Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Out and about, in a very limited, local way

Ixias by the railway track near Lepperton

I flashed past these eye-catching ixias (corn lilies) at speed and promptly thought that I should have stopped and photographed them. I then thought I couldn’t be bothered until a couple of kilometres down the road when I turned and went back. Are they not pretty? They are growing on wasteland beside the railway in Lepperton and the sight of them stopped me being grumpy about something else that had happened.

There is nothing choice or rare about ixias. We have them in the twin borders in several colours and they show up each year on one of the mass bulb suppliers’ catalogues. But as a wildflower, their charm seems greater to me. I was glad I had dug some to put down in the Wild North Garden where they may recreate the simple charm of the railway siding.

The rare sight of a camellia hedge in full bloom, though now past its peak

I also stopped to photograph a camellia hedge because a mass flowering camellia hedge is a rare sight for us in these days of the cursed camellia petal blight. This one is down the road from us (in a rural sense – maybe 5km down a different road entirely to the one we live on but still ‘down the road’). We used to have mass displays of larger flowered camellias in informal hedges but they are a thing of the past here. The plants haven’t gone; it is the flowering that is a memory. This particular hedge is in an extremely open situation, exposed to both full sun and wind from every direction. It confirmed for me that the extremely sheltered microclimate we have in our own garden has exacerbated camellia petal blight to be some of the worst in the world. Fungi thrive in a protected situation. It is a trade-off. That microclimate enables us to grow many other plants that would not otherwise thrive but at the expense of the japonica and hybrid camellia flowers.

Camellia ‘Waterlily’
Camellia ‘Les Jury’ to the left and Felix’s ‘Waterlily to the right. Something that had finished flowering but appears to be white at right angles in the centre.

It was Mark who drew my attention to the fact that it is Camellia ‘Waterlily’, one of his father’s early cultivars. We have the original plant in the garden here. Next to it, to the left, is a clipped hedge – now at the end of its flowering season – of Camellia ‘Les Jury’. It is the best red his Uncle Les bred so they have the Jury camellia brothers right and left of the gateway.

Each spike is a cluster of a huge number of individual flowers with long stamens on the xeronema

We don’t have a whole lot of native plants that carry gardeners’ bragging rights with them but the Poor Knights’ lily – Xeronema callistemon – is one. It grows on the rocky cliff faces on the Poor Knights islands, often washed by sea water and never drying out but never getting waterlogged. According to Wikipedia, those offshore islands of New Zealand which few people ever get to visit but are a treasure trove of unique flora, were so-named because their shape reminded the early Europeans of a bread pudding popular at the time, the Poor Knights Pudding.  There is a random piece of information for you.

Xeronema callistemon in the central row on a bank in Waitara, thriving in a regime of benign neglect

Their natural habitat is not easy to re-create in a garden situation which is why they carry some bragging rights. I am pretty sure they are also frost-tender and it takes a long time for them to reach flowering size. Despite all that, there is fine display of huge plants on a shady bank in my local town of Waitara. Prostrate rosemary festoons down the bank below them and they are flanked by some pretty scruffy trachycarpus palms but eat your heart out, gardeners who have failed with the xeronema at home. Finding a suitable spot and then allowing benign neglect seems to work better.

Poor Knights lily and Marlborough rock daisy in our swimming pool garden. Maybe they feel at home because we have a salt water filter on the pool and they can smell the salt? Or maybe not.

Our best plants are just coming in to flower. I admit we groom the plants a bit – removing spent leaves. I like the combination with the Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis) – another cliff dweller but this time from a location which must be close to 1000km south of the Poor Knights Islands.

Trimming the hedges here is largely done by Lloyd. If you look carefully, there is tape on the bamboo to mark the desired heights and he also checks with a string line.

Meantime, it is all go on preparing the garden for the Taranaki Garden Festival, opening on October 29. We have our fingers crossed that we stay at level two which enables it to go ahead. We will be awfully miffed if we get Covid Delta in Taranaki with a last-minute cancellation after all this work.

Kia kaha. Stay sane and stay safe in these trying times.  We are living through an event that will become a significant point of history for future generations to study. It is not a comfortable position for anyone.

In times of trouble, you will find me in the garden

That is an old stone mill wheel from the ninteenth century, repurposed these days as a bird bath

It has been a difficult week in New Zealand. I recall commenting here to an Irish reader (*waving to Paddy*) that if anybody can get rid of Delta, we will. This week brought us the distressing realisation that we almost certainly can’t. Gone is the dream of the return to level one this summer – level one being no restrictions on day-to-day living bar those pesky border controls. Like many others, we were plunged into a state of deep anxiety. All due to just one case entering the country and now spiralling ever larger, creating the whack-a-mole situation we are now in.

I have to grit my teeth with those who declare ‘we just have to learn to live with it’. I don’t think learning to live with Covid looks like they think it does. It does not mean a return to life as it was with some people getting a bit sick and a few dying – but, presumably, nobody known to those advocating this course of action. Learning to live with Covid means living with ongoing anxiety, wearing masks, using sanitiser, scanning, restrictions on movements and gatherings and playing whack-a-mole all the time. Learning to live with Covid means an indefinite extension of the current status quo.

Scadoxus puniceus

The only path out of this is very high vaccination rate. Please, if you haven’t been vaccinated yet, get it done now. Ignore that small group of very loud, insistent anti-vaxxers. Surveys show that there aren’t that many of them, statistically speaking (somewhere between 4 and 7%?) but too many of them seem pretty determined to keep their ‘freedom of choice’ by attempting to abuse and verbally bludgeon everybody else out of exercising their freedom of choice.

Crinum moorei at the front, which will flower white later in the season, dendrobium orchid, clivias, bromeliads, Scadoxus puniceus and the wedding palm – Lytocaryum weddellianum – in a tiered woodland planting beneath giant rimu trees

What does this mean for our garden festival, scheduled to start on October 29? Goodness only knows; we certainly don’t. We were headed for one of the largest attendances ever with coach tours and ticket sales setting new records. That seems unlikely now.

I see three possibilities. The first is the best-case scenario where travel restrictions are lifted to the north of us and we plough ahead but with masks, sanitiser and physical distancing. This is also the least likely scenario.

The second scenario is the border remains in place on our main northern access to Taranaki and numbers are hugely reduced as a result. In which case it will all be much quieter and lower key.

The third is that Covid reaches Taranaki in the next few weeks and all events are cancelled but I figure we cross that bridge if we come to it.

Seedling vireya, very scented, which seems to be predominantly R. konorii growing beneath pine trees
Pleione orchids have a shorter season in bloom but are so pretty

It all makes planning very difficult here. When we know we are opening the garden, there is a lot of extra garden grooming that gets done – titivating, one might call it. It takes a lot of time to titivate a garden the size of ours and we don’t do that final flourish if it is just for our own pleasure.

Colourful woodland on rainy morning this week to lift the spirits

But if it all turns to custard, there are many (many, many) worse places to be than here. The colourful woodland this week soothes my soul and relieves my own anxieties. Woodland gardening does not generally conjure up colourful visions bar maybe a sea of snowdrops beneath bare trees if you are British, or perhaps large drifts of bluebells or hellebores.

Finally getting Mark’s neglected orchids out of his Nova house and into the garden in lengths of tree trunk with the centre rotted out
We are big fans of the dainty dendrobium orchids from the Bardo-Rose group

We like highly detailed woodland and it certainly is looking very pretty this week. We achieve this by lifting the canopy of our tall trees to let filtered light in below. Over the years, low branches have been removed to keep the lower trunks clear for maybe the bottom four metres or so. These days we do more thinning at ground level than planting and we use various strategies to ensure that plants can grow despite the massive root systems on the trees. Zach has been planting out some of Mark’s neglected orchids – mostly dendrobiums in the Bardo-Rose group – in hollowed out tree rings this week. These stump lengths are from the silver birch we dropped a few weeks ago. The rotten heart of the tree tells us we were right to fell it.

We do not get florist-quality blooms outdoors but the cymbidiums last a long time in the garden and add glamour
Cymbidium with Helleborus sternii. I would like more cymbidiums but need plants with smaller flowers. Those bred for cut flowers tend to be larger and can look out of scale in the garden.

Our interest in orchids is basically on plants we can grow outdoors in the garden so mostly pleiones, cymbidiums, calanthes and dendrobiums in practice. I like the little dendrobiums the best but the cymbidiums add a touch of glamour.

Clivias in orange, red and yellow, we have in abundance
Mark’s peach hybrids add variety but this one seems reluctant to hold its flower spikes upwards

Quite a few years ago, Mark did some hybridising with clivias to try and get some peach coloured ones. He rather lost interest but I planted out the best and they are coming in to their own. I wish this one held its flower up better but it is a pretty, pastel variation on the many oranges, reds and yellows we have. Last time I looked, there were quite a few international breeders working on peach tones and then on white and green flowers but I have no idea if these are commercially available here yet.

Wherever you are, stay sane as well as staying safe. These are trying times we are living through. I will be hiding in the garden somewhere, maybe taking photos to share.

Prickly matters

I have, as we say, been ‘doing under the rimus’. “It looks like you have vacuumed it,” said Zach and I was gratified because it is a big job on one of the key areas of the garden. The pressure is on, you understand, with just under five weeks until we open for the Taranaki Garden Festival.

Not, as we thought, a billbergia but Aechmea coelestris var albomarginata

We have our fingers crossed that Auckland will be out of Level 3 so able to travel (looking good, Aucklanders, on Friday’s figures! The rest of us around the country are holding our collective breath for you. Well, most of us around the country).

Neoregelia

Cleaning up under the rimus is painstaking work but it only needs that level of attention once a year so I generally describe it as low maintenance. I go through and pick over every plant to remove the debris that falls continuously from the trees above and to groom each plant. We are not talking a small area – maybe 100 metres long and varying from 10 to 30 metres wide. The debris is being removed by the wool bale load even though we leave the rimu needles to provide the path surfaces.

Vriesea

It is a complex planting but bromeliads feature large. It is not that we have a choice collection of bromeliads. Our interest lies solely in them as garden plants in a shaded, borderline-sub-tropical situation so that limits the range we can grow. Broms are a huge family and largely from the tropical areas of the Americas. The best-known bromeliad is of course the pineapple. I have something of an aversion to prickly plants and many broms are prickly. Their flowering, while undeniably exotic and interesting, doesn’t make my heart sing like some other plants. So my knowledge of them is limited to caring for the ones we have and I have never felt motivated to get to grips with the whole plant family, botanically speaking.

Nidularium probably procerum, I am told by one who knows more about these than I do

Most of the varieties we have flower and then put out one or two fresh shoots to the side while the flowering centre starts to whiff off and die, sometimes very slowly over a period of two years or more if left alone. Once they start to discolour, I go through and cut them off which stops the clump from looking too crowded.

A particularly prickly aechmea

The very best implement for this is what I now see is named a ‘flax cutter’ – a small curved, serrated blade that is extremely useful for many garden tasks but probably not cutting flax. It is handy for cutting down grasses and faster than secateurs for deadheading perennials that need flowering spikes cut off. I had to go and buy a new one this week. I lost my good one somewhere amongst the bromeliads. I then went and found my old one and promptly lost that too. You would think I might have learned by now to keep better track of garden tools. This one came with a nice ash wood handle but I spray painted it before I even took it out to the garden – blue, because we had a can of blue spray paint on the shelf. I will not lose this one, I have vowed to myself.

Arm puttees and the new flax cutter

The second piece of vital gear is arm puttees. The alternative is that the prickly bromeliad leaves will shred the skin from the top of the garden gloves to the elbow. I speak from experience here. My arm puttees are simply the sleeves cut from an old denim shirt, elasticated at both the wrist and the elbow. They are worth improvising if you are dealing with prickly plants.

DIY garden kneeling pads

While on handy hints, I can highly recommend cutting kneeling pads from the high-density foam mats sometimes used as yoga mats or sleeping mats for trampers. One came into my possession and I can see it will last me for years. I simply cut it to the required size with what we know as a Stanley knife which is just a larger box-cutter. I find the kneeling mats sold in garden supply shops way too small but these I can make in a size that suits me. They cushion the ground and keep my knees dry, as long as I keep to the mat.

A billbergia

I had a mental debate with myself as to whether I could post my few photos of those currently in flower in the area where I am working without naming them – by general group if not cultivar. Well, we have long since lost the cultivar names. I have never committed bromeliad groups to memory but I feel I am lowering standards if I don’t name plants here so feel free to correct me on the classifications. We are by no means certain on them. Postscript: I have done a round of corrections on the photo caps after receiving advice from a reader who knows a whole lot more about bromeliad botany and nomenclature than we do.

What we refer to as an FIK but I am now told is Aechmea pineliana
No prickles! Aechmea gamosepala X ‘Cappuchino’

When the detail brings delight, not the devil

Tulipa saxatilis and simple cream freesias in the rockery this week

Bulbs play a major role in our garden. We use a huge range of bulbs, many no longer available commercially. Some never were readily available. Very few of those we grow are the larger, modern hybrids which are generally what are on offer these days. We prefer the simpler style of the species or at least closer to the species.

Added to that, seventy years of intensive gardening across two generations has built up the numbers most satisfyingly. Most of our cultivated gardens have bulbs incorporated in the plantings. Or at least bulbs, corms, tubers or rhizomes to cover the range.

Erythroniums

We have a fair few that are fleeting seasonal wonders in our climate but we just adjust our expectations. The cute erythroniums – dog’s tooth violets – are maybe a 10 day delight and can be taken out by untimely storms but that is just the way things are.

Meet Beryl. Narcissis ‘Beryl’ with cyclamen, nerines and even a Satyrium coriifolium in the bottom left corner

I don’t grow any in containers now although the same can not be said of Mark. His bulb collection is currently sitting in limbo for us all to see the scale as his inner sanctum – his Nova house – is currently being relocated. He hasn’t taken good care of them in recent times but he is determined to keep some of the rarer, touchier varieties alive. It is possible to maintain a more comprehensive bulb collection if you are willing to faff around with growing them in containers in controlled conditions. I am not so dedicated. My interest wanes if we can not grow them in garden conditions.

Gladiolus tristis popping up unexpectedly in our parking area

It is the random bulbs beyond the gardens that are currently bringing me pleasure. Some of these have been planted. Some have popped up from our nursery days. When trays of bulbs were being repotted, Mark had a strict rule that fresh potting mix was to be used (granulated bark was our chosen medium). Hygiene, he would explain. The old potting mix was spread around the place and at times it had seed or tiny bulbs within it. I am guessing this is how the Gladiolus tristis, a species gladiolus, came to be at the base of a cherry tree. I certainly don’t remember planting it there and I can’t recall it flowering before.

Ipheions at the base of an orange tree

When we plant bulbs beyond the cultivated garden areas, we try and select spots where they can establish in fairly undisturbed conditions. At the base of trees is good, as long as there is plenty of light. Around old tree stumps, on margins that don’t get mown often, or in little spots where we can walk past and be surprised to see them in bloom.

Trillium red with bluebells down in the park meadow
And trillium white with Lachenalia aloides tricolor and snowdrops to the right on the margins by a stump

We have rather too many bluebells now, to the point where I often dig out clumps to reduce overcrowding. The Spanish bluebells or the ones that are crosses between the vigorous Spanish and the more refined English species are definitely rampant, bordering on weeds. That sea of blue is very charming in their flowering season but sometimes it is the one seedling escape flowering bravely on its own that makes me smile as I pass.

The simplicity of a self-sown bluebell
Common old Lachenalia aloides where a tree stump used to be

It is both the transient nature and the detail that makes bulbs so interesting in a garden context. Far from simplifying our own garden as we age, the more we garden, the more we like to add fine detail. That is what keeps it interesting for us.

Bluebells and narcissi at the base of gum tree
Narcissus bulbocodium with bluebells

Pickled magnolias

Manchu Fan and Felix Jury

Who knew that magnolia petals are edible and, when pickled, make a pretty fair substitute for that pink pickled ginger (gari) often served with sushi? I didn’t, until it came down my social media a few days ago but plenty of other people did. I found this out when I googled ‘pickled magnolia petals’. Even Jamie Oliver has a recipe for them on line.

The recipes seem to be fairly uniform and not at all complicated.

Four cups of petals ready to be blanched
Bringing the pot back to boil for 30 seconds
  1. Pick four cups, loosely packed, of fresh magnolia petals (see my notes below on petal selection).
  2. Blanch the petals in boiling water for 30 seconds then drain, cool quickly and dry. I laid them out on paper towels.
  3. Boil 1 cup of apple cider vinegar, ½ cup of sugar, 1tsp salt and a 2cm knob of peeled ginger.
  4. Pack the petals in a clean jar and pour over the boiling liquid. Mine filled a Roses marmalade jar.
  5. Seal and leave for 24 hours. Once opened, store in the refrigerator.

Surprisingly, they do taste and handle remarkably like the pink pickled ginger.

Magnolia petals are edible fresh and can be used in salads – but I can not describe them as delicious. The outside petals can get a slightly bitter after taste. Maybe take a few bites to sample when picking to pickle and you will soon get a feel for which ones will pickle the best.

I picked a mix of colours – red, pink, yellow and white. It is too early for me to advise whether some colours taste better than others. Others declare that different varieties of magnolias have different flavours but I wanted to post this before magnolia season finished so maybe we can crowd source reader opinion on this?

Four cups fresh petals to one jar pickled

Next time, I will keep to younger flowers. It is easier to handle petals that are on the smaller side so the cup-shaped magnolias (often soulangeanas) are perfect candidates and bruise less than the large cup and saucer blooms with huge petals. I wouldn’t cut the petals as one recipe advised because they instantly turn brown which is not a good look.

My pickle is still very fresh but it is certainly tasty with cheese on a cracker. I plan to do a second jar to keep sealed until summer when I make sushi again but I can see it will be handy to use as a fresh pickle in many contexts, not just limited to Asian inspired dishes. It is certainly cheap and fast to make.

Happy pickling.