The stone trough dates back to the 1800s. With Japanese maple and rhodohypoxis
I am over big containers of plants. So over them, I got rid of more than 30 medium and large pots this week (proceeds to charity). I have four left with plants in them – at our gateway – and I am wondering whether they are necessary. Oh, and two vintage stone troughs with a pedigree that goes back over 100 years and the poor plants in one of those need urgent attention.
I scrubbed off the carefully cultivated patina of moss and lichen for the new owner
It is different in a small garden. I know that. And I am not opposed to the modern fashion of having a large number of plants in containers making a flexible display, as long as they are plants in high health. It is just a lot of work and a lot of heavy work to keep those plants worthy of being featured, let alone changing the display. In a very large garden such as we have, I have decided we don’t need them. I found I did not even get around to moving some of the medium sized containers from “out the back” to display at their peak because I could not be bothered manoeuvring them into a wheelbarrow and risking back injury. And I don’t want to be watering in the summer months.
The verandah pots at Jenny Oakley’s garden near Manaia in peak health
After years of running a commercial container nursery, I know a lot about growing plants in containers. The smaller your pot, the more often you need to repot, water and feed. But even large pots need regular attention and should be repotted entirely at least every two years. The larger the pot and the plant, the harder this becomes so most people avoid doing it, until the day when the poor plant has gone into such major decline that it can no longer be ignored. Or the pot has cracked or broken because of the outward pressure. And you can’t just keep potting permanent container plants to ever larger containers. At some point you have to get into root pruning and all the work that entails.
I have witnessed many aberrations in good taste in containers and ancillary decoration over the years. Garish blue pots continue to infest the country – particularly Taranaki gardens, due to the high volume sold by a local importer some years ago. Having long rid myself of these lapses in good taste (planted up with burgundy plants, as I recall), close friends live in fear of my sniffy derision at their 1990s blue relics. I maintain a discreet silence unless they are good friends. Similarly, cheap pots adorned with glazed pictures of bamboo or sunflowers left these premises many years ago. I had it down to aged terracotta, neutral shades, hypertufa or stone.
But only the small pots remain. There are a few plants that need to be kept containerised, especially invasive bulbs or vulnerable treasures, but I do not think I will miss the detail of the other plants I had around the garden. I can always go garden visiting and admire them in other people’s gardens.
Beautiful pots don’t even need a plant in them – photographed in Lynda Hallinan’s garden near Auckland
The deciduous azaleas certainly add vibrancy to the late spring garden as we enter November. They are not all so breathtakingly unsubtle. But I guess, were a plant to think like a human, if you are going to spend 11 months of the year being pretty insignificant, you might as well make a loud statement when it is your time to star.
The area of our garden that we refer to as ‘the park’ was first planted in the early 1950s, in the style then promoted by the New Zealand Rhododendron Association. Plants stand in solitary splendour which gives them their own space, plenty of air movement and the ability to be viewed from all aspects. While it has changed and matured over the intervening six decades, the deciduous azaleas still thrive in this environment with minimal attention.
Azaleas are all part of the wider rhododendron family. Evergreen ones originate from Japan while the deciduous azaleas are much more widespread in the temperate world, being found in China, Japan, Korea, southern Russia and North America. Most of what are grown now are hybrids with very mixed genetics.They are often inaccurately referred to as Ilam azaleas or azalea mollis in this country. “Mollis” refers to a particular cross deriving from A. molle and A. japonicum, originating from early plant breeders in Holland and Belgium. The Ilam azaleas came from the breeding done in Christchurch but have strong links to the Exbury azaleas, also referred to as the Knap Hill hybrids. Then there are the Ghent azaleas, which originated from that area in Belgium. Confused? It is really difficult to disentangle when in fact the most accurate description is simply to refer to them as “deciduous azaleas”.
First published in the November issue of New Zealand Gardener and reprinted here with their permission.
I spent the past week in Sydney, helping our second daughter move into her new apartment. This was a larger task than either she or I had anticipated so left little time for things horticultural. But oh the jacarandas were lovely, used widely as street trees and in front gardens in the eastern suburbs. Sydney is a great deal warmer than Tikorangi – 
Daughter’s apartment is on the third floor. No lift. It’s not too bad – the stairs are well designed to make it easy. But I mention the third floor because that is several Magnolia Little Gems and a handsome red bougainvillea growing level with her apartment balcony. I have written about 
Over the years I have seen a number of small English backyards where the only access way is via the house and thought that would be tricky. I can now say that these are eclipsed by apartments with no lift. ‘I will repot her container plants while I am here,’ I thought. Or at least the kentia palm and the tired peace lily which looked as if it was on the point of surrendering. I briefly toyed with carrying the plants down to the potting mix where there was a bit of communal garden so the mess wouldn’t matter, but decided it would be easier to carry the potting mix up and do it on the balcony. I wasn’t sure there was an outdoor tap and the rootballs needed a good soak. Logistically, it is harder than you think. Believe me. I was trying to contain the mess but even so some of the debris and the water went over the edge and I worried about alienating the lower apartment residents. The spent potting mix then had to be carried downstairs to spread. These were new challenges for me and I will look upon apartment gardeners with even greater respect. Undeterred, Daughter reclaimed her closed unit worm farm from a previous dwelling and located it discreetly at the back of the ‘landscaped’ communal area. Her kitchen scraps need to be carried downstairs anyway, so she figured she might as well keep them separate, feed the worms and use the liquid fertiliser they generate. It makes you proud to be the parent.
The kentia palm, I noted, is in fact three kentias (Howea forsteriana from Lord Howe Island) and there were at least five seeds sown in the original pot. That is a nursery technique to get a larger plant in a shorter space of time. Naturally I wondered about separating them but daughter needed one attractive kentia, not three smaller ones going into shock from such brutal treatment.
Greater love hath no mother than shopping for plastic items in Kmart but I did also get to wander through the plant section of a Bunnings store while we were doing a mission in search of home handyperson supplies. For $A26.90, you can buy a novelty houseplant of germinated “Black Bean” seeds. These are 
The calanthes are ground orchids and we have big clumps now because these obliging plants can just be left to quietly increase in size. These are fully evergreen and somewhat frost tender but they are a delightful sight through spring and they combine very well with clivias, ferns and even hostas.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 