McNab, have always credited us with inspiring them to garden – albeit several decades ago – and they tell me they made their first plant purchase from us. It was a pot of rhodohypoxis. They have clearly learned a huge amount in the time since.
It takes a lot of skill to manage a very steep section but Three Elms show it can be done in such a way that the changes in level seem effortless
Three Elms is a town garden on a section that is not large but started out as a steep challenge. It is a due to their hard work and thoughtfulness that the gradient is no longer a problem. They have created small terraces with fairly easy transitions between them, belying the original slope and making moving around the area straightforward. Talk to Shane, if you visit, about the lengths he had to go to installing the large boulders and rocks that are used extensively. They are a feat of determination and physical effort.
That is a tropical cordyline, believe it not, with strelitzia, a dwarf maple and a palm.
The hard landscaping provides the framework but it is the plantings that star. As they should, in my opinion. Pretty much every square metre has been carefully thought about and tended with skill and care over many years and it shows in the plant selections, the health of the plants and the harmonious combinations. There are a lot of bromeliads but it is not only bromeliads, by any manner of means.
A nod to Japan makes use of a challenging space between the back of the house and a ponga (tree fern) retaining wall.
Gardens are only work if you don’t enjoy what you are doing. Three Elms has had a lot of time, thought, skill and – yes – love given to it over many years and it shows. If you are out and about garden visiting locally this weekend, go and see it.
Hurworth Country Garden
Hurworth Country Garden also delighted me. I had been to an event there late last year but events distract from looking at a garden and I wanted to have a better look. I was about a third of the way around it when I found myself thinking, “This is a really graceful garden” and that is not a descriptor that I have ever used about a garden before.
It is pretty large for a retirement garden situated just beyond the city limits and immaculately presented, but that high level of maintenance doesn’t interfere with the feeling of relaxed charm and space – and indeed, grace. Again, it reflects the skill, experience and thought of its owners, Jan and Graeme Worthington. I do like a thoughtful garden.
I loved the vibrant colour of the raised beds edging to the house verandahs, contrasting with the more subtle colours of much of the rest of the garden.
Jan’s use of colour is subtle but not monochromatic. When I commented on this, she put it down to her experience in quilt making. I haven’t seen her quilts but I imagine they are as immaculate and harmonious as her garden.
I coveted Hurworth’s garden room
They also have one of the loveliest garden rooms I have seen and I do like a good garden room. I didn’t even think to ask how and when they use it when the garden is not open to the public; it is perhaps a little too far from the house to use for summer meals and entertaining but it is the sort of room I could visualise sitting in myself, just to enjoy the ambience and views. Hurworth is a garden with a particularly lovely ambience.
Kowhai Garden
The third garden I went to was Kowhai Garden which has a remarkable collection of rhododendrons – over 900, I believe. It is not just rhododendrons but they are the stars at this time of the year. I entertained myself identifying those I knew, dredging my memory banks from the days when we had a nursery that specialised in the genus. Again, it is an example of how people cope with gardens that include a very steep slope, as much of this large garden has. What stood out for me were the rhododendrons that are thriving in a low maintenance environment – not only flowering well but also keeping good foliage and good plant form. Some are performing much better than others.
Rhododendron ‘Lemon Lodge’
Near the house is an outstanding plant of ‘Lemon Lodge’ – simply the best specimen I have ever seen.
Rhododendron ‘Floral Fete’
Also looking lovely were plants of R.nuttallii x lindley hybrids – these ones are ‘Floral Fete’, the owner, Neil Tapsell told me. There used to be a number of named forms of this cross around including the likes of ‘Mi Amor’, ‘Stead’s Best’ and ‘White Waves’. I am not sure how many are still available commercially but it remains a beautiful hybrid and ‘Floral Fete’ is as good as any of the forms I have seen and arguably better than ‘Mi Amor’.
Here endeth my summary of Thursday’s garden visits. I am hoping to get to see another couple over the weekend but the arrival today of our most beautiful Jury hybrid, our little baby granddaughter accompanied by her mama, may yet derail my plans.
Finally, I add this photo from Three Elms not because it shows much of the garden but I am always interested in how gardeners manage their behind the scenes workspaces in small town gardens. Tidily and discreetly, in this case, I would say. Our behind the scenes spaces are much more expansive and untidy and I am in awe at anybody who can manage to screen and disguise garden service areas so well.
We have had quite the week here. Although the garden is no longer open to the public, we hosted the NZ Rhododendron Association conference attendees on Friday. They were two years later than originally planned; the 2021 conference was cancelled at the last minute due to Covid dramas. I thought I would get some photos to record the event but there were so many people, so many vehicles to park – including three coaches – and so many staggered departures to catch flights and the like that we were scrambling to keep all the juggling balls in the air. Not a single photo was taken to record this event so all I can do is illustrate with Rhododendron ‘Lollipop Lace’, a lesser-known Jury hybrid that was looking very pretty on the day. And say that it was a highly successful visit and it is very affirming for us to have so many people really enjoy the garden.
Unexpectedly delightful in the little Lepperton church.
The annual garden festival here opened the same day and we are deeply relieved to have retired from that 10 day event. Despite being a little zombie-like yesterday, I headed over to nearby Lepperton where I found an unexpected delight. Floral art is not an area in which I have any expertise at all; I lack even a framework to understand any of the principles and skills involved. I rarely cut flowers to bring indoors because I feel that as soon as I cut blooms, they start dying and I would rather see them living longer in the garden than commit flowercide. But in Lepperton, I found a floral art display which made me stop and reach for my camera.
The little Lepperton church is, I am told, 123 years old. From the outside, it is a typical white, weatherboard church of that era, inside it is unexpectedly charming and the floral displays were simply spectacular. Immaculate blooms arranged by floral art enthusiasts make a grand display. If you are local or currently visiting the area, it is well worth a visit.
Not your usual orchids on display in the Lepperton church hall
Out the back of the church is a little church hall with an interesting display of lesser-known orchid treasures put on by the Taranaki Orchid Society, which is well worth a look as well. There are a few crafts and local honey on sale, as well as our gardener, Zach, selling plants he has potted up for the season, which was my main reason for visiting.
Out the front of the church, there is a splendid white azalea in bloom. I didn’t ferret around the base to see if there is more than one plant growing or whether this is all just from a single original plant layering along the ground, but it does show the size these plants can reach if not kept clipped to the tight, little mounds that most gardeners seem to favour.
Down the road and round a corner or two, a roadside rhododendron was showy enough to make me turn around and go back for a second look. It appears to be an old house site to me because there were other ornamentals also left edging an empty section. Offhand, I don’t know which one it is but it will be an early cultivar because it is quite old.
The Lepper Garden in Lepperton
Most of the plants I recognised in this garden were of the woody tree and shrub type but I am pretty sure Pauline bought this Farfugium tussilagineum argenteum from us and the pink petals are from Felix Jury’s Camellia Dreamboat
There is quite a cluster of gardens open this week around Lepperton for both the main garden festival and the fringe festival but I only had time to visit one. I chose Lepper’s Garden because we used to know the creator of this garden – the late Pauline Lepper. I was only halfway round the garden when I thought, ‘my goodness, Pauline must have spent a lot of money at our nursery back in the day’. There were so many plants that I recognised as coming from us that it was like meeting old friends. If Pauline is looking down from above, I am sure she will be smiling to see the next generation continuing her garden and watching the plants she chose grow to maturity.
Simple bedding plants but I like the blue haze and the repetition of blue at ground level through the garden
This is the biggest garden visiting week of the year in our area. We plan to visit a few gardens that we haven’t seen before and hopefully there will be many others out appreciating the huge amount of work garden owners put in to preparing their gardens to open for others to enjoy.
As the deciduous magnolia season draws to a close, it is time for the rhododendrons to star. And Mark’s rhododendron hybrids ‘Floral Sun’ and ‘Floral Gift’ have indeed been starring this week. Not only are they gorgeous, they are also scented, Gift even more so than Sun.
On Friday next week, we have the New Zealand Rhododendron Association conference attendees coming here. This was originally scheduled for 2021 but cancelled at the last minute as large parts of the country went into the second Covid lockdown. We agreed to them coming this year even though we no longer open the garden.
We are not the rhododendron garden we once were. They were a key plant when Felix and Mimosa started the garden here and Mark started the nursery on rhododendrons. We produced a huge range, including many of the showy American rhododendrons that were all the rage back then. Some readers will remember the days when everybody wanted ‘Lems Cameo’, ‘Lems Monarch’, ‘Puget Sound’ and the likes.
Mark’s ‘Floral Gift’ has been a bit of a sleeper star. We worried that it was a bit sparse on foliage at the start but it has gone from strength to strength as a garden plant. This plant was moved a few months ago from an area where it had become too shaded and it has not worried at all about that relocation.
In the time since, we have lost many plants which either faded away or up and died on us, as Mark describes it. This includes a lot of the species, the dwarf varieties which are largely bred from alpine species and the showy hybrids from places with colder climates. Rhododendrons are reasonably adaptable plants as long as they get a winter chill (which they don’t here), a situation which is not hot and dry in summer or too wet at any time. I console myself with the knowledge that the British Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship garden, Wisley, has recently felt the need to relocate a lot of their rhododendron collection to more northerly RHS gardens in order to save it. Wisley has a low rainfall and the combination of increasingly dry conditions combined with milder winters meant that many varieties were endangered.
Public gardens play a major role in preserving species and collections but that is not a responsibility we take on as a private garden. We just go with the flow and adapt. One of those adaptations has been to largely eliminate the use of sprays. Some of our rhododendrons required spraying every year to keep them healthy but there is nothing sustainable in that. So it comes down to accepting that we will lose ‘Rubicon’, ‘College Pink’, the Loderi hybrids and some others.
At least the nuttalliis still thrive here
What we do know is what will thrive and look good without spraying. We have always been fond of the maddenii group and particularly the nuttalliiis. None of them have the big, round, ball trusses commonly associated with rhododendrons but most are scented, keep good foliage, do not get infested with thrips (which is what gives white leaves and weakens the plant), suffer from leaf burn on the edges of the leaves and they are far happier in our mild conditions without a winter chill. I much prefer them to the classic ball trusses now but I spent countless hours trying to persuade customers and retailers of their merits when we were producing them commercially. Too many just wanted rhododendrons with big red trusses.
One of Mark’s unnamed hybrids. Please notice the foliage.
Mark set out to see if he could breed healthy plants with ball trusses and clean foliage in order to meet the market demand. But it takes a long time to breed and assess new woody plants (except for roses which have a super-quick turnaround) and, in the meantime, rhododendrons fell from favour for all the reasons mentioned above, meaning demand dropped away and we retired from the nursery and plant production. So even though some of them are pleasing, they just sit in a long row in a paddock and we look at them from time to time.
It is more about the foliage than the flowers on these unnamed seedlings. Of course they need to put up plenty of good blooms but plants that stay looking good and lush all year round with no spraying, feeding or mollycoddling was the important factor in breeding.
I may pick blooms of those that are looking good to show the conference attendees when they visit. It is not that the flowers are exciting breakthroughs; it is that they have good foliage and a healthy habit as well as mass flowering, even when grown in full sun without ever being fed or sprayed. That is an achievement. One day, rhododendrons may come back into fashion and there is a little resource sitting here for a future generation to capitalise on.
Besides preparing the garden for the conference and an overseas tour due soon after, our roof has been dominating our lives here for the past few weeks. Like other houses from the same era of the early 1950s, we have – or had – a concrete tile roof and those tiles are now so fragile that they break if you so much as look at them. We bit the bullet and decided we could no longer delay replacing the roof. It is not an easy roof and therefore eye-wateringly expensive. The lead scaffolder commented that it is one of the most difficult scaffolding jobs on a domestic house that he has done because of the different roof levels. So we are surrounded in scaffolding, piles of tiles, bricks, new roofing and a whole lot more. And a partially reroofed house with stop-gap weather proofing in a Taranaki spring is high stress. Yesterday’s rain had Mark and me crawling around in ceiling cavities patching remaining cracked tiles from inside and strategically placing buckets. I don’t often concede to age but I came to the conclusion that we really are getting too old to be crawling around in ceiling cavities. If it is fine tomorrow, we should see the main body of the roof finished with only ridge cappings, flashings, spouting and downpipes to go. I am looking forward to the day when we no longer have to worry about leaks and occasional internal floods (two so far this year).
A work in progress
The new roof is an anachronism in materials – long run roofing iron – but not in colour. The old tiles had weathered to grey-brown but we can see that they started off in a shade that was more orange than red and I can remember those startling orange tile roofs from my childhood. The new roof is dark brick-red-brown and that will be fine, probably an improvement on the earlier orange-red. I did not want a grey roof. There is enough greyness in the world without voluntarily adding more.
The chimney was a cause of nagging anxiety
Dropping the back chimney to below roof level was a major job that took three men with a jackhammer and a sledge hammer all day on Friday. We didn’t use that fireplace – we have three others – and we have long worried that the massive brick tower was an earthquake hazard that had the potential to demolish part of the house and take lives if it ever snapped off. We have to take earthquake risks seriously in our shakey, quakey isles. Architecturally, I am sad to see it gone but it will be a relief not to worry about earthquakes or leaks.
Going, going…
… gone.
Whether all this will be completed, cleared and the outside areas reinstated before the conference people arrive at the end of next week remains to be seen but they are coming to see the garden, not the house. At least we are not open for the garden festival because that would have been a problem.
This lemon cymbidium orchid has not flowered before that any of us can remember but it is a little charmer. The lilac is a Dendrobium Bardo Rose.
I am a faffer in the garden. At times it feels like an indulgent use of time but really, the greatest pleasure I find in the state commonly called ‘retirement’, is being time-rich. I have the time to faff and I derive a great deal of pleasure from paying attention to detail to get things right, in my eyes at least.
Our gardener, Zach, brought us two orchids he picked up at the local orchid show, knowing that we wanted to extend the cymbidiums beyond the ones Mark and our daughter gathered several decades ago. We wanted clean colours that could light up a space and provide contrast to the rather large number of brown cymbidiums we have. Brown was the fashion colour back when our young daughter became the recipient of generous gifts from enthusiasts wanting to encourage her.
Zach and I placed them where we thought they would work and he planted them in slightly raised mounds of coarse woodchip and bark that we gather on site. As soon as I looked, I knew they were wrong but I was a bit reluctant to say anything after he had gone to the trouble of planting them. Then Mark came in and started to say, “I was walking down the far end of the Avenue Garden when something startled me.” I have lived with him long enough to be able to finish his observation for him – “a lime green orchid?” “Yes,” he replied. “I didn’t realise when it was sitting on the bench that it was such a synthetic, fluorescent colour. Maybe it would fit in better in a more shaded area surrounded by green foliage.”
Better when placed more discreetly and not out on its own shouting ‘look at me! Look at me!’ The photograph has come out more gold and the earlier lime colour seems to be changing as the flower matures.
I think the white will bed in more harmoniously than where we had it
I originally placed it by this massive red-brown orchid but it was too stark a contrast and instead of adding a light touch, it simply looked out of place. This one may be brown but it has at least nine very long flower spikes laden with bloom.
Zach, bless him, is very obliging and willing to see the garden through our eyes. We found what we hope are final homes for the new orchids. The white one was also misplaced and looked far too starkly bridal amongst the browns but fits in more naturally in another place entirely. While we were about it, he moved one I thought was hideous – a caramel brown in tone with a startling red throat – to a less prominent position where it fits in with the colours of the clivias as opposed to being beside a pretty, pink cymbidium.
Not my favourite cymbidium
I am much happier with the result. Zach has been quietly dividing and relocating bits to extend the orchid display and feeding them with compost. The plants are responding most gratifyingly after decades of benign neglect. What the cymbidiums may lack in subtlety, they make up for with their exotic character and the many weeks they last in good bloom in the garden.
Pleione orchids flowering now
The pleiones are pretty rather than exotic and very much a seasonal delight. Their flowers are much more delicate and they have a short season. They also need more attention each year to keep them going. Without looking after them and replanting most years, we would lose them. We like them enough to be willing to fuss over them.
Dendrobiums in pink and white, backed by the primrose calanthe orchids that are passing over now
The Bardo-Rose dendrobiums are also dainty but not as pernickety as the pleiones. They too can survive on benign neglect with minimal attention.
We have brown brown, red brown, murky brown, caramel brown and golden brown. Six flower spikes so we can’t complain.
Faffing about pays dividends in my book. We garden on a pretty large scale for a domestic garden but it is the detail within that larger scale and landscape that keeps it interesting for us all year round.
In Monet’s garden – taking garden grooming to ridiculous lengths
Attention to detail is not to be confused with immaculate gardening. I have been in a fair number of immaculate gardens in my time – not a leaf out of place, not even a blade of grass. Preternatural tidiness. It is much admired by some but really only achievable by extraordinarily precise, tidy people who have a small garden, because it needs attention every day. And maybe these immaculate gardeners only maintain this pristine perfection when their garden is open to the public. Even if we aspired to that level of garden grooming it is neither achievable nor sustainable across the 10 acres that we actively manage as garden. Fortunately, it is not one of our garden goals. I have never forgotten the sight of four young gardeners at Monet’s garden in Giverny, picking over the pelargoniums. They were not dead-heading; they were literally dead-petalling – picking off the spent petals from each individual bloom. I was riveted by the sight but honestly, I couldn’t think that it was worth paying four sets of wages to pick off dead petals for the visiting hordes. That is much too much attention to detail.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 