Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

In the Garden: June 18, 2010

Pleione bulbs

Pleione bulbs - discard the mushy, dark ones like the specimen to the left

  • The winter solstice or shortest day of the year is nigh – this coming Monday in fact. Alas the worst of the winter weather hits after the shortest day but at least you can console yourself with the thought that the days are lengthening again.
  • Traditionalists will be out planting their garlic (ours is in already). If you don’t have big fat cloves saved from last season, then make sure you only buy New Zealand garlic for planting. The cheap Chinese garlic comes from the wrong hemisphere so is out of its seasonal cycle and is reputedly riddled with virus which threatens our local garlic industry. You also have no idea what it has been treated with so it is all round bad practice to buy cheap imported garlic for planting.
  • Asparagus is a luxury crop for the home gardener because it is a permanent plant which takes up space all year for a harvest lasting only six weeks or so. It also takes a few years to start cropping well so is unsuitable unless you are planning on staying in the same place. But for those with space and the long term commitment, heading out to pick some spears in spring is a gourmet experience. If you have a patch, now is the time to clean it up and spread a blanket of compost to feed the crowns below the ground and to suppress weeds. If you have plans to plant an asparagus patch this spring, then get in now and dig the area. Then double dig it. Add as much compost and manure as you can and dig it yet again. Then let it rest and mature before planting in a couple of months time.
  • Winter is the time for pruning all deciduous plants except for cherries (both ornamental and edible) and plums which are summer pruned to prevent silver blight getting in. Gardeners in cold, frost-prone areas are best to leave their hydrangeas until last (pruning encourages growth which can then get burned by frost). But wisterias, roses, apples, grapevines and the rest can all be tackled over the next six weeks.
  • We did Outdoor Classrooms last year on pruning wisterias and grapevines (these are on http://www.abbiejury.co.nz and on Stuff (Deb, are these still accessible on the Fairfax site?) We will be looking at pruning roses and hydrangeas shortly. Don’t cut your wisteria off at ground level if you want flowers this spring.
  • Most spring bulbs are in growth already so it is time to look at planting or lifting and dividing the summer bulbs – particularly lilies.
  • Pleione orchids are spring flowering but now is the time to clean up clumps and repot because they are still dormant. These are a most attractive and hardy ground orchid, often called the teacup orchid. If you look after them, they build up quite quickly and we find them useful for carpeting woodland margins where conditions are open. The prized yellow ones like a winter chill so will do better inland and in the south but we find the pinks, lilacs and whites are equally at home in milder areas. It pays to clean them up now (discard the soft, mushy black bulbs and keep the fresh green or red ones, trimming off last season’s dead roots) because root disturbance on pleiones once they are in growth is a no-no.

Flowering this week: Camellia lutchuensis

Camellia lutchuensis - a triumph of refinement and style rather than bold statement

In the crowded class of camellia species with small, white, single flowers, Camellia lutchuensis has a special property which sets it apart – it has the sweetest scent of any camellia. In fact, lutchuensis is the parent of  the scented cultivars (some of which are better scented than others but few are as good as their parent). While not quite into the heady fragrance of daphnes, lutchuensis has a lovely scent which can be detected as you walk past the bush.

There is nothing blowsy or showy about this little camellia but some of us like the simple charm of the creamy white cups which, at only a couple of centimetres across, are never going to shout look at me, look at me. The buds are also very pretty. It is best viewed in close-up as opposed to a landscape statement. Added to that, the foliage (which is smaller than more common japonica camellias) goes a bit yellow in high light levels, so this is a plant for semi shade or open woodland. It is definitely for those of more refined tastes – but what would you expect from a species native to Japan, that country which reveres simplicity in nature and gardening? It also occurs naturally in Taiwan which is another island that has given us some really interesting plants across a range of genus.

Flowering this week: Luculia pinceana Fragrant Pearl

The sweet fragrance of Luculia Fragrant Pearl through autumn and winter

The sweet fragrance of Luculia Fragrant Pearl through autumn and winter

Fragrant Pearl was a breakthrough in a world of winter pink luculias. The summer flowering white luculia is grandiflora (a different species), the hard candy pink form in flower now is gratissima. The most common form of pinceana is Fragrant Cloud which reaches for the clouds but has beautiful late flowers in soft almond pink with a white eye. Fragrant Pearl is white, very fragrant, has very large individual flowers and if you have a good plant, it will flower from the end of March to the end of June. It does get some size to it if you don’t keep it pruned and pinched out – as in 3m x 3m. Luculias have a wide distribution throughout Asia, including parts of China and northern India but basically they won’t tolerate hard frost and very cold temperatures, they don’t like too much heat but they are happy in moist and friable soils – which is pretty much describes the conditions in much of Taranaki.

We have our colleague, Glyn Church, to thank for introducing the white pinceana luculias here. Some years ago he brought in seed and Fragrant Pearl is a selection which we purchased from him as part of that seed raised batch. It was so good that we started propagating it from cuttings (to keep it true and avoid seedling variation) and put a cultivar name on it. It roots easily from cuttings taken in late spring or early summer and grows rapidly so if you can find a plant in a friend’s garden, you can grow your own.

There are no shortcuts when it comes to notable trees in the landscape

A great grandfather's legacy - the canopy of rimu trees planted in 1880 as a shelter belt.

A great grandfather's legacy - the canopy of rimu trees planted in 1880 as a shelter belt.

New Zealand is a windy country. It seems self evident but it wasn’t until I started travelling overseas that I realised that the wind we have learned to live with here is not the experience of many. But you just have to look at a map and see our long thin islands surrounded by vast bodies of ocean and it is hardly a surprise that we have on shore winds, off shore winds, winds from the south, the north, the east and the west. It is the norm and consequently shelter belts in rural areas are also part of our landscape. Australians have commented to me about the predominance of clipped hedging in our garden landscape too and a lot of that has to do with minimising wind.

Many readers will be aware that hedges and plants are better at dissipating the blast of wind than a solid barrier. Walls and fences can funnel the wind up and over, protecting only the area in the immediate lea of the barrier because the air then flows down again. Even then, you are only protecting for the height of the wall so any time a plant gets its head above, it catches the full blast.

But it is not hedging for urban gardens that I have been thinking about, rather the benefits of a bit of creative thinking and plantsmanship when it comes to utility shelter belts. Here we benefit greatly from the vision of Mark’s great grandfather when he settled here 130 years ago. Presumably Tikorangi had already been cleared of most of its native tawa forest cover because the first thing Thomas Jury did was to get in and plant some shelter from the prevailing winds. Those trees give us our stately garden avenues today and we have learned much from looking at them. The more spectacular is the rimu avenue, often likened by visitors to the effect of a vaulted cathedral ceiling. Now those trees give us an environment which is one of the most special areas of our garden – and as it has taken well over a century to reach this stature, it is not easily replicated.

Our other avenue comprises mere pine trees, but pines of huge grandaddy stature – towering over 40 metres high and a mixed blessing. At ground level they give us wonderful gnarled old trunks, again in rows because of course they started life as a shelter belt. Above is a little more problematic with falling pine cones and a few swinging branches but nobody has been injured so far. Both avenues continue to perform their initial function – they break the wind and shelter the garden.

How many of today’s shelter belts will still be around in another century? And how many are planted in trees with the potential to add significant impact to the landscape? Leightons Green, phebalium, nasty yellow conifers or pittosporumns … I don’t think so.

After 130 years, our Pinus muricata are somewhat more compact than the P. radiata windbreak trees of the same vintage.

After 130 years, our Pinus muricata are somewhat more compact than the P. radiata windbreak trees of the same vintage.

It is of course Arbor Day tomorrow and that is a good time to make some shelter belt resolutions. These wind breaks do not have to be 100% cheap, utility and uniform. Dropping it to 90% cheap, utility and uniform is fine and there is the opportunity to use these shorter term plants of little or no aesthetic value to act as nurse trees for the long term landscape trees. For who will plant the rimu, totara, araucaria (Norfolk Island pines, monkey puzzle and the like, along with our own kauri), picea, abies, tawa, beech, oaks and other splendid trees with the potential for stature and longevity? As the size of town sections grows ever smaller, the need to continue planting potentially large trees in positions where they have the opportunity to reach maturity becomes correspondingly more important. Owners of lifestyle blocks have a chance to make a significant long term contribution and leave a worthwhile legacy if they just plant some decent trees. It is all very well thinking farmers should do it. Some do, but you can’t just plant trees in paddocks which are grazed. Trees have to be fenced off and that is very expensive and fiddly on a large scale. By their very nature, shelter belts are double fenced and planting is the easy part.

When it came to our own roadside shelter belts some fifteen years ago, Mark went for the mixed and layered approach. Quick, cheap cover came from expendable alders. Long term landscape trees are mostly kauri, rimu and totara, planted perhaps for our grandchildren and great grandchildren. Then, because we don’t have to buy the plants, seasonal impact has been added with magnolias – both showy deciduous types and larger growing evergreen michelias. The final layer is the roadside camellias – larger growing varieties surplus to garden requirements. They are a bit of a seasonal statement, some of our shelter belts, but also practical and planted with an eye to the long term future.

Many years ago, I wrote a column advocating that every person should plant at least one good, long term, landscape tree in a position where it has the chance to reach maturity. I recall two responses. The first was: “What, only one?” Fortunately a few will plant many but that only compensates for some of those people who will never, ever plant a decent tree in their entire lifetime. The second person castigated me for being too honest about how large a large tree will eventually grow. “We will never sell any if people know how big they can get,” she said.

In my books, landscape trees are large, handsome and long lived. These are not to be confused with pretty but low-grade, short term, quick impact trees favoured in most home gardens – the Albizia julibrissin, flowering cherries, robinias and their ilk. As a general rule, fruit trees will never make a landscape tree either. By definition, any plant with the telltale words compact or dwarf in the description will lack stature.

Our country is still somewhat raw and utility in our approach to trees. To many farmers, they are a waste of valuable grazing space and they get in the way of machinery in this heady world of high production but green desert farming. To many town dwellers, they block views and are messy. In a country with a tendency to cold houses, the shadow they cast is another black mark. Any tree of stature is measured in terms of timber potential, not landscape value. Compare that to the pride taken in the UK with their champion trees – those specimens judged to be the largest of their type in the country and awarded accordingly and in Europe where trees of ancient pedigree are venerated. I have seen the plane tree, now some 2500 years and definitely ailing, beneath which Hippocrates apparently sat to write the Hippocratic Oath. We have a long way to go yet here. Arbor Day would be a good place to start.

Rimu trees from 1880 in the background, mixed plantings from 1950 to now in the middle ground

Rimu trees from 1880 in the background, mixed plantings from 1950 to now in the middle ground

Tikorangi Notes: 28 May, 2010

Latest posts:
1) 28 May, 2010: The banana crop of 2010 revealed but really about our recommended tasks in the garden this week.
2) 28 May, 2010: The wonderful lemon fragrance of Backhousia citriodora.
3) 28 May, 2010: More about bananas – our Outdoor Classroom on thinning to get better crops.
4) 28 May 2010: The burgundy coloured loropetalums, China Pink in our case, are a splendid additon to our gardens here.
5) 26 May, 2010: The story of Cordyline Red Fountain.

The persimmon in autumn is more about looks than taste, for us at least

The persimmon in autumn is more about looks than taste, for us at least

As autumn morphs into winter here (to paraphrase our inimitable television weather presenter), we seem to be doing the Squirrel Nutkin impersonation and following a food theme. We aim to be self sufficient in vegetables and most fruit – I say aim, some years we get closer than others. But with only two of us left at home these days, I don’t have to resort to buying much fresh produce at all.

One of the edible crops we grow which we rarely eat ourselves is the highly ornamental persimmon which looks fantastically decorative in the autumn. This is an elderly astringent variety which means one needs to wait until it so ripe it is nearly rotting before it becomes palatable. Even at that stage, I only like the jelly-like segments at the very centre and find the outer flesh rather clarty and sticky. I am sure it would make an excellent gelato, icecream or granita but none of these appeal in the chill of late autumn. It is possible to buy non-astringent fruit and plants which can apparently be eaten crisp, like an apple, but I have yet to bring myself to buy one when we have all these going to waste at home. Except that they are not really going to waste because they bring us a great deal of pleasure over many weeks just adorning the bare branches of the tree.