Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Invisible gardening

I made that term up. It is when I spend a fair amount of time working through an area, removing a large amount of plant material and at the end of it, most people wouldn’t even see the difference because it all looks pretty much the same. Just a bit tidier.

This times ten is a lot of waste to remove from an area that is not large

In the past week, I have spent five days meticulously going through the area we refer to as ‘the grasslands’. It is a very simple planting, mostly our native Carex buchananii and Carex comans ‘Bronze’. In the process, I have removed about ten overloaded wheelbarrows full of vegetation but honestly, nobody else is likely to notice the difference. That is fine. In fact, I regard it as something of a triumph because I know it is a lot better.

The ‘before’ scene
And the ‘after’ scene looks very similar

Most of the grasses we grow are evergreen and it seems that taking the time to work them over once a year, removing spent foliage, dead patches and debris buildup in the crown of the plant keeps them looking healthy and attractive as garden plants. That is the big difference between how they grow in the wild and keeping them in the garden – the human hand making an intervention now and then. While they will seed down and establish as a colony in the wild where some dead plants and strugglers are just part of the natural cycle, a garden situation only looks natural. My intervention makes sure that each plant is standing in its own space with limited competition, either from its seedlings or indeed weeds. I also comb out the foliage on each plant to remove the buildup and to keep the festooning form rather than it becoming a tangle.

The Rimu Walk is maintained with one major, annual blitz and just the occasional tidy-up of fallen debris inbetween

We have a few other areas that also thrive and look good all year round with just one concentrated, annual blitz on maintenance. The Rimu Walk is notable. Every year, I spend a couple of weeks working my way over every plant from one end to the other and the garden waste is shipped out by the wool bale load to compost in a patch of bush elsewhere on the property. I work on rotating two wool bales and, at a rough guess, we probably move out over fifteen bales full. That is to say, I fill them and Lloyd or Zach remove them for me. At the end of it, there are no gaps in the garden, no bare areas and no indication of the time and care that has been spent but it just looks tidy, cared-for, healthy and loved. My efforts are largely invisible and I like it that way.

The spectacular Scadoxus multiflorus ssp katherinae is also managed with one major clean-up a year and very little inbetween

I refer to areas like these as ‘low maintenance’. With one thorough, detailed effort a year, there is little that needs to be done between those big clean-outs. We did one weeding round on the grasslands area in spring but nothing else. The scadoxus area will remain largely untouched until late winter again. Beneath the rimus, we will pick up fallen branches and sticks brought down by the wind and pull out the odd weed that has sneaked in but that is about it. They feel as though they are low maintenance, but if you averaged out the hours spent on that annual blitz, they are possibly not that low.   It is just different maintenance, albeit that it only works in areas that are largely weed-free to start with, filled with plants that do not require ongoing staking, deadheading, cutting back, dividing, restricting or training and where a thick layer of natural mulch has built up over the years. Nor do they have edgings that need to be maintained, grass that needs to be cut or paths that need to be swept.

It is perhaps easier to see in close-up. Before…
… and after

Garden maintenance can be a bore as well as a chore. There are areas I don’t enjoy working in. But it is oddly satisfying to focus entirely on just one block, working over it in minute detail and wrapping up after a few days, a week or even more and having the area look its well-furnished best at the end of it all, despite the removal of prodigious amounts of green waste. Even better is knowing that it will remain looking fine for the better part of the next year.

Maybe it is more discreet gardening than invisible. it is also a sign of somebody who has the time and inclination to spend on such fine tuning. I am aware that for many people, garden maintenance sits somewhere closer to crisis management and that is a very different scenario.

“O Christmas tree O Christmas tree you stand in splendid beauty!” Or maybe not quite so splendid.

The need for a Christmas tree became pressing. I admit that when none of the children get home for Christmas, I tend to skip that festive accoutrement. Our three all live overseas these days. But with two of them making it back this year, one with partner and daughter who was a baby last time I saw her in May but is now very much a small child, there was clearly a need for a decorated tree.

Family tradition decrees that said Christmas tree can not be a) purchased or b) a fake tinsel affair. It must be harvested or repurposed from home. This has led to considerable variation in size and type down the years.

We know it as a pohutukawa – the New Zealand Christmas tree but really only in the landscape

In the warmer parts of Aotearoa New Zealand, the pohutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) is firmly established as the iconic ‘New Zealand Christmas tree’ but it does not lend itself to cutting to bring indoors. It is an outdoor tree. Being one of the few trees that will grow right on the coast, even on crumbling, eroding land, tolerating both wind and salt spray, it is widely grown as a street tree, on golf courses, as shelter belts and generally all round the place. Its flowering season may be short but it always comes in the lead-up to Christmas.

Pinus radiata is the main choice for Christmas trees here – quick-growing, expendable, suitable foliage and the Christmas pine scent. Christmas tree farms supply them as dense, clipped pyramids but wild collected specimens or just branches are generally more sparse. Mark has been known to wire in extra pieces to fill out bare spaces. It used to be a time-honoured tradition that families would head out to the country to harvest a tree or branch from the roadside but I am not sure that still goes on since tree farms made better specimens easily available, albeit at a price. That practice of wild collection had the potential to go wrong, of course.

The falling branch of the rather large Pinus montezumae

We lacked even a wilding pine to harvest this year. What could we use? The first plan was to retrieve some of the huge branch of Pinus montezumae which has split but not yet fully snapped off the tree in our park. I could see it would be messy and we would have to be creative in wiring in extra pieces because it is sparse when viewed close-up. But I felt sure a collective effort would see us equal to the task.

Ralph accompanied me on an inspection of the fallen Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’

Then the Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’ fell over. It seems to have root problems and it hadn’t even been windy when we noticed it down. It seemed more manageable than the Montezuma Pine although Mark doubted its capacity to take up enough water to keep it alive when cut off. So far, so good. It only has to last another three days so I think it will make it. It is nicely colour-toned to our pink sitting room; it cost nothing either in dollar terms or in environmental impact. It is just not your traditional Christmas tree. I had to bypass all the small decorations because of the big foliage so the decorative aspects are… restrained, shall I say? Golden balls, feather birds and my glass decorations I made back in the days when I was a moderately competent leadlighter and copper foiler and the remaining Christmas lights.

It matches the colour scheme of the sitting room – or, as daughter described it, the marshmallow lounge. On account of it being pink and white, you understand.
The long term prognosis of the propped up cercis is unknown

Lloyd and Zach took 90% of the foliage and branches off the remaining cercis and propped it back up. Only time will tell if it can recover.

Poor management, allowing the ailanthus to have two leaders at the start

Despite the fact that we have had settled, calm weather recently, we have had more than the cercis and the Montezuma branch fall. I include the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) which lost a trunk last weekend. It is a quick growing tree and something of a weed so it is no loss. But you can see how a trunk split out at the base and it is a good example of why trees should be kept to a single leader from the very start.

That is quite a long straight trunk whn seen lying on the ground, but low grade wood

The wood is too soft and light to be of any use. Lloyd has cut it into manageable lengths and at some stage soon, Zach will create one of his natural compositions in a wooded areas where they can stand as random uprights and start the process of rotting down to return to the soil.

This bird looks as though it may have come off second best in an encounter with a cat but we do not have a cat. Maybe it just had a hard life in the box of Christmas decorations.

May you and those close to you find happiness and congeniality in the festive season. Here, in Aotearoa with our summer Christmas, the country has already started the big shut down when some people at least can breathe out, indulge too much, relax and take time out as much of the country closes down for the next few weeks.

Very pink

Justicea carnea and Kalmia latifilia ‘Ostbo’s Red’

It is satisfying when a plan comes together and this particular border has been giving me pleasure this week. It is very pink and not necessarily a shade of pink that I love but the combination of the piped icing-like kalmia, Flower Carpet roses and pink candlewick flowers of the Justicia carnea  works.

The view from an upstairs window this week
From decades ago – Mark’s mother’s rose garden

When Mark’s parents built the house in 1950, they set about creating picture views from every window. Over the years, we have had to work hard on this particular view, despite the solid structure of the sunken garden being the central feature. It was once a froth of old roses. Mark’s mother loved old roses but in the time since the area was first planted, the huge rimu trees (Dacrydium cupressinum) along the back have doubled in size, their roots have reached out a similar distance and other trees have grown, meaning the area is no longer open and sunny.

And the view from downstairs. The bamboo screen on the outside of the window is to stop birds flying into the windows and killing or injuring themselves, which used to be a frequent occurrence.

Over the last 30 years, we have made many changes, including removing all the struggling borders bar one and removing all the old roses, bar one. I have wondered about removing this last side border because I don’t enjoy maintaining it and that is usually an indication that something is wrong with it. But it is the view from our sitting room (more like a ‘front parlour’ of old except it is not at the front but it is a room we use when we have guests, rather than every day). And, from upstairs, it is the view from our second daughter’s bedroom (no matter that she left home more than two decades ago – our children still have their own rooms here). As I go in each fine morning to open windows and again late afternoon to close them, I look out the windows. This week, I decided it could definitely stay because every time I looked, the combinations delighted me.

Like piped icing – the resilient flowers of Kalmia latifolia ‘Ostbo’s Red’

We only have a couple of kalmias in the garden and every year, their blooms are a fresh surprise. They look remarkably like skilled cake decorations from piped icing.

Rose Flower Carpet Pink
Rose Flower Carpet Appleblossom

When it comes to roses, I tried hard to find roses that would grow in our climate without spraying. Our high humidity and sheltered conditions are difficult when it comes to roses and I expect more from a plant than just beautiful blooms. We have tucked a few into the Iolanthe Garden where the froth and volume of perennials masks their diseased foliage and defoliated branches. But in this border, I want better performance and trial and error narrowed them down to Flower Carpet Roses – Pink, Appleblossom and White, mostly grafted as standards which gives elevation and more air movement. They keep much better foliage and mass flower, even if they are perhaps more utilitarian than romantic. The bright pink and white forms repeat flower for us, on and off for months, the softer pink Appleblossom less so and it can ball in the wet but it is the prettiest of them so I forgive that. At least its foliage stays healthy.

Primula denticulata in early spring

It is not the shrubs in this border that trouble me so much as the under plantings. Conditions range from heavy and wet at one end – perfect for the thriving Primula denticulata in September but there is not much else that flowers for the other eleven months of the year – through various degrees of shade to sun but with considerable root competition from trees and shrubs, to bone dry, impoverished conditions at the far end nearest the rimu trees. I need to come up with better ground cover combinations than we have but 30 years of trying hasn’t yet solved that to my satisfaction. Maybe I am just being too picky, after all.

Memories of candlewick bedspreads which were very common in the 1960s and starting to become threadbare and motheaten in the 1970s – Justicia carnea

Succession planning and gardening values

Somewhat unrelated flower photos from this week to make the text pretty – captions at the end

“A garden dies with its owner.” Those words were attributed to the late Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter fame and repeated to us by one who worked with him. At the time, the renowned gardener Lloyd was being asked about succession plans. In the event, Dixter was transferred to a private trust and has continued to change and develop under the control of Lloyd’s former head gardener, Fergus Garrett, who has earned his own place in the annals of UK garden history. That is a comparatively rare example of the successful transfer of a garden after the death of its originator.

We visited Great Dixter in 2009 and planned to return on the 2020 trip we had to cancel when Covid struck.

The big difference at Great Dixter is that Fergus Garrett was not tasked with the requirement that he preserve the garden as it was in the time of Christopher Lloyd, frozen in time, as it were. It appears he was given a free hand to continue to develop and change the garden as he saw appropriate. Too often, when a garden transfers ownership or management, with it comes the expectation that it will be preserved as the originator created it and that rarely, if ever works. Time moves on, trees grow, micro-climates change and so do techniques and expectations.

Great Dixter again

I realised recently that when I visit gardens, I want to see elements of dynamic change, of current energies, dreams and visions, not just the preservation of the past, no matter how famous or significant that past was. As Mark and I age, I often think how lucky Mark’s dad Felix was to have Mark at his gardening side for the last 17 years of his life. He died knowing that his garden was in safe hands, going forward, not just being maintained or, worse, going back. That is a rare situation. Most of us just have to accept that our gardens may well die with us and hope that at least the good long-term trees may survive. As I say, relatively cheerfully, we will be dead and we won’t know. Christopher Lloyd was just being realistic.

The Lloyd quote came from Australian garden designer, writer, educator and presenter, Michael McCoy who brought a tour through here last week. Michael first visited here this time last year as he was scouting for this tour and we spent a remarkable couple of hours going around our garden in the rain. I have never met anybody before who was so utterly in tune with how we garden here – with our dreams and aspirations, who knew and admired the same international gardens, trends and people who have inspired us, who has walked such a similar gardening path across the decades – yet we had never met before. We don’t accept many tour bookings these days but it was on the strength of that shared ground that I agreed to Michael bringing his masterclass tour here.

A tour is not the time for extended conversations between the tour leader and the garden host because it is focused on making the experience as good as possible for the tour participants but we did have a brief conversation – again – about garden edgings. Regular readers will recognise this topic from earlier writings. I am not a fan and I am busy removing unnecessary edgings, particularly in the Avenue Garden. Michael McCoy and I agree on this topic. As far as I am concerned, there are only a few reasons for garden edgings – be they in a row of identical plants or a more permanent material. One practical reason is to retain mulch on the garden bed when the birds will otherwise scratch and distribute it onto adjacent areas; another is to retain the garden when there is a variation in level with the path either higher or lower than the surrounding planted areas; the third reason is to stop people walking on planted areas but this no longer applies now that we no longer open to the public. I have been reviewing all our garden edgings and removing those that are not necessary. When we cut a sharp line at the edge of a lawn, do we need another sharp line on the edge of the garden? No, we do not.

The fourth reason for edgings is entirely aesthetic and values-based. It is to make a garden look tidy. I laughed when, immediately after the tour left, I came inside and my news feed showed me this: Gardening: Hedges and edges add structure – and hide weeds. It is paywalled, I am  sorry, but just the heading, the accompanying photo and the bio note on the author will give you the flavour of the piece. I read the whole article and it is not that there is anything wrong in what the author has written. It is just that he is espousing the widespread use of both hedging and particularly edging plants to give definition to a garden and to add formality. His views on good gardening are very different to where our thinking is. Many gardeners favour this approach and will happily edge their gardens in compact buxus (B. koreana is a better option than the more common suffruticosa or sempervirens in these days of buxus blight), euonymus, liriope or dwarf carex.

It made me realise again just how far we have moved from seeing gardens as orderly, tidy affairs that sit on the landscape. Instead, we want to garden in a way that sits harmoniously within the wider environment, working with nature rather than imposing rigid control. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks, as the saying goes. There are other ways to garden.

Not exactly straightjacketed into tidy orderliness down by the stream where the Higo iris are blooming

It was most affirming to meet somebody with considerable international experience who shares our gardening values. If you want to see more of Michael McCoy’s writings, photographs and videos on related topics, you will find him by his name on both Facebook and Instagram or his own site, https://thegardenist.com.au/

Not a lion in the meadow, a Ralph in the meadow

We have had Ralph for over two years now and he has met a reasonable number of visitors and several tours but I have never seen him perform as he did with this tour. He was sure he was the star in front of an appreciative audience. “Look at me! See how high I can jump! I can almost fly!” as he launched himself in the air after a passing bumblebee. “Follow me. This way please.” “Look over here!” “And here!” “Stand aside, dog coming through.” This continued all the way around the garden, where he must have covered ten times the distance of the humans. I suspect he was rewarded at afternoon tea with tastings of cake and biscuits – thereby breaking our iron rule of never feeding him tidbits when we are eating – but that is the way of tour groups. He was exhausted when they left and zonked out to sleep. Life has been very quiet for him in the days since.

The Higo iris are flowering in the park and truly, it is one of my favourite times of year in that area. Every year they make my heart sing in delight.

Purple penstemons, euphorbia and bright alstromeria in the borders. I haven’t had much success with penstemons in the past but now think I should try more.

It seems that the rabbit family who live beneath the swimming pool deck, who used to chew the lilac blue campanula to the ground, have gone and the next generations haven’t realised they are edible. One of the more compact alstromerias behind – name unknown.

Sisyrinchium striatum, I think, with white Iris sibirica. It is a pretty iris but very soft in the petal so it is inclined to weather mark more than other Siberian iris we grow.

Even with the best laid plans, volunteers can arrive and look as if they belong. I have NO recollection of planting the purple Higo iris by the the Phlomis russeliana and I am sure I never planted the euphorbia. The colour contrasts are startling but I like that in the summer borders.

Seeing through another’s eyes and TMF here

I am fine with the foxgloves in the Iolanthe Garden but there are no common pink ones

We no longer open for the springtime garden festival here but it is still a time of year when out-of-town friends come to see the garden. One such friend is an Auckland garden designer. I never ask for advice because I think seeking free advice is not much different to asking a medical professional for personal advice at a social event. Some lines should not be crossed. On the flip side, both Mark and I have a policy of not offering unsolicited advice in somebody else’s garden, no matter how tempting at the time, so this may all be a bit self-defeating. Our designer friend has a similar approach but he asked one simple question. We were looking at the Court Garden and he said three words, “Why the foxgloves’?

The large flowered yellow Verbascum creticum is fine but the foxgloves were just wrong in that situation

I suddenly looked through his eyes and indeed it was a good question to ask. I went to some trouble when I planted the garden back in 2019 to add palest, pastel coloured foxgloves to add some height and flowers in spring and I have let them gently seed down. Well, at the time they were meant to be pure white ones but they turned out pastel. I had not questioned their presence since but when I looked with different eyes, it occurred to me that they are, in fact, insipid in that situation. I looked at them for the next two days and on the third day, I pulled the lot out. When I sent a text to my friend to say they were gone, he just replied with the single word “Good”.

Flowering or not, once the decision was made, they had to go

Besides, we were running the danger of TMF – Too Many Foxgloves. For years, I have been so focused on pulling out every common pink one and even paler pink versions of it (because foxglove seed will naturally revert to the unattractive pink form) that I hadn’t looked at the overall picture. While I am particularly fond of the pure white form, especially in the Iolanthe garden which is more perennial meadow than anything else and down in the park, we don’t want them everywhere. It is time to review all locations where we have allowed them to grow and time to limit their range.

It is not even an attractive pink and it doesn’t combine well with other colours. I regard it as a weed.

I went to see a garden during the recent festival which I hadn’t seen for many years and now has new owners. It was a very nice garden and well maintained but as I walked around, I thought to myself that if they asked me for advice, it would be to pull out 90% of their dark pink foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) , if not the lot of them, leaving just the white ones. They have let them seed everywhere and, to my eyes, it was a definite case of TMF. They didn’t ask, so I didn’t comment. But it made me more aware of letting them grow here in our garden.

No matter how good a plant is, it is still a mistake to have too much of it. I refer not just to foxgloves but also forget-me-nots, mondo grass, common verbascums, Verbena bonariensis, pansies, aquilegias and a host of other plants that self seed around the garden. In our garden, I would also add tree ferns, nikau palms (Rhopalostylis sapida) and kawakawa (Macropiper excelsum) to that list.

It wasn’t the gladious that was the problem; it was the foxgloves

Interestingly, as soon as I removed the pastel foxgloves from the Court Garden, having decided they were the wrong plant and too pallid, the anything-but-insipid Gladiolus dalenii syn natalensis no longer looked out of place at all; it changed from looking somewhat garish to vibrant instead. It can stay after all. It has only just dawned on me that the reason the foxgloves looked insipid in that location is the background. In the Court Garden, they were surrounded by plants that were either pale green hues or silver or many shades of brown. They look more charming in situations surrounded by masses of darker or brighter shades of green. I should have noticed this earlier.

A garden is never finished and even with an established garden, fine tuning it is what keeps it interesting. Sometimes, seeing it through somebody else’s eyes can be very helpful and small changes can make a big difference. I might ask for more advice from people whose opinions I value. Maybe it is not the same as asking my dentist about toothache over social cocktails after all.

The Court Garden with Verbascum creticum but no foxgloves any longer