Tag Archives: Abbie Jury

Show time!

It is the time of the year when the deciduous azaleas star and there aren’t too many plants that star in bloom as they do. For 49 weeks of the year, they are largely ignored and then boom!

If you set aside the flower power, deciduous azaleas are a fairly unremarkable plant, at least in our conditions. I have never seen one with exceptionally attractive form. In winter when they have no leaves, they tend to look twiggy, scruffy and dead. With their fresh foliage in spring, they are generally unremarkable. By the end of summer, in our mild, humid conditions, the foliage is often mildewed. As I went around photographing ours on Thursday, I thought they would look better if we did a big round on taking out the dead wood, which we haven’t done for some years. This is a task best done when the plants are in leaf because in winter, it is hard to tell the difference between dead wood and live wood. But even when we clean them up in this way, it is still very hard to turn an azalea shrub into a good form which stands on its own merit because their growth habit is so twiggy, so formless.

These shortcomings are forgiven when they come into bloom. Masses of bloom, often strongly scented and the colour range is extensive. Some have a vibrance and mass that is rarely equalled. ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ they shout. Others are much more restrained in hue if you can’t think how to integrate the pure colour of the oranges, reds and yellows.

We have a fair swag of them, mostly planted between the 1950s and the 1960s. Some came into the garden as named varieties but the names have been lost in the mists of time. Felix Jury immediately used these in controlled crosses and raised more from seed. Mark also dabbled in turn, particularly with getting double flowers. Deciduous azaleas are one member of the rhododendron family that I think you can safely buy based on flower colour alone, without worrying about searching out particular varieties.

Most of our azaleas are surrounded by large expanses of green. And a rhododendron is not going to survive being planted right on the streambank like this azalea (which is itself a member of the rhododendron family but let us not be pedantic).

Azaleas are useful because they are nowhere near as touchy about growing conditions as most rhododendrons, particularly wet feet, as we refer to heavy soils that never dry out. In those earlier days, our park was prone to flooding. They will also tolerate dry and exposed conditions, living and growing when many rhododendrons will quietly give up the ghost and die. We only have a few deciduous azaleas in the cultivated gardens around the house; most are in the looser areas of the park and the  Wild North Garden. And therein lies a lesson on placement. I don’t think they are an easy plant to place well in smaller, urban gardens, especially the strong coloured varieties.

It is hard to place a plant as dominant as this when in bloom in a smaller, town section planted in the soft pinks of springtime.

I drive past such a small garden every time I go to town. Freshly planted, my guess is that the owners went to the garden centre in spring and bought everything in flower that they liked. It has been particularly pretty this spring with both Magnolia Felix Jury and Iolanthe putting on a show despite their small stature at this early stage, along with some very pretty cherry blossoms, rhododendrons and camellias. And, this week, one garish deciduous azalea in bright yellow. I can see why they bought it but it does rather stand out as lacking harmony with the rest of the garden. The more restrained colours are easier to integrate.

I think our brightest azaleas work because they are standing pretty much in isolation surrounded by masses of green. When they have finished flowering, they will just be another shrub down in the park, like a neutral coloured cushion on a sofa. It is much harder to place them well in a small garden.

If you are in New Zealand and want to buy a deciduous azalea or three, do it right now. This is not a plant that fits modern methods of production and retail so you are unlikely to find them easily when they are not in bloom. Garden centres are not keen on them because they only sell when in flower.

I briefly attempted to disentangle the differences between deciduous, mollis, Ilam and Ghent azaleas, to name just a few groups. Mark gave me a potted history of the azalea in Aotearoa New Zealand and names like Exbury, Stead, Yeats and Denis Hughes all came up, along with notable collections around the country when they were a very popular plant several decades ago. Alas, I am not so fascinated by the genus as to give the time to fact check it all. I will say that if you use the broad term of ‘deciduous azaleas’, it will encompass the lot.

I picked one flower from each azalea that I could reach currently in flower, just to show the range of colour, size and flower form.
The three double white flowers are Mark’s efforts. I did not know this until he saw me laying out the flower board selection.
Too much? I admit there is a whole lot of this orange wonder in its location in a wilder area of the park where it has thrived, untouched by human hands for decades.

My lukewarm attitude to big red rhododendrons

Noyo Chief, big, bold and red.

Back in the days when we used to retail plants, I would quip that nine out of every ten big, red rhododendrons were bought by men; the tenth was usually bought by a woman for her husband. This may well be an exaggeration but it made me view big, red, rhodos as very… well… masculine.

Looking down to the park. Noyo Chief on the right, polyandrum on the left of the mown path. And photobombing Ralph in the foreground.

It may be that, in the intervening years, men have matured beyond that manly cliché and refined their tastes. I couldn’t possibly comment. This train of thought came back to me as I stood looking down one of the tracks to our park. On one side is a large, handsome plant of ‘Noyo Chief’ in full bloom and on the other side of the track is R. polyandrum in flower. My brain registered that ‘Noyo Chief’ was putting on its usual showy display but my heart drew me down to look more closely at polyandrum. It is all a matter of taste and preference. I can see  the merit of the big red but it was the gentler charm of the very fragrant, loose-flowered cream that stirred my emotions.

Polyandrum with its heavily scented, large flowers that measure up to 17cm across but not your classic ball truss of a rhododendron.

Back in the early 1980s, Mark started the nursery here. We will give his father, Felix, credit for many things but contrary to what some people still think, he did not start the nursery. That was all Mark’s effort, from one wheelbarrow up. He started with rhododendrons as the main line and, as one in four New Zealanders lived in the Auckland area at the time (now more or less, one in three), he always had the goal to produce rhododendrons more suited to their climate. This meant varieties that would keep good foliage and not need regular spraying in a mild, high humidity climate that lacked winter chill.

The NZ hybrid Rubicon is one of the best reds – my camera has turned it pinker than it is to the naked eye. But you can see the silvering on the leaves which is a sign of thrips which we get badly in mild climates. This plant flowered brilliantly for years and then simply… died.

There are a few big ball truss types that perform well in Auckland and this includes the arboreums, many of which are big reds. ‘Kaponga’ is a good example. But it was the maddenii group that Mark targeted. Felix had already found that they performed way better here in our mild, humid climate, keeping healthy foliage without spraying, flowering abundantly every year and many, if not most, had fragrance. Most of Felix’s successful hybrids are from within the maddenii group – ‘Bernice’, ‘Moon Orchid’, ‘Floral Dance’ and ‘Barbara Jury’, amongst others.

This is an unnamed maddenii from Felix’s breeding – the same cross that gave Moon Orchid and Felicity Fair.
The same maddenii beside white Mount Everest. I like that contrast of the looser maddenii with the chunky sturdiness of the ball truss on Everest.

Alas, none of the maddeniis have big, ball trusses that are generally associated with rhododendrons. Nor do they come in red, be it bright red or dark red or pure red. And the maddeniis don’t have that chunky, solid, rounded form of growth seen in many rhododendrons, instead being much looser in form. We spent years working hard to convince the buying public of their merits. It often felt like pushing the proverbial excrement uphill and I don’t miss those days at all. These days, I am happy to enjoy them in our own garden. The maddeniis make my heart sing more than any other group of rhododendrons. Personal taste and all that.

Rhododendron nuttallii x lindleyi ‘Stead’s Best’ delights me far more than any big, bold red.

As a postscript to big red rhododendrons, let me tell the story of ‘Fireman Jeff’. Back in the early days of the nursery, our country’s borders were much looser and there was a lot of new material coming into the country. Mark bought all the new hybrids he could find locally, mostly originating from the USA. It was the era of plants like ‘Lems Monarch’, ‘Lems Cameo’, ‘Puget Sound’, ‘Trude Webster’ and so many more. I see our 1990 mailorder catalogue ran to a full 127 different rhododendron options, which seems a huge number for what was still a small nursery. ‘Fireman Jeff’ was amongst those recent imports. Mark and I must have been a bit tired in 1989 when we wrote its description for our catalogue:

Fireman Jeff (Jean Marie de Montague x Grosclaude) 2m Mid season.

This over-rated hybrid is best suited to a cooler climate where its bright red, almost hose in hose flowers could make a splendid feature in your neighbour’s garden. Large plants $10.00.

I see a year later, in 1990, we changed our tune a bit and wrote: “To prove our comments last year wrong, it flowered beautifully for us this season. Better suited to cooler climates where it may justify its good reputation.” And we had put the price up to $15.50. We dropped if from our range, though, because it wasn’t suitable for our target market.

I lack any photos of Fireman Jeff. This instead is another maddenii seedling.

‘Fireman Jeff’ is still being sold extensively but the advice remains sound – best in cooler climates (south or inland) with winter chill and lower humidity. Keeping to the arboreums and maddeniis is a safer move if, like us, you are high humidity and lacking winter chill. With a garden dating back to the early 1950s here, we can speak with some authority on the rhododendrons that have lasted the distance in these conditions.

These are both unnamed seedlings but again, that combination of the tight ball truss and the loose maddenii bells pleases me.

Spring in the woodland gardens

Red Hippeastrum aulicum, pale yellow calanthe orchids and Crinum moorei varegata are all mainstays of our woodland plantings

It has been a difficult week, so all I have to entertain readers with this week is scenes from the spring woodland. We like highly detailed woodland.

High shade is the key – here in the Avenue Garden

The key to woodland gardening here is to manage light levels. The charming scenes we see of European and British woodlands – the expanse of white birches underplanted with snowdrops and crocuses and that sort of thing – are beneath deciduous trees which let light in during winter and shoulder seasons.

Trilliums are a bit marginal in our climate so it is always a thrill to see their understated charm
Scadoxus, however, are so happy here that they have pretty much naturalised themselves. This is S. puniceus which flowers in spring. S. katherinae will feature in summer.

In Aotearoa, somewhere over 99% of our native flora is evergreen and most people tend to garden with exotic evergreens as a preference. In our years of retail, I encountered many gardeners who would reject anything deciduous. As a result, we don’t get the seasonal light coming into shaded areas. Also, with our rapid growth rates, trees tend to grow much larger. As UK author and horticulturist, John Hillier inscribed in our copy of Hiller Manual of Trees and Shrubs, ‘double heights and halve the time for New Zealand’. Dare I say it, UK woodlands often look quite spindly to my eyes.

Orchids, we have a few. These are pleiones. We lost all the yellow ones that need more of a winter chill but the purple, lilac and white varieties thrive under laissez faire management in the woodland garden.
More orchids – dendrobium to the left and cymbidium to the right

Woodland gardening means dappled light and some shade, but not deep shade. There aren’t many flowering plants that will perform in deep shade. Lifting, limbing and thinning are needed to create high shade and to allow reasonable light levels below.

The Rimu Avenue has such a dense network of roots from trees that are now over 150 years old that we have had to rebuild soil below to allow underplanting

There are also times when the soils below will need some extra texture, volume and replenishment in order to get small plants established. Small plants at ground level won’t thrive if they are bedded in amongst dense tree roots which have dried out the surface.

It is not all bulbs in our woodlands. Azaleas, vireya rhododendrons, camellias, hydrangeas and other shrubs add mid-level detail and height.

On the upside, even high shade and dappled light is enough to hugely reduce weed growth and the visual delight lies both in the detail below and the play of light. It is much lower maintenance than gardening in full sun.

Why a difficult week, you may wonder. We nearly lost our beloved dog Ralph to poison – not our poison and not deliberate but traumatic, nonetheless. We thought he was going to die on Tuesday night. He is still recovering and we are now confident he will survive, although there is a possibility of long-term organ damage.

Ralph in happier times

It is perhaps little understood in this country that our predator-free goals are only achievable with the extremely widespread use of slow-acting poisons, one of which has no antidote. There is a pretty gung-ho attitude and light regulation when it comes to the use of poison. We choose not to use it and will trap and shoot instead. Ralph’s ordeal this week is a reminder to us of why we made that decision. Our lives would have been so much poorer had he died so needlessly and in distress.

Charming erythroniums or dogs tooth violets – best left undisturbed as much as possible because their long, thin bulbs sit vertically in the soil and are fearfully easy to snap when digging.
Lachenalia aloides tricolor on the margins of woodland where light levels are higher. With a white trillium popping up through them and snowdrop foliage to the right.

Magnolia delight

The roadside. On the far left is Honey Tulip and there is a Black Tulip also there that is not visible. Fairy Magnolia Cream, Serene, Iolanthe, Felix Jury, Athene and Fairy Magnolia Blush.

I see it was twelve years ago that I wrote about generous gardeners. Not those who readily share plants but those who plant up areas for other’s enjoyment. I remembered that article this week because of a beautiful stretch of roadside on the outskirts of our small town that I drive by almost every time I leave our property. It is a spectacular row of magnolias that goes from strength to strength every year. It edges grass paddocks where the owners graze a few stock.

Looking back from halfway along the row

The thing about this row of magnolias is that its purpose is to delight passers-by. The owners, Pat and Brian, can’t see it from their house which is on the adjacent section. Pat, in particular, is a keen gardener and they keep a detailed and heavily ornamented garden around the house but the row of magnolias is for the benefit of passing traffic, be it in vehicles or on foot.

Magnolia Athene
Fairy Magnolia Cream

I called in yesterday to ask their permission to share the photos and, with their usual generous spirit, they said ‘any time. Our garden is your garden’. I had thought I might ask Pat if I could photograph her but it was a rushed visit and I didn’t want to embarrass her. She commented that she thought the magnolias were better this year than ever before and many people are admiring them. “I tell everybody they are Abbie’s magnolias.”

Magnolia Felix Jury just finishing flowering in Pat and Brian’s roadside row

We have had this conversation before. What you have to understand is that this row of magnolias is not far off being a complete collection of Jury magnolias. In vain, do I tell her that they are Felix and Mark’s plants. In Pat’s mind, they are mine.

I do remember giving Pat this plant of Honey Tulip
Honey Tulip – Mark’s only yellow on the market. So far.

She remembers me giving her most of the plants. I remember giving her one and may have given her a few more but she was a very good customer of ours in the days when we used to retail plants. I have always admired Pat’s eye for a good plant. She lacks any curiosity about plants, rarely remembers names, won’t grow bulbs because they are untidy when they finish flowering but she has a good eye and picks out plants she likes solely on their appearance. She has a garden with plants like Camellia yuhsienensis, Rhododendron veitchianum and other choice varieties tucked in with garden centre utility options and plants she has picked up on special. I find her approach to gardening refreshingly honest and unpretentious while also being very capable.

Pat’s plant of Rhododendron veitchianum. It wasn’t until I got up close to it that I realised the striking colour contrast was cineraria.

What makes these magnolias interesting to us is that Pat and Brian garden very differently to how we do. The magnolias are planted in the open, exposed to pretty much every wind that blows. They are not mulched and the ground around them is kept bare. They are not trimmed or clipped. I would guess that they were well fertilised when getting established but are now left to their own devices. In those exposed, open conditions,  they are performing better than many of the ones we have here in our own garden which is sheltered from most winds.

Serene is one of Felix Jury’s lesser known hybrids but worthy of more attention. A later season magnolia, it is very lovely.

Wind is a big issue in this country of long thin islands set amidst vast oceans. Wind hardiness is a big factor in the selection of magnolias in our breeding programme. Petals that are of a softer, thinner texture and flower forms that are looser in structure fall apart when it blows hard. We see it every year on some of the magnolias here – particularly M. sprengeri ‘Diva’, M. sargentiana var. robusta and even the stellatas (star magnolias) and their hybrids. We have seen spectacular displays on some of these and similar magnolias in less windy countries – memorably in the Dandenongs in Australia and in the north of Italy. We don’t have that leeway here. So, it is interesting to see the Jury magnolias in very open conditions, still putting up mass displays of blooms that are largely untroubled by the many storm fronts that pass over in our early spring time.

A small plant of Magnolia Iolanthe with many OTT blooms

A few doors down from Pat and Brian’s home is a house with this little Magnolia ‘Iolanthe’ in bloom – showy enough for me to stop the car and photograph from the roadside. The plant can only have been in the ground two or three years and I haven’t noticed it in flower before, although there is a young plant of ‘Felix Jury’ a few metres away in the same garden that catches my eye when in flower, every time I drive past. But look at ‘Iolanthe’ strutting her stuff! I counted around 30 blooms and opening buds on this very small plant.

Magnolia Iolanthe

I am a big fan of front gardens and roadside plantings. They make the world a better place for us all, or at least for those of us who notice them.

STILL pruning…

It is an experience shared by most gardeners. I will just get this (smallish) job done and then go on to something else. And that smallish job expands from a few hours to days or even weeks. So it is with trimming camellias, about which I wrote last week. I am still doing it.

A rare sight these days – good flowers on Jury’s Pearl.

We don’t trim a lot of camellias, I thought to myself. And then I added them up. Excluding the camellia hedges – and there is a fair distance of those – I reached about 40 that get individual attention every year. That is not a lot compared to the number of camellias we have which must be several hundred, but it is still quite time consuming. Some we trim to be feature plants; some we trim to freeze them in size.

A relatively dry winter has meant we have had a better show this year. It doesn’t resemble the mass displays we used to get before the devastation wrought by camellia petal blight but there have been some pretty blooms. Most of our larger flowered camellias are retained as shelter, screening, wind breaks or their attractive form, certainly not for floral display because that is but a memory and the larger flowered types get hammered by petal blight. It means more work to ensure that in key spots in the garden, we have to make that attractive green form visually effective in order to justify keeping them. We have a strong preference for the small flowered varieties which do still put on a good show. And autumn flowering sasanquas, of course but they are long finished.

Fairy Wand has been reduced to a skeleton and we may drop it lower yet. We try and keep a good framework when we are cutting camellias very hard, not cutting off at ground level.
That is A LOT of Fairy Wand piled up to be mulched

Camellia ‘Fairy Wand’ started life as a miniature back in the days when miniature only applied to the flower size and not, as most people assumed, growth habit. Bred by Os Blumhardt in Whangarei, Mark planted it, ‘Gay Baby’ and ‘Tiny Star’, also from the same breeder, beside our driveway. After about 40 years, they were all about six metres tall and in a decidedly leggy state, with wayward branches being cut off to keep the driveway clear. We stagger our extreme pruning here. ‘Tiny Star’ was cut back two years and is now a bushy little column shape about two metres tall. This week was ‘Fairy Wand’s’ turn for drastic treatment. ‘Gay Baby’ will be done at some stage in the next two years, when ‘Fairy Wand’ has rejuvenated. We don’t want a row of three massacred plants. It took Zach all of an hour to cut back the Fairy and about the same length of time for Lloyd to mulch it up for wood chip.

Taking Fairy Wand down behind gives this tableau of clipped camellias a whole lot more impact, especially the cloud-pruned sasanqua Elfin Rose. We are now thinking of dropping Fairy Wand behind even lower so it stays below the cloud pruning.

As an aside, it is possible to rejuvenate most michelias in the same manner. You do need to start with plants that are growing strongly because if they aren’t, the shock may kill them but we have, upon occasion, cut michelias as ruthlessly to promote bushy fresh growth.

Itty Bit in the centre after being reduced in size by about 40%

While Zach may only have taken an hour on ‘Fairy Wand’, I have spent many hours on others and that is because we want the form and shape on a healthy plant. I probably removed about 40% of ‘Itty Bit’ to reach this stage.

Camellia Hakuhan-kujaku – a shadow of its former self

It took me ages to get ‘Hakuhan-kujaku’, the peacock camellia, to this state. I took out at least 60% of it and it looks a whole lot better for the time spent. Shapely, not hacked or massacred.

Camellia minutiflora front right, Itty Bit behind

Little C. minutiflora is one of my absolute favourites, though hard to get photographs that do it justice so you will just have to take my word that it is a little charmer. It is a more recent planting so I probably only took 25% off it. At least it will only be a tidy-up trim for the next few years until there is so much congested growth and crossed branches that it is time to spend hours laboriously picking over every branch again.

My secateurs and pruning saw are my best friends at the moment. If you are wondering where to start on this type of pruning, I start by looking at the plant from every angle. Because we are trying to keep the plants from getting tall and leggy, I first take out growths on top that are going straight up instead of bushing out sideways. Then I work around the perimeter, reducing the spread, always trimming growth flush to the branch or trunk. Then I get into the middle and take out crossing branches. Finally, I get underneath and trim from below, making sure there is cover across the top while taking out surplus growths and branches below. I spend a lot of time looking and tracing where main branches go. This is why it takes time.

Look! Just look at this exquisite little chaffinch nest lined in soft feathers. Must the chaffinches start all over again because we humans destroyed their nest? Disclaimer – this one was blown down in a storm.

At this time of the year, I remember the warning from friend and colleague, Glyn Church. Pruning needs to be finished very soon on taller trees and shrubs. The birds are nest building and will be laying eggs. Unless you are okay with destroying days of hard work by individual birds and killing off their young, time is of the essence.

They are just common, pesky blackbirds but it still does not feel right to kill them for human convenience or by human carelessness.
A tui nest.