Tag Archives: gardening

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 13 July, 2012

Spring must be getting close – dwarf Narcissus Twilight is opening

Last week was garden bed…

Latest posts:
1) The Great Garden Make Over (aka renovating the rose garden). Not quick, not even that easy, but hugely satisfying.
2) They were the first narcissi to flower this season – Narcissus bulbocodium citrinus ‘Pandora’. However, others are starting to open, including the little Felix Jury hybrid ‘Twinkle’ above.
3) Grow it Yourself – tamarillos, this week. Yet another subtropical fruit, from South America again this one, that we have taken over in this country as if it were our own – even to the extent of branding it tamarillo!
4) Away from gardening and on to recipe books – 500 Tapas reviewed.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 13 July 2012

The work in the rose garden has absorbed all my recent energies, and a good deal of Lloyd’s too. If the rain had just held off for another couple of days, it would have been finished but intermittent showers and the developing mud has driven me indoors.

Camellia Fairy Blush

Camellia Fairy Blush is looking particularly pretty in our little hedge. This was the first camellia Mark ever named – a scented, lutchuensis hybrid. Mark is not given to exaggeration or overstating matters so he was always rather deprecating about Fairy Blush. “It’s just a little single,” he would say, “but it does flower well and has reasonable scent.” Yes, it is a little single that flowers for several months on end and is as fragrant as any camellia, on a compact plant which clips very well. These days we regard it as the one that got away from us. We should probably have taken out Plant Variety Rights (a plant patent) on it. It is now a market standard in both Australia and New Zealand and it can be a little galling when nurserymen tell you how very well they have done out of your plant. Such is life. But then we have learned the hard way that even agreements and Plant Variety Rights don’t necessarily give market protection either. We would still plant Fairy Blush in our own garden and recommend it to others, even if it wasn’t our cultivar and that is a fair testimonial.

Our hedge of Camellia Fairy Blush

Renovating the rose garden

At its best, the rose garden looked good…

Don’t ask us for garden advice. We hand out endless plant advice and I write regularly about many gardening matters but we do not dispense personal on site advice. This is not for want of requests but oft-times, all the person asking wants is for you to affirm that they are right. Besides, advice carries an implicit suggestion that you think the gardener is not doing it as well as you could. And that doesn’t always go down well.

But there are times when an outside view can be extremely helpful. We have a garden which we loosely call the rose garden or the “sunken garden area”. It is a formal area, laid out in the early fifties and planted by Mark’s mother with her beloved old fashioned roses. These days it would be called a garden room. Over the years, it has had a lot of work done on it including several major renovations. And still it didn’t work as well as I wanted. Sure it looked pretty in spring but it didn’t look pretty enough for long enough. Worse, I just didn’t like working in the garden. I would avoid it until it could no longer be ignored. Clearly something wasn’t right but we were failing to come up with a diagnosis.

Enter a house guest last spring. It was Neil Ross, whom some readers will know from his writing in NZ Gardener. He used to be head gardener at Ayrlies in Auckland but since then, has been working in gardening and design in England. I asked for his thoughts but in busy schedules, it came down to grabbing a few minutes at dusk. To my surprise, that was all we needed. We stood in the garden, wine glasses in hand and Neil nailed it for me.

“Gosh,” he said, “that really is a deep sunken garden.” (This had never even occurred to me. I just knew it had been dug by hand by Mark’s dad, aided by a draught horse). “And that is accentuated by the height of the standard roses. They’re really high. I’ve never seen such tall standards.”

In the following 90 seconds, he fired out suggestions. Get rid of the tallest standard roses. Remove the far border “which merely creates yet another path that I bet nobody ever walks down” (true, Neil). Make the borders wider on the main bed to compensate and lift all the perennials and reorganise them. Instead of the classic mix and match of perennials and bulbs, he suggested I opt for “more blocky plantings” and simple combinations of two or three plants in each block.

That was it. I knew instantly that he was right on the mark but I left it to percolate in my brain until a couple of weeks ago. Besides, such drastic changes needed to be done in winter. It clearly involved moving a lot of plants. Besides, while the advice may have been given in 90 seconds of inspiration, there was quite a lot of solid work in implementation. The garden beds are all hard edged – with footed concrete. Getting rid of one bed entirely is a major operation in itself, especially as we wanted to salvage the 15 year old maples and handsome weeping camellia. There are a lot of plants in just one bed. That said, roses are easy to move – at least compared to other shrubs.

Recycling the turf from the extended borders to the defunct garden bed

I admit I have had help. The concrete garden edgings have been cut into manageable lengths and recycled where needed. This means that once completed and in full growth again, the garden will look as if it has been in place forever. Nothing shouts recent renovation more than pristine fresh concrete. And I am not the one who is recycling the squares of turf from the enlarged borders over to the area where the surplus bed has gone. But my job involves digging the entire garden, lifting all the perennials and bulbs, dividing them and replanting in new combinations. That has been Serious Fun. I speak in gardening terms and while gardening is many things, Serious Fun is not usually one of them. More on new perennial plantings next week.

We have been blessed with wonderful weather. A very wet winter would not have made this easy at all and I am hoping to finish this week before we get the wet, cold rains that will arrive, without doubt, sometime soon.

The upshot of all this, is that I would counsel readers that if you have an area of your garden that you do not enjoy working in, this may be an indication that there is something inherently wrong with it. I was lucky that the right person happened along eventually and gave me a rapid fire diagnosis. The best people to give advice are those who know at least as much as you do about gardening and design and who do not have an emotional investment in you acting on their advice. If you can find a really good garden designer (not just any old one), who gives on-site consultations, they should be able to assess the situation quickly and decisively but they are not easy to find. You may end up having to listen to a lot of ideas from different people before someone hits the mark for you. Just, don’t ask us, please.

A major makeover in mid flight

As it was – the borders are too narrow and proportions wrong

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Plant Collector: Narcissus bulbocodium citrinus “Pandora”

The first narcissus of the season – N. bulbocodium citrinus ‘Pandora’

Always the first little narcissi to flower in winter, these lemon hoop petticoats are pretty as a picture at the moment. I guess they gained their common name because they resemble those wired underskirts from times past. The bright yellow bulbocodiums flower later in the season. In contrast, the citrinus are very early, coming out with the snowdrops. These are easy bulbs to grow. In fact this clump is naturalised in hard conditions where our gravel driveway meets an elevated concrete path – which is why the flowers show some splash and wear. There is no mollycoddling involved with them but they do need good drainage and full sun. N. bulbocodium is native to the south of France, Portugal and Spain so will occur naturally in relatively hard conditions. Given that the foliage is distinctly grassy in appearance, you just need to make sure you are not mowing it off in the early stages.

Daffodils go far beyond the common big King Alfred types and we like a range of them so we can have them in flower for many months. We prefer earlier flowering ones overall because they are generally finished by the time the dreaded narcissi fly is on the wing. It lays its eggs in the crown of the foliage and each bulb becomes home to one fly larvae (big, fat creamy grub) which spends a year sustaining itself by eating the bulb from the inside out, only to metamorphose and repeat the cycle. A breeder told me that narcissi only need 65 days of growth to build up strength in the bulb for next year’s flowering so you can remove foliage early if you need to beat the fly. We also favour the littlies, the dwarf varieties, which are much more compact and showy in the garden.

Bulbocodiums increase readily by division and some will set viable seed.

First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.

Grow it Yourself: tamarillos

This is not a crop for inland or southern residents unless you have a holiday house on the coast. Even then, it is becoming an endangered species but ours still staggers on. This is another South American fruit which we have made our own in this country (along with the feijoa). In fact, it was NZ that conferred the name tamarillo. Older readers may remember when it was still called a tree tomato, though botanically it is Solanum betaceum.

Problem number one for inland gardeners is that it is very frost tender. It is a solanum so think same family as the potato and tomato (and nightshade but we can ignore that). It has to be completely frost free in its first year or so and will only take the lightest hints of frost once established. With its big, soft leaves and brittle growth, it doesn’t take kindly to wind, either. But readers, probably coastal, who can give protected and warm conditions, should have more success. It is not at all difficult to grow if you can find the right position.

Problem number two is more recent – the dreaded potato psyllid which is a fairly new arrival. It weakens the plant so badly that it usually dies. It takes up to two years for a plant to get large enough to crop, so it is relatively fast growing for a fruiting shrub. If you are really keen on tamarillos, it is probably advisable to keep raising replacements from cuttings, to ensure continued supply. They are not too bad from seed, either, though plants you buy will be superior selections. Because the psyllid is airborne, you can replant in the same area. Being a solanum, it is a gross feeder and will respond to rich soils full of compost and well rotted manure. Plants are self fertile meaning you only need one to get fruit though they do seem to crop more heavily in company.

First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.

Fragrant rhododendrons

This is my final feature written for the Weekend Gardener. However, I would urge readers to respond to their readership survey in this latest issue. They want feedback – give them your comments. Tell them what you think of the new directions they are taking. Do. Please.

First published in the Weekend Gardener and reproduced here with their permission.

Floral Dance gets its scent from R. sino nuttallii but is a very different flower and plant.

Loderi Venus is one of the fragrant Loderi series but hard to find for sale and more of a small tree.

Many people don’t realise that there are more scented rhododendrons beyond the well known Fragrantissimum or the Loderis, though these cultivars have certainly stood the test of time.

The early Loderi series were bred at England’s Leonardslee Gardens at the turn of last century and Fragrantissium has been around even longer. There is little to rival the Loderis even now for big, full trusses, but they are more akin to small trees than to shrubs. Added to that, they have to be grafted and there aren’t many specialist rhododendron nurseries continuing with grafting so they are not generally available on the market.

Most gardeners need plants which are more compact.

FRAGRANTISSIMUM

In the smaller growing, very fragrant white flushed pink class, Floral Gift is our preference

In the smaller growing, very fragrant white flushed pink class, Floral Gift is our preference. Fragrantissimum has been around since 1868 and is the best known fragrant rhododendron. It has a wonderful scent but it is a bit leggy and open and you don’t get many flowers to the truss. Its blooms are also rather soft, so it is inclined to weather mark. There are quite a few different options in this type with their scented blooms in white with a pink flush. Princess Alice, Elsie Frye and Harry Tag are all more or less similar. All are smaller growing (around a metre high) and have good scent but you need to encourage them to form a good shape by pruning and pinching out leggy growths at the right times. Our preference in that colour range is our own Floral Gift. It has a sturdier habit of growth and its large flowers are so heavily textured that it endures most bad weather without damaging the blooms.

R. polyandrum is one of the most fragrant species with its huge blooms, but it is a larger grower with a very open habit.

FRAGRANT SPECIES

R. cubitti is a fragrant species which is easy to grow but because it flowers very early, it is not suitable for cold climate areas.

Most of those we grow as garden plants are hybrids – crosses between different varieties of rhododendrons. There are a number of fragrant species but these are not always easy to grow. In fact many are downright difficult. But the ones which have proven their worth as garden plants for us include the following:

R. polyandrum is the fragrant parent of many hybrids and is so strongly perfumed it will stop you as you walk past with its scent hanging heavy in the air. It has enormous cream flowers with each bloom measuring at least 12cm across. The flowers are soft so weather mark easily and the plant is rather leggy and open in growth, but where space allows, it is a wonderful garden addition.

R. maddenii is hardy for New Zealand conditions and has very heavy textured flowers which feel as if they have been cast out of wax. It is usually white with a pink flush and it flowers late in the season which makes it a good choice for colder areas. It is another relatively large grower in the two metre range.

For frost-free areas, R. veitchianum is a gem with its pure white, frilly, scented flowers.

R. cubittii is a pretty, frilly pink and white with good scent. It is an excellent smaller grower to around 1.5m and will even take full sun but the downside is that it flowers early in the season. This means that in cooler areas, it needs some protection from frosts or the flower buds will freeze and fall off and it won’t be happy at all in really cold, inland areas.

R. veitchianum is even more tender. In fact it is has about the same hardiness as a vireya rhododendron which means that any frosts more than a degree or two will not only destroy the flowering but also burn the foliage. But it is a great option for warm areas of the country and it will reward you with pristine white, frilled flowers smothering the bush in early spring and good fragrance. It also has a tidy, compact habit of growth on a smaller growing plant.

FRAGRANCE AND COLOUR

While we all love the fragrance of flowers, the plants are not producing this scent to please humans. Generally it is linked to attracting the right insects for pollination. While the rhododendron relatives of deciduous azaleas and some vireyas will use both colour and scent, fragrance in rhododendrons is generally linked to white and pale colours. You won’t find big bold, full trusses of red, blue or purple rhododendrons with scent. Part of the hybridist’s quest is to try and get new varieties with combinations of desirable characteristics.

Felix Jury’s series of R. polyandrum hybrids brought a greater colour range to scented rhododendrons in New Zealand – Barbara Jury

SCENTED HYBRIDS

Bernice

The late Felix Jury (yes, he was my father in law) set out to try and combine fragrance, colour and healthy foliage and named a series of new rhododendrons. Many of these are still available on the market today. None of them have the big full trusses of the traditional rhododendron, but they have many other aspects in their favour, including performing well in warmer climates. His R. polyandrum hybrids all have scent, though not as strong as their scented parent. They do, however, make tidier garden plants and bring more colour. These include Bernice (crimson tones), Barbara Jury (pure yellow fluted blooms), Moon Orchid (frilly apricot and yellow) and Felicity Fair (more pastel honey colours).

Felicity Fair

R. sino nuttallii (the sino just means it comes from China) is a magnificent rhododendron species with fragrant white trumpets but it is rarely available for sale. It has, however, given birth to two colourful offspring which are compact growers and much easier to produce so more widely available. Floral Dance (above) has very frilly, very fragrant, large trumpet flowers in white with a yellow throat and deep carmine blush and tips. The heavy textured dark foliage is a bonus. Floral Sun is a half sister with pretty soft golden flowers. Its fragrance is not as strong (which means getting close enough to put your nose by the flower to smell it) but the mass of pretty flowers and the tidy, compact growth make for an excellent garden plant.

Whether we ever get a big red Rubicon or a big blue Bumblebee with strong fragrance is unknown territory but it will be by the hand of the plant hybridiser, not nature, if it happens.

Moon Orchid

Floral Sun is the soft yellow half sister of Floral Dance and becomes a very tidy, compact garden plant with masses of blooms.

Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Tag Archives: gardening

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 13 July, 2012

Renovating the rose garden

Plant Collector: Narcissus bulbocodium citrinus “Pandora”

Grow it Yourself: tamarillos

Fragrant rhododendrons

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