Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Garden lore

” Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find it a kind of soothing monotony. It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative’s latest example of unreasonableness.”

The Well Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd (1973)

Thwart the wisteria's plans for breaking the spouting

Thwart the wisteria’s plans for breaking the spouting

Blue Sapphire is making quite a good effort at repeat flowering this summer

Blue Sapphire is making quite a good effort at repeat flowering this summer

Summer pruning wisterias

If you have any wisteria, summer prune them now. They are rampant growers and all their soft tendrils will wave around until they find somewhere to anchor themselves. If that somewhere is between weatherboards, the spouting and the barge board, underneath the verandah roofing or similar, all it takes is one season for such growths to thicken, become hard and woody and cause damage. I write from experience. We had to replace a length of split spouting.

Technically, summer pruning of wisteria should be trimming all those new growths back to the sixth leaf bud from the stem though I admit I don’t count the buds when I trim back. Cut with secateurs, stem by stem, not with hedge clippers if you want flowers next season. Winter is the time for the main pruning which shapes the bush. All those growths are then reduced to two buds from the stem. That is where they will flower.

Failure to flower at all in spring is usually a result of incorrect pruning. If you don’t want to prune your wisteria, my advice would be to take it out altogether. Left unpruned for several years, it will become a triffid of scary proportions.

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

Meadows, prairies and wildflower gardens

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We gave our eldest a particularly good book on American wildflower and prairie gardens for Christmas and her eyes lit up. It seemed a moment of triumph in parenting which I have not seen recorded before – the age when children of gardening parents are delighted to be given such a gift. There was a touch of envy from us. It was a lovely book but also a gardening genre which is largely beyond our reach.

Prairie gardens and meadow gardens are not compatible with good dairy country so this garden style is likely to be unattainable for a fair swag of readers too, but it doesn’t mean we can’t admire it elsewhere. Dairy country by definition has high fertility and good rainfall along with temperatures that are mild enough to grow grass strongly all year round. That is not prairie territory.

Our eldest lives in Canberra which offers perfect conditions. It has low rainfall, low fertility and is very cold and dry in winter (which stops pretty much all plant growth) and very hot and dry in summer. Pasture grasses and weeds will not overtake the chosen plants. Annuals and perennials will not romp away with lush growth that gets flattened here by frequent heavy downpours. Instead, plants will hang in and grow slowly, tenaciously putting down roots in search of elusive moisture and sustenance and flower stems will be much shorter and sturdier. Prairie conditions, in fact. So it is perfectly realistic to think that one can create a garden sward of tough perennials and ornamental grasses which will sway in the wind and put up a succession of blooms over a period of several months.

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Essentially a meadow garden is made up of wild flowers as close to their natural form as possible, often natives. This means shunning modern, sometimes over-bred hybrids which tend to go for much larger flowers and compact, bushy growth. A meadow garden is simulating the wild but modifying it to a garden setting. There is a long tradition in English gardening and the routines are well known. It relies on low fertility to keep down competing grasses and the parasitic plant referred to as Yellow Rattle is often introduced because it weakens the roots of grasses.

At the end of the season in autumn, the meadow is mown and left to lie for a week or maybe two. This allows the seed to fall out of the spent plants. After 10 days, the mown area is raked free of the cut vegetation to keep fertility low. The area is then left to come again the following spring.

Can you imagine doing that in dairy country? It will not work.

076The advice I saw in a NZ magazine, which I will not name here, to sow your wildflower garden into an area which you have cultivated and fed to the max with proprietary fertilisers and then to sow again in mid season if it starts to pass over is not a wildflower garden at all. It is simply mixed annuals.

Introduce grasses to the mix along with at least some North American native flowers and your meadow garden becomes a prairie garden, more or less. Cone flowers (echinacea), ox-eye daisies (Heliopsis helianthoides), monardas, Californian poppies (properly called eschsholtzias but I have to check the spelling every time) – North America is rich in wildflowers. The prairie garden has been embraced by contemporary European and UK gardens and designers and I can see why. Clumps of grasses are deathly dull when planted in groups or when mass planted to achieve the motorway embankment look, but take on huge charm in the company of a wide range of flowering plants, both perennials and annuals.

What characterises both meadow and prairie gardens is an absence of woody plants, an absence of layers (plants tend to be of a similar, low height), a higher tolerance of weeds and seasonality – in winter there is no garden at all to speak of. It is a much more relaxed style, hugely different to how many of us choose to garden. It can also be environmentally sound, especially in harsh climates, because it provides food for birds and insects while anchoring the soil in windy conditions with no fertiliser inputs or spraying.

In season, such gardens are infinitely charming in all their manifestations. It has a lot to do with the simplicity and the relaxed style. We are still wondering whether we can manage something similar here in a new garden we have planned but we are fighting nature and will have to choose plants carefully as well as overcoming our ingrained antipathy to weeds and a belief that gardens should look good for all twelve months of the year.

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Earlier last month, I visited a field of bearded iris in flower. I don’t want to overstate the case. It was a nursery (http://www.theirisboutique.co.nz/) growing the iris rhizomes in rows in a field and there were a fair number weeds, to the embarrassment of the owner. It was also an absolute delight which made me smile.

It is the simplicity of an expanse of flowers in a field situation which appeals. Gardens do not have to be heavily designed and intensively maintained with high quality permanent plantings of trees and shrubs to make one’s heart sing.

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

Garden lore

” You have only to think of the front gardens you drive past in summer that are planted up almost entirely with dwarfs to realise how lacking in character and individuality they are. Such plants never get off the ground; they are mere colour explosions.”

The Well Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd (1973)

Summer lawn care

Set your lawnmower a notch higher for summer, or several notches higher if you are one who scalps your lawn. It is a myth that if you cut your lawn very short, it will need less mowing. In fact if you cut it very short, you weaken the grass growth to the point where it is likely to die off over summer and what you get instead is an invasion of weeds. Paspalum, kikuyu, summer grasses and flat weeds – all will thrive in the vacuum you are creating. Without exception, good lawns and turf are cut a little longer. If you have neglected, long, rank grass (which can happen at holiday homes), don’t try and get it down in one hit. Cut first on the highest setting. Wait a few days and then cut a second time to the desired length. Your grass is less likely to go into shock and die over summer.

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

Letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

The latest rig near us, photographed from Ngatimaru Road

The latest rig near us, photographed from Ngatimaru Road


589 Otaraoa Road,
RD43, Waitara
jury@xtra.co.nz Phone 06 754 6671
December 30, 2012

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment
PO Box 10-241
Wellington 6143
New Zealand

pce@pce.parliament.nz

Dear Dr Wright,
Hearing you speak on National Radio recently about your interim report on fracking was like a breath of fresh air. I refer particularly to your comment referencing the proliferation of industrial sites in the countryside and the impact on local residents.

It seems to me that two critical areas that have fallen through the cracks are:

1) The total absence of any public sector planning. Planning is all done by private companies and all the public sector does is to respond to applications by applying the relevant legislation. So there is no overview of development. The location, pace, nature and management are all determined by individual private companies.

2) With that has come the total absence of any public sector duty of care for local residents. Any care is entirely at the whim and discretion of private companies and woefully inadequate. Worse is that an ethos has developed which is deeply unsympathetic to complaints from local residents. At its most extreme, this takes the form of public vilification of individuals.

We are immediate neighbours to the Mangahewa C site in Tikorangi and every piece of heavy machinery passes along two of our road boundaries. The latest rig is both visible and, at times, audible to us. We have a large garden which we open to the public and the negative impact of recent development has been so extreme, that the company concerned ceases road operations when we have a coach tour booked in for a garden visit. At those times, it is as if the off switch has been flicked but it is a stark reminder of how bad things are the rest of the time. I now garden wearing an iPod in an attempt to mute the noise.

I have no confidence in the ability of local councils to effectively monitor and manage development and am frankly alarmed at suggestions that Taranaki be paraded as a model for successful practice. I have been lobbying for over 15 years for councils to take a more proactive role in managing development and mitigating the negative effects on local residents but the councils remain an impenetrable brick wall and appear oblivious to issues and, at worst, antagonistic to opposition and to complaints.

Of considerable concern is the publicly supportive position of the petrochemical industry taken by the CEO of the Taranaki Regional Council, Basil Chamberlain. I strongly believe that the CEO of the monitoring body MUST be seen to be neutral and independent.

Fracking has been taking place on the adjacent property for about three years now but it was only this year, and only at our request, that testing of our bore water started. Yet apparently we have the only deep water bore close to that site. Three years to set monitoring in place is not best practice.

Definitions of affected party zones appear to be at the discretion of councils. Fifteen years ago, it was a one kilometre radius. At some point, Regional Council apparently contracted that zone to 300 metres, New Plymouth District Council even less. In the countryside, 300 metres is not far at all. This has had the effect of hugely reducing the number of people defined as “affected parties” which is decidedly beneficial for the companies but has only negative effects on local residents.

Consents are for such a long time that much can change in the interim, including environmental expectations, yet it appears that the conditions of the original consent stand for the duration. I understand old sites have been reopened under original consents. Too much reliance is placed on the “goodwill” and “good practice” of the companies to respond to issues during the consented periods. And once consent is given, it sets the precedent for renewal.

When the Mangahewa C site was first applied for, I had to fight hard to be ruled an affected party. The NPDC planning officers were unhelpful and uncooperative in the extreme. Once we had that status, we were presented with a document to sign. We wanted to sign consent for the first well only and then review it. We were told that was not an option and unless we signed unconditionally, it would go to the Environment Court and that we would have to fight it there. Nobody suggested we seek independent advice.

I could not face the time and energy it would take to go to the Environment Court so we signed. I have only recently found a copy of the information which prompted us to sign. Our concern was traffic. We were informed that there was a remote possibility of up to 8 wells being drilled over a 20 year time span and that once drilling commenced, a maximum of 3 heavy vehicles and 8 light vehicles a day would pass our road boundaries. Once in production, the light vehicle movements would drop to 3 per day, the same as heavy vehicles. I recall it seemed churlish to be difficult over a mere 6 additional vehicles a day passing us.

In the time since that affected party consent was signed, one initial exploratory well has ballooned out to at least 9 additional planned wells (we are on to number 3) on the neighbour’s property and a further 8 multi well head site down the road, all over the next 5 years. That makes 19 or 20 wells over a period of 7 years (far from the “unlikely possibility” of up to 8 over 20 years). Every piece of transport passes our two road boundaries with a sharp 90 degree turn and a hill so the huge volume of trucking movements could not be noisier and more intrusive.

We are now assuming that in the references to between 6 and 11 additional vehicles each day during drilling and production phases, they omitted to add the important words: “before 7.30am each day with an unspecified number thereafter”. That is closer to what our reality is now.

Compensation for landowners and affected parties should not be left to the discretionary largesse of individual companies who often ring-fence it with confidentiality agreements.
It is not appropriate to think that continuing to allow the companies to play Santa Claus is all that is required. Too often, for affected parties it merely consists of a hamper here, free tickets to a show there, maybe tickets to Australia for an event if they really like you.

The development levies back in the days of Think Big projects may not have been a perfect system of recompensing on a larger scale, but they did at least keep grants at arm’s length. The current system where individual companies get to make grants is all too redolent of Santa Claus again and raises doubt about the independence of recipient councils. Todd chose to make a generous grant to New Plymouth District Council for their favoured project of the new Len Lye Centre. As a result, I doubt very much that any NPDC councillor is going to be critical of anything that company does.

Over fifteen years ago when it first became clear that our district may face enormous petrochem development, I sat in the then mayor’s office with her and the town planners and pleaded with them to adopt a proactive position in planning for the potential development. I pointed out to them that there was nobody else to look after the interests of local residents and that the current model of the petrochem companies picking off areas and then working with individual landowners locked in to confidentiality agreements had the effect of pitting neighbour against neighbour.

Nothing happened and the only thing that has changed is that the development is happening.

I attempted several times to raise the same matters with the next mayor and also presented a submission to the full council showing them what the effect was and begging them to look into what could be done to minimise the negative effects for local residents. They commissioned a report but nothing changed.

I have given up trying to talk to councils. There is no will for councillors and their officials to see anything negative.

If you are back in this area, we would be very pleased to meet you and to take you to visit some of the other affected residents in our immediate area. That is considerably more than anybody connected to the local councils has ever done.

I have posted four blogs to my website, if you are interested in reading any of these.

1) No problems with petrochem development in Taranaki???
2) Living in petrochemical heartland
3) Tikorangi Notes; Friday 20 January 2012
4) Tikorangi – the new Texas?
5) And three short You Tube clips attempting in a minor way to catch the flavour of what living here is now like.
Relentless noise
The Park, Tikorangi the Jury Garden
Rimu Walk, Tikorangi the Jury Garden.
Yours sincerely,
Abbie Jury

NB This letter replaces the earlier letter dated December 4. In the time since, we have discovered there are to be an additional 17 wells drilled close to us by Todd Energy over the next 5 years. I also found a copy of the “affected party” consent we signed in 2006 and the information provided which led to us signing that consent.

A pedestrian matter

The chequer board approach (in need of a gravel top up)

The chequer board approach (in need of a gravel top up)

This morning’s column is for readers on low budgets or in mature gardens. Path surfaces. If you are on a new property which has been landscaped, or what passes for landscaping, odds on your paths are in place and are concrete. We just love the utility and endurance of concrete in this country.

New concrete dries to a somewhat startling white which is usually appropriate to a new build, but can look garish and out of place on an older property. It also leaches lime for the first few years so you are likely to have trouble growing plants such as rhododendrons and camellias alongside it. The foliage will go yellow on acid loving plants.

Aged concrete softened at the edge with prostrate thyme

Aged concrete softened at the edge with prostrate thyme

Because we have a fair amount of old concrete here, where we have chosen to go with extending concreted areas or new paths, we take the trouble to mask the new look. Adding colouring (black oxide) counteracts the whiteness. Once it is all smooth and starting to start dry, we spray a sugar and water solution over the top. That strips the smooth top layer and exposes the aggregate. Voila. The concrete looks aged from the start.

Were we English, we would have a tradition of flag stones and stone pavers. We are not, so they are a very expensive option. You can get a similar effect in concrete pavers which come already roughed up and coloured to give the overall impression of stone. It’s a good product. We have used it to pave a small courtyard and the same style of pavers were used in a modern outdoor dining area I featured on this page a fortnight ago. The larger sized pavers look better if you want the flagstone look. Ours are 600mm square.

I don’t recommend brick unless you live in a dry climate. Old bricks are porous which means they soak up moisture and retain it, enabling moss to grow very nicely thank you. Brick paths tend to be extremely slippery for much of the year and therefore hazardous. It is also difficult to get a relatively even surface and if you don’t construct a solid edging, the side bricks roll out.

Gravel paths are usually best retained with a solid edging to reduce spilling. We have used concrete sidings on ours. We like gravel paths. There is something satisfying about the scrunch as you walk along them and they are softer on the eye than unforgiving concrete. They are not as simple to install as they first look, however. You can’t just pile gravel onto the ground because the mud will rise from below. You need to excavate down to lay a compacted base course first before you top with your choice of gravel. For foot traffic, a 5cm base should be fine. Don’t lay the top gravel so thickly that it makes walking difficult. You also need to choose your gravel with care. Rounded stones can be like walking on marbles but you want a grade which is reasonably consistent (in other words it has passed through a screen) to look attractive.

Gravel can be quite difficult to keep looking smart without a leaf blower. We did it for years with a leaf rake to remove the build up of litter but it is labour intensive and doesn’t do a particularly thorough job. The leaf blower removes humus in a trice and we wondered why it took us so long to discover its merits. However it is a noisy and intrusive machine and your neighbours will come to dread it as much as your lawnmower. A certain amount of gravel will get blown into the surrounds too.

If you have a larger area to cover, placing pavers at regular intervals throughout a gravel area can add interest and style cheaply. To look good, measure the placement of the pavers to keep them regular and put them down before you lay the top layer of gravel.

We have not gone with wooden walkways at all. In our garden, they would make us look too much like an institutional or public garden (“the DOC look” as we call it). Having seen them elsewhere, I would comment that even corrugated decking timber can get slippery if it is wet for protracted periods or in shade areas and it can be particularly hazardous on slopes. There are non slip products you can buy to secure to your wooden paths or steps but they will add to the cost. If you are not a public garden, then I think wooden walkways tend to be a better aesthetic fit to a modern house with acres of timber decking.

Mulching the leaf litter for the most pleasant walking surface of all

Mulching the leaf litter for the most pleasant walking surface of all

In woodland areas, we keep a thick layer of natural mulch on paths and we shun hard edgings because we want a natural look. In the last few years, when we groom up for our annual spring garden festival, we have gone a step further and raked up the all the litter and fed it through the mulcher. What comes out is a consistent grade of anonymous brown mulch which we then rake back over the paths. It gives the softest and springiest surface to walk on. While it doesn’t compact down, it is remarkably durable as long as it doesn’t get washed away and it can be maintained with a leaf rake. It looks really good until autumn when we get both wind and fresh leaf drop so it is not a long term solution but it gives an attractive option for wooded areas without expenditure.

Some level of consistency is desirable. No matter what size your garden is, you probably don’t want to be using a whole range of different path surfaces. They don’t all have to be the same and paths can differentiate between high use, formal and informal areas. But the overall effect will usually be more cohesive if you can keep some level of uniformity.

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