Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Tikorangi notes: a week of pests and petals

Magnolia Honey Tulip

Honey Tulip is going from strength to strength as the tree matures

The magnolia joy this week has been ‘Honey Tulip’. Mark is a modest plant breeder and inclined to describe a number of his best plants as a stroke of luck. I know how hard he works to get these so-called lucky breaks and there is not much left to chance. As we looked at a prominent specimen of ‘Honey Tulip’ at our entrance this week, he expressed relief again that it is indeed excellent and that we have not released a dog of a plant on the market. And he mused (again) that out of that particular controlled cross, he only got two yellows amongst the offspring and only one of those was of merit. That is what he calls a lucky break. I don’t think he is happy unless he gets a run of several – or many – very good similar seedlings worth considering but even then he worries into the future whether he picked the best one at the time to name and release! So the annual display that ‘Honey Tulip’ puts on for us is both a relief and a delight as it continues to go from strength to strength.

The battle with the rabbits continues. After the new lily border was decimated last year, it was a priority to try and get them up this year. While the bulbs will likely survive one year with all their growth having been chewed off, two years is stretching it. First, I spent a day erecting a mesh fence along the border. It was more diversionary than rabbit-proof. In an environment filled with tasty edibles, I just hoped they would take the hint and change their route. But the little fockers laughed at me. When the first shoots were chewed back to ground level in a single night, I started putting cut lengths of drainage tubes over the damaged ones. That works but there are literally hundreds of bulbs in that border and Mark didn’t think it was a realistic option for the whole area. He tried the expensive rabbit repellent spray we bought last year but they laughed at his efforts too.

Netting and tubes in an attempt to deter rabbits

Blood and bone works. Mark now does a daily round. He sprays water on the fresh shoots and sprinkles a light application of blood and bone on the wet surface. The moisture makes it adhere which means that he will only have to repeat the application after heavy rain. It requires vigilance and routine. We need to get them above maybe 40cm so the rabbits can’t chew off the top and the shoots can keep growing. It won’t matter then if they chew off the lowest leaves.

Blood and bone lightly sprinkled on damp foliage is the best rabbit deterrent so far

The longer term solution is obviously to reduce the rabbit population. Mark does daily rounds with the gun. The dogs have found the odd burrow of small ones, to their delight, but are pretty useless once they are larger and on the loose. We got desperate enough to buy some rabbit poison but it is also poisonous to dogs so it requires putting out at night and gathering it back up in the morning. On the first morning, not only had the rabbits totally ignored the bait but our Dudley dog ate one bait before Mark’s eyes. It put him off using it again. The option of getting a cat again is still on the table. It is the first time we have ever hoped a stoat may move back onto our territory to do a clean out of the rabbits. Not for the first time, we have muttered curses at the early British settlers in this country who introduced this pest so they could continue their what-ho-jolly-hunting traditions.

A magnolia bud that has been eaten out, usually by possums but we are now wondering if rats are also to blame

While on pests, a possum – or maybe rats – have wrought havoc this year on some of the magnolias in the distant parts of our property. You can see from the photograph how the offender has eaten into the bud and nipped out the centre at the point when the flower buds were forming. Every single bud on this tree was taken out, which is why Mark is wondering about rats as well as possums. It is very discouraging. Mark is the chief pest control officer here and he generally manages to maintain some sort of equilibrium with a combination of ongoing trapping and the gun but this year appears to be particularly bad.

Doryanthes palmeri or the Queensland spear lily

Two months on from when I first mentioned the Doryanthes palmeri coming into flower,  I am coming to the conclusion that it does not open any more than this. I had envisaged that massive stem covered in open blooms but I think it may just gently continue for a long time yet, opening blooms in sequence without that mass display. The bees love it. Every time I pass, I can hear the audible hum and most of the open flowers have a bee foraging within them.

I mentioned it as a nursery relic cast aside. And indeed, I found confirmation of that this week as I was clearing around the plant. Behold, the original black planter bag, still around some of the root system. Some plants are tough and determined. It was not going to stay constricted by a pathetic little PB as we call these nursery bags.

Dainty and fragrant Narcissus jonquilla

Finally, because we love the tiny as much as the large, here are two little scenes from the rockery. Spring is a glorious season here, never more so than when we get over a week without rain to enjoy the blooming. But suddenly we are on the cusp of the point where a long spring no longer beckons but instead we are under pressure to get the new plantings done before it is too late and we are too dry and too warm.

Moraea villosa or the peacock iris

In praise of petal carpets

Magnolia Lanarth, down by the big pond

I love me a good petal carpet. I have an entire folder in my photo files, dedicated to petal carpets. There is another one for floral skypaper but that is for another day. While we can get petal carpets pretty much all year round, this is peak time with magnolias, prunus and camellias dropping petals. The best carpets form beneath trees or large shrubs which drop their spent blooms in petal form, rather than the complete flower. Transient these may be, but on their day, they are a delight. 

The petal drop from the original Magnolia Iolanthe beside the drive is prodigious. We will rake or blow them off the drive when they turn to unattractive sludge but leave the ones on the garden to break down at their own rate. It is just part of the cycle of growth and decay.

We have many white michelias from Mark’s breeding programme and they make splendid snowy carpets, sometimes even retaining some of their scent. This magical white pathway is beside a whole row of a cross that Mark refers to as his Snow Flurry series.

I had to include at least one photo of a photo-bombing dog. So many of my photos have a dog within them.This one is my late and much beloved, loyal companion, Zephyr, beneath a Prunus campanulata. Zephs was a quiet dog but the most photo-bomby of all photo-bombers, making frequent appearances on the pages of the Waikato Times, for whom I was lead garden writer at the time. The prunus is still there, laying its carpet of blooms every year but Zephyr has been returned to the earth.

Prunus Awanui

I once read a profile of a garden that was opening for our annual garden festival. Clearly the owner prided himself on immaculate presentation because he proudly declared that he went out every morning to rake up the fallen petals beneath his Prunus Awanui. And I thought why? This is our Awanui. It may be a little larger than his tree was but the blossom is comprised of lacy single flowers without bulky substance to the petal. This means they will fall like gentle snow and decompose on the ground so quickly that there is no sludgy period. Why would anybody think it necessary to rake them up daily?

Sasanqua camellia blooms generally shatter into petals as they fall, unlike the japonicas and reticulatas which more commonly fall as complete blooms. This pink sasanqua fell below to carpet the Helleborus foetidus.

Solandra longiflora

For a change in colour, I give you Solandra longiflora in January. These fall as entire trumpets so they do turn brown and sludgy on the ground as they decay, but on their day, they are a lovely sight.

And the yellow kowhai blooms, our native Sophora tetraptera. This tree is much beloved by our native tui and kereru so many people find the floral display is greatly diminished but we figure we have plenty to share.

The fallen red blooms of a rhododendron make a transient, plush pile carpet for a few days each spring.

I felt sure I should have at least a few blue petal carpets but all I found was this slightly sparse carpet of jacaranda petals down our avenue garden. There aren’t many blue flowered trees when you think about it – the jacaranda, iochroma and paulownia but what else?

And finally from this selection, when the weather is calm, the soft pink petals of  Fairy Magnolia Blush can form pretty circles beneath each plant.

Learning from experience: gardening with bigger grasses in NZ conditions

Late March, so autumn of the first year.

We know quite a bit about many aspects of gardening, particularly shade gardening, but gardening in full sun with big, bold perennials is a whole new ball game here and a steep learning curve. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I planned to lift and divide the larger growing grasses that I have used in the new borders.  Of course I am only half way through it. These jobs always take longer than I plan, even factoring in other distractions. But it is interesting to stocktake the performance of these bigger grasses one year on from planting.

Stipa gigantea falls apart into divisions when lifted

Stipa gigantea – the giant feather grass or golden oats. Yes it grows quickly and enthusiastically but is very easy to dig out (not strong-rooted) and pretty much falls apart into divisions when lifted. So it is easy to manage. The flower heads are the feature but while ours bloomed, the sparrows laid waste to them so we did not get the full glory last summer. As far as we can make out, it is sterile so seeding and invasion are not an issue.

It is hard to beat the miscanthus at any time of the year

Miscanthus – I think it is ‘Morning Light’ we have. It required a little more effort to dig it out and an old handsaw and small axe to separate it into pieces but was not particularly difficult. I would not want to leave it too long though, before digging or it would get beyond my physical limits to dig and divide without assistance. It has been a standout. The clumps stand tidily like sentinels and it is brilliant at all stages – the foliage and the plumes. It is the only fully deciduous large grass I am growing and even the pillars of dried foliage have been attractive all winter. It is also close to sterile, setting almost no seed.

Is it Chionocloa rubra? Someone will know but it is a native tussock at least.

Chionocloa rubra – there is a bit of a question mark over the name of this one but a couple of visitors have suggested this identification. A native tussock grass that is performing brilliantly so far in attractive vase-shaped clumps. It is easy enough to dig and divide (more hacking apart with saw and small axe than dividing, to be honest) though I only divided this year to get more plants. It won’t need as much active management as most of the other grasses.

Anemanthele lessoniana is another native grass. It was a little underwhelming in its first year but I am told flowers attractively once established. I started with just three plants so I have divided them after their first year to get more.

The native toetoe (now an austroderia though formerly a cortaderia – our environmentally friendly version of the invasive Argentinian pampas grass) was one I planted a little anxiously, worried about its potential size. I need not have worried. The resident rabbits love it so much that the poor little things have failed to make any headway. I shall have to construct little cages over them if I want them to get any larger. I see we have five different austroderia species native to NZ though which one this is, I am not sure yet.

It appears I failed to photograph the calamgrostris at is peak but it is the third one up on the left in this May scene of late autumn.

Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’. Yes well, this one may be on borrowed time. It is scary. I bought several – I can’t remember if it was 5 or 10 because I divided a couple of clumps mid-season when it was clearly growing strongly (about now, alarm bells should be ringing for experienced gardeners). It is a stock grass for the contemporary perennial gardens we have been looking at, mostly in the UK. Our Canberra daughter also said it was the stand-out grass in her little prairie-style patch. And it was most attractive all summer and autumn. Not so in winter where it has been a messy mix of green and brown. It is deciduous in colder climates but not so here. But that is not the main issue.

Added bucket for scale but I also measured and the root systems reached 45cm across in one year. As a quick aside, my kneeling pad of the day is a piece of rubber carpet underlay cut to size. It doesn’t last that long but it comes from waste destined for landfill anyway and while it lasts, it is good.

The plants I bought came in 2.5 litre pots so larger than a liner but not big. Under one year is all it took for each plant to e x p a n d from about 12 or 14m across to somewhere closer to 45cm across. It took every ounce of my determination and strength to dig out the clumps for they were going deep as well as wide. The root ball is solid and dense and that is when I went to find the axe to chop it apart. I raised my eyebrows and started replanting just a few smaller – much smaller – clumps and these reduced in number the further I went. Most are piled to compost. The clumps I replanted are on trial for one more year but in my bones, I know they are on borrowed time. In our conditions, it is just way too vigorous though I am guessing that in harder conditions with dry summers and cold winters, it may just be deemed a ‘strong’ grower. I don’t know if it seeds but I am not seeing seedlings pop up so far. I would say that it may be quite useful if you want to retain an eroding precipice quickly but as a garden plant, try it before getting too carried away. I think I will decide that its powerful growth outweighs the charm of its flowering plumes.

I haven’t tackled the Elegia capensis yet but it can stay untouched for another year. It is a restio so not one of the grasses, though its growth habit and bamboo-like appearance mean it fits a similar niche in the garden. I know from experience that this is one we can contain if required by cutting around with a sharp spade to reduce its spread.

The smaller grasses can wait but the standout smaller variety so far has been a very dark green form of the Australian lomandra. We have several named forms and I am hoping I will unearth the labels when I lift the clumps again (I hate looking at visible plant labels so I tend to push my labels in so deep that I can’t find them again) and the dark forest green one is by far the pick of the bunch. The rest are a bit… utility, shall I say?

The takeaway lesson from all this is we need to trial plants here. That key plants used widely overseas perform differently in our conditions. It is why we buy garden books that cover design, history, philosophy and contemporary trends but never books written by overseas authors which focus on recommended plants and planting schemes. There is no substitute for local experience.

Postscript: I have finally found a home for the Dutch irises. They always looked a bit crass and coarse in the rockery and other areas where we concentrate on species and dwarf bulbs. But they are perfect with the big grasses, Just the right scale. And they bring in colour now in early September when there is not much else happening in that area.

 

The glyphosate debate

The visual and environmental scourge of the scorched earth roadside

Glyphosate has been much in the news of late and the calls to ban it are increasing in this country. I am no scientist so any opinions we have here are based on experience and observation. Because we ran a plant nursery for about three decades, our experience with sprays is greater than the average home gardener. You don’t think all those brilliant looking plants you buy from the garden centre are grown organically, do you?

Because of my lack of scientific background, I was pleased to find a post on the credible and independent Sciblogs site, written by scientist, Dr Grant Jacobs. If you have any interest in the use of glyphosate, I would urge you to read it in full here.

If you are not going to read it in full, the key points I have taken from it are:

  • The original probable (not definitive) link between glyphosate and cancer was made by IARC in 2015 (IARC being the International Agency for Research into Cancer which comes under the World Health Organisation). IARC’s role is to flag areas for further investigation and identify hazards, not to make definitive rulings. Even the term ‘probable link’ is an oversimplification of IARC’s findings.
  • The role of risk assessment on those potential hazards falls to regulatory bodies – the Environmental Protection Agency is a key body in NZ. And while IARC made the initial finding, subsequent investigations by scientists in such regulatory bodies around the world have not raised red flags. It appears that all such investigations have cleared it as safe when used according to instructions and with usual safety precautions. The difference between hazard and proven risk is important.
  • Any blanket ban on such a product comes down to a political decision and that is what we are seeing happening in Europe. A political decision is not necessarily based on science. It can often be based more in public opinion and political polling.
  • The court case in USA which triggered the recent round of debate (the school caretaker who contracted cancer) is based on a judge and jury trial in a courtroom and as such it is subject to the vagaries of a court system where the jury may or may not understand the science and where the directions given by the judge have a huge influence. This will all be tested further in the appeals process but a court case does not constitute rigorous scientific enquiry and risk assessment. While the case is certainly interesting, it is not proof of anything at this stage.

Jacobs also clarifies why we need to be talking ‘glyphosate’, not using the original brand name of Round Up. Indeed Round Up for Lawns contains no glyphosate at all. It is the chemical that is under scrutiny, not the branding. Round Up is a Monsanto product and while there are many concerns about Monsanto across a whole range of issues, the safety or otherwise of glyphosate should not be confused with a battle against Monsanto business ethics (or perceived lack thereof). Let us keep the arguments separate.

I was listening to a discussion on Radio NZ about all this and the host went on and on about the safety of glyphosate. “Is it safe? Can you guarantee it is safe?” he kept asking. Wrong question. How safe is it if used properly? Is the risk within acceptable limits? These might be better questions. Our lives are filled with hazards that we choose to manage. In the 44 years that glyphosate has been in use, it has proven itself to be safer than many other chemical sprays that are, or were, also used. Remember Paraquat? I don’t think there is any dispute that glyphosate is hugely safer than Paraquat but is it safe enough to continue using?

I worry about the nature of public debate that may see political decisions to ban what has so far been a relatively safe agrichemical, while leaving far more dangerous options on the market. Unless we have a change of heart, mind and practice on how we manage weeds and pasture, we run the risk of banning one option, only to have people substitute with another spray that could be way worse. We are a country that accepts a pretty high level of use of chemicals, toxins and sprays. While some are now controlled and you need to be an approved handler to buy them, the home gardener can still buy a fair number of products across the counter that are no longer available to their counterparts in the European Community.

The issue of the possible threat to human health underpins all this debate with IARC, cancer and banning glyphosate. It is separate to the issue of the impact on ecological systems. That is a whole different area to be considered. There are theories that environmental damage may be more to do with the surfactant (the sticking agent) rather than the glyphosate. We have also raised our eyebrows at the quick knockdown glyphosate products – the convenient aerosol or pump sprays that the home gardener can use to kill a plant more or less instantly. But again, that is a separate issue to fundamental matter of the claimed threat to human health.

It is complicated, not black and white. By all means, go organic and shun the use of non-organic sprays in your own garden. But maybe don’t cast glyphosate as the greatest villain of all the sprays and single it out for blanket bans while leaving the others on the market. I think that is called throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Time will tell if we will face a future without glyphosate and that bears some thinking about for home gardeners, farmers and most landowners as well as the public sector which maintains the parks, reserves, road verges and playing fields. Our attitudes to weeds, to invasive plants, to long grass and to presentation standards which are widely held as desirable will have to change too. On the bright side, the scourge of the scorched earth roadside may disappear which would be hugely beneficial both environmentally and aesthetically, in my opinion at least.

Garden lore: seasonal garden advice

Herewith your annual reminder of three seasonal matters.

  • If your magnolia appears to have plenty of furry buds but when they go to open, all you get is a few damaged petals – or nothing – the culprit is almost certainly a possum. They can develop a taste for the buds and eat the centre out without the damage being overly obvious to the casual eye until the blooms fail to open. A single possum is quite capable of taking out most of the buds on a tree over a few nights. Mark and the dogs head out every dry night at this time of the year on a possums-in-the-magnolias round. The price of our glorious display is seasonal vigilance (and high velocity lead, which is not an option for city dwellers).

    One of the first blooms on Magnolia Felix Jury

  • If you feel you must spray your lawn, do it on the next fine day and do not delay if if you have deciduous magnolias (or indeed kiwi fruit or any other plants that are susceptible to hormone spray drift). The faintest whiff of lawn spray at the time the leaf buds are breaking dormancy is likely to damage them badly and magnolias are particularly susceptible. Most magnolias break into leaf just as flowering finishes. Every year we get enquiries from people worrying about the deformed new foliage on their trees. Invariably, the cause is lawn spray. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot you can do about spray-happy neighbours.
  • Get any tree or large shrub pruning done urgently. The birds will be building nests full time shortly. I am not sure what killing off birds’ eggs – or worse, later in the season, hatchlings – is called. Aviancide, perhaps? But if you have ever taken the time to watch the birds gathering materials for nests, you will realise what a huge amount of time and effort it takes. It seems very mean to destroy them, all for failing to factor that into planning for pruning.

    Vulcan in its full glory today.