Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Flowering this week – Kalmia latifolia “Ostbo Red”

Kalmia Ostbo Red with its look of piped icing rose buds

If ever there was a cake decoration flower, it is the kalmia. The buds look pretty much like piped icing rose buds right through to the point where they finally open to a pastel shaped cup with deeper colouring on the underside. These flowers are also successful cut for a vase indoors, lasting a fair time in water.

Kalmias are evergreen members of the heath family, growing here in similar conditions to rhododendrons (they like an acid soil) and coming into flower just as the rhododendrons are largely over. They are native to the eastern seaboard of North America from Canada to Mexico so are tolerant of a wide range of temperatures but generally we would describe them as very hardy. Americans often refer to them as the Calico Plant or Mountain Laurel. Over time, they will grow to about 1.5 metres high but they are pretty slow growing.

Kalmias are not rare but they are not often available in garden centres simply because they are notoriously difficult from cutting. Sometimes plants will come in a rush through tissue culture (micro propagation) in which case you should buy on sight because you don’t know when they will be offered again. If you know of somebody with a plant you can grow them by layering (we did an Outdoor Classroom on the topic about six weeks ago) or if you find any seed on a plant, they are straightforward and reasonably consistent from seed although you will get some variation from the parent. Alas some of the common named varieties don’t set much, if any, seed at all.

November 20, 2009 In the Garden

And the prize for likely the best flowering anywhere in the world of the beautiful but difficult vireya rhododendron orbiculatum in the week ending November 20, 2009 goes to friends of ours at Oakura, near New Plymouth

November 20, 2009 In the Garden
• If you have grape vines that you pruned in winter, they will be in rampant growth now and you will be needing to shorten the laterals and thin some of the growth. Our Albany Surprise are already starting to flower and we will keep them to one or two per lateral (side shoot) and trim at two leaves past the outer bunch. If you let the growths get too long and heavy, they snap off without warning.
• When you get a good steady rain after a dry spell, such as last Tuesday evening, the snails come out to feed in their hordes. You can get a really good kill rate if you head out with torch and umbrella to their favourite haunts. A foot stamp is environmentally kinder than poison.
• You can keep digging and dividing clumping perennials while they are in full growth. You should be safe continuing to do this up until Christmas or so. Always dig over the ground well and loosen up clods before replanting, preferably adding compost. New roots are tender and fine and will have trouble getting into heavy, compacted soils.
• Deadheading roses can be a big task but it makes a difference to keeping pests and disease at bay. It is best to do it with a bucket at your side and take off diseased foliage as you go, removing all from the site. Roses give maximum flower for your efforts but if you don’t spray them, they do take a little extra care to keep them looking healthy and bountiful.
• Get onto planting kumara runners if you have yet to do them. Keep sowing seeds of corn, salad veg, beans (dwarf, butter and runner) to ensure a succession of crops later. If your courgettes, cucumbers, pumpkins and similar running plants are up and growing well, keep pinching them out after about six strong leaves have formed, to encourage side growths (laterals) rather than just a few long runners.
• Time is running out for picking asparagus. Commercial growers will pick through to Christmas but this a mistake in the home garden. You need to leave sufficient shoots to form a mass of ferny growth in order to nourish the crowns below ground. When you stop picking, give a feed if you have not yet done so and get a layer of mulch on to suppress summer weeds getting a foothold.
• It is still relatively cool so there is time to get tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, melons and pumpkins planted but don’t delay and you are better to buy plants if you have not got your own seed sown in pots and well underway. Keep a copper spray on tomatoes and potatoes if they are already established in the garden. Wet weather followed by warmer weather will almost certainly lead to blight.
• Cover strawberries without delay to beat the birds.
• Anybody who has grown vireya rhododendron species will know that it is difficult to keep many of these alive. So when local friends sent us photographs of their R. orbiculatum with probably over 60 flower trusses this week, we figured that they probably take the award for the very best flowering of this very tricky vireya species anywhere in the world for the week ending November 20. We have never seen such a spectacular orbiculatum before.

Colourful Gardens by Dennis Greville

We are so over green gardens, we are past claiming that gardening is primarily about foliage not flowers and equally we have moved on from good taste mono colour palates and static, unchanging gardens. I am with the author on his determination to celebrate seasonal colour and flowers.

Readers of the NZ Gardener magazine will know Dennis Greville as a regular contributor. He is very experienced and competent, both in writing and photography, and I am guessing that he really enjoyed doing this book because at times he treads a fine line between enthusiasm and a hint of purple prose. But an exuberant topic such as colour deserves a somewhat passionate text. The first forty pages give a useful theoretical background, the remaining chapters feature the colour palette and impact in the garden. There are many coloured photographs, on every page in fact and all captioned.

It is not a beginner’s book. Too much plant interest and too many photos of fairly sophisticated planting combinations for that. Hallelujah for an author and a publisher who are not scared to use proper plant names as well as giving the common reference. On an experience scale of 1 to 10 (1 being absolute beginners), this book sits appropriately in the mid level as being suitable for gardeners in that 3 to 6 level of ability and experience.

(Published by New Holland. ISBN 978 1 86966 269 1)

Flowering this week – Arisaema dahaiense

October 27 2009 001 (Small)

Not quite a mouse eating plant, but truly remarkable - A. dahaiense

In a quiet moment in the middle of our garden festival last week, Mark must have been suffering from boredom to be so mischievous as to tell a garden visitor that this flower had just eaten a mouse. She actually believed him too, until he twiddled the long tendril which comes out from the flower and resembles a mouse tail. She wasn’t sufficiently gullible to believe that the mouse was still alive. But this extraordinary flower is decidedly reptilian in appearance.

You certainly won’t find this plant on the shelves at your local garden centre. Mark spent many years hoping to be given one of the rare bulbs and it finally came to pass last year so this is its first flowering for us. At this stage, it is strictly who you know when it comes to acquiring this plant. Dahaiense comes from the Yunnan area of China although this strain was collected somewhere round the Burmese border area. In the wild, it has been photographed at close to two metres in height but our plant has yet to reach anywhere near that stature.

There are a whole range of different arisaemas and some are much more spectacular than others. They are a most curious genus being true hermaphrodites. When the plant is strong and robust, it becomes female and able to set seed but when it is immature or feeling a little weak and poorly it becomes male and is only capable of pollen donation. We will say no more on that topic.

Mark has spent some years gathering all the different species available here and hybridising to get some unique forms to use in the garden. He has a large number of spring flowering plants which hold their cobra-like heads above the foliage (most species hide their flowers below the leaves) and his summer flowering forms extend the colour from the more usual brown or greenish flowers into pinks and burgundies. They are not pretty but they are certainly interesting and nobody else has bedding plants quite like our arisaemas. Dahaiense has opened a whole new range of possibilities as a pollen donor this year.

Taming the Wilderness – workshop notes

Create space around individual plants to avoid an overgrown, unkempt look

Create space around individual plants to avoid an overgrown, unkempt look

TAMING THE WILDERNESS

Handout notes from the workshop taken here in our garden November 7, 2009 as part of the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival.

  1. If you are new to the garden, don’t charge straight in immediately and start dropping trees and shrubs. Ideally, give it about nine months to go through the seasons so you can see what is there before you do major felling and removal. In the meantime you can be clearing the lower grade plants – most plants that sucker, clump or seed down can be safely attacked.
  2. Track the path of the sun so you can see where your winter sun and summer shade positions are.
  3. Unless you know what you are doing, seek advice as to which trees are quality, long term trees worth preserving. Somebody at the botanic garden or public park, or an enthusiastic member of a group such as the International Dendrology Society will likely know more than a tree surgeon (whose skills often lie more in safely felling a tree and using chainsaws than in deciding which trees are of value).
  4. Overgrown gardens lose the detail and small treasures, but can give you a framework and maturity to work with. Don’t reduce it all to a blank canvas by clearing everything.
  5. Stand at each window in the house and plan views if possible. Also spend plenty of time looking from every angle in the garden to work out potential view shafts, sun and shade through the seasons.
  6. Make the most of maturity of plants. LIFT AND LIMB. Allow light through underneath and build up layers of garden. Many, if not most, young gardens are badly overplanted to get a quick effect. It is likely that you will need to thin out a number of these plants.
  7. Mature gardens are usually about shade conditions. LEARN TO GARDEN WITH SHADE. Don’t try and turn it all back to sun and a juvenile garden.
  8. CREATE SPACE AROUND PLANTS. The fresh appeal of young gardens is often because each plant stands alone in its own space. As gardens grow, that space gets swallowed up and the plants become entangled. Creating a sense of space again is good for the plant (less competition, more light and more air flow) and creates a more cared for look in the garden. Most gardens need to restrict the size of trees and shrubs.
  9. LEARN ABOUT PRUNING – especially the right times of the year to prune plants and the general rules of pruning. A good pruning saw is worth the expense, as are good loppers. Supervise chainsaw operators carefully – you can not glue branches on later.
  10. Widen paths. Remove anything spiky or prickly beside the path. Creating a sharp edge between a path and garden immediately makes a place look better cared for.
  11. As a general rule, woody trees and shrubs are best left well alone in the root area. Just a feed (preferably in spring) if the plant is looking hungry and pile on the mulch. Herbaceous or clumping plants prefer friable or fluffed soil and in a neglected garden may need to be lifted, divided and rejuvenated.
  12. If you are gardening on a slope or even on a hill, trim the branches and prunings and lay them around the contours of the slope and use them to start building up layers of humus. It is all part of the natural cycle. Bare earth is not a good look.
  13. Be a vigilant weeder from the start. It saves a great deal of time and effort later. Once an area is weeded, lay mulch to suppress fresh young seedlings. You will have many dormant weed seeds in your soil which will spring into life with a bit of light and cultivation.
  14. In our opinions, gardens need some logic to them and this usually means that detailed and tightly maintained areas of the garden are closest to the house, to living areas and entranceways. As you radiate out further, the theme becomes looser and more casual. Most people use outdoor living areas which are close to the house, rather than at the bottom of the garden.
  15. Vegetable gardens need full sun.
  16. As a general rule, water features are best in full sun.