Tag Archives: gardening

Passing the sniff measurement test – fragrance in the garden

Magnolia Vulcan - spectacular and magnificent in flower but too far up to ever smell

Magnolia Vulcan – spectacular and magnificent in flower but too far up to ever smell

When I entered my teens, my mother gave me a book on charm. I can only recall two pieces of advice from it, though I read it time and again. One was to err on the side of restraint – that one white accessory with a little black dress may be stunning but three or four are bitsy (think Audrey Hepburn-esque style). The second was not to apply perfume before 10am. Until mid morning, the subtle scent from one’s morning bath should carry one through and to add perfume on top is heavy handed and inappropriate. Understatement was an integral part of charm in the sixties.

It was the perfume rule that had me thinking (though the merit of subtlety in accessorizing is a handy rule of thumb and not just for clothing). In years of plant retailing, I met a scary number of people – always women – who would only buy a plant if it was fragrant.

As a defining attribute, I think fragrance is over-rated and doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny. It is different in cut flowers. The wafting fragrance from a vase of flowers indoors is a delight but even then you need quite a large amount of very fragrant flowers to scent an entire room.

Seriously, apply the sniff test in the garden if you are obsessed with growing scented plants. There are not that many plants that will pass the metre sniff test – that is, able to perfume the air a metre beyond the plant and that usually requires a warm, calm day. Some daphnes will do it, as will the rare Michelia alba and proper orange blossom.

Luculia Fragrant Pearl - passing the 50cm sniff test

Luculia Fragrant Pearl – passing the 50cm sniff test

Come in a little closer and there are a range of plants which will tease you with a hint of fragrance as you pass by – philadelphus or mock orange blossom, luculia, auratum lilies, the stronger scented jonquils. But if you stop and immerse your olfactory organ (that is your nose) in the reproductive organs of the plant (that is the flower), there is a very strong perfume.

Therein lies the problem. Generally you have to stop and sniff a flower to get a true sense of its scent, or, in many cases, any scent at all. And nobody goes around their garden sniffing each and every flower every time. So the presence of perfume is often irrelevant in practice.
Some flowers are so subtly scented that you need the right conditions to get any fragrance at all. Scented camellias are of this ilk, but the public romanticism is such that merely advertising this attribute will help sales. I know.

Then there are plants where scent is related to time of day. How many people have bought the common port wine magnolia (Michelia figo) because of the promise of heady scent, only to be disappointed? The flowers are small and insignificant, the scent comes in late afternoon to night so you won’t get a whiff of anything at other times, and then the actual aroma is closer to the old Juicy Fruit chewing gum than anything else.

The bottom line is that plants have not evolved with scent to please humans. So there is no guarantee that the biggest, showiest and brightest blooms will also have the best fragrance. More often, the scent is there to attract pollinators so it is frequently linked to rather small, insignificant blooms which might otherwise pass unnoticed. There are a whole lot of scented rhododendrons and, almost without exception, they are white or pastel coloured. Bright flowers don’t need scent to attract their pollinator when they do it by colour. Night scented plants are generally pollinated by night flying insects so they don’t need to be fragrant during the day and they don’t need size and colour.

Floral scent is delightful and much appreciated. No synthetic scent can match the best natural fragrances. But those natural scents are by their very essence ephemeral. To extend their life, you have to capture the scent in oils, perfumes, pot pourri and the like. To make it mandatory that a plant be scented before you will buy it, is to elevate one characteristic beyond its merit. I regard scent as a bonus but first and foremost, a flowering plant must be interesting, attractive and appropriate to the position.

And when the next person asks me whether such and such a magnolia is scented, I may weep. We grow many magnolias here and revere them above other flowering trees. Many of ours are large now, and I can safely state that I have never stood beneath a large magnolia in flower and been amazed at the heady fragrance. Stick your nose in the flower and some are pleasantly scented, but that is pretty hard to do when the flower is five metres up the tree. Who cares when the floral display so astounding? Must the lily be gilded further with compulsory scent?

Plant Collector: Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Metasequoia, commonly known as the dawn redwood

Metasequoia, commonly known as the dawn redwood

Most people know this by its common name, the Dawn Redwood, though this can cause a little confusion if you mentally associate the massive redwoods with North America. Those are the sequoia and sequoiadendron whereas the metasequoia is a Chinese plant (though botanically related). It wasn’t even identified and recorded until the 1940s, which is very late in the piece for botanical discoveries, certainly of something that large. For it is a very large tree – this specimen must be nigh on 30 metres now. We understand this specimen was planted in the mid 1950s here. Seed was sent from China to the Arnold Arboretum in the USA in 1948, just before China closed its borders for decades, and the arboretum then dispersed it around the world to ensure the survival of the species. So our tree must be one of the older ones in cultivation outside its native habitat, though is a mere baby for what is a very long-lived tree.

The other aspects that make this tree really interesting are that it is a conifer (bears cones) but it is deciduous. There are very few deciduous conifers. The leaves are turning colour now and will fall soon. In spring, the fine, feathery foliage (described as pinnate) emerges in bright green and garden visitors invariably ask us to identify the tree. It also has magnificent shaggy brown bark which is wonderfully tactile. It is just not a tree for suburban back yards but where space allows, it is a most handsome landscape specimen. It likes adequate moisture and we have it growing by a stream, but it is not as tolerant of wet roots as the other deciduous conifers, the taxodiums and glyptostrobus.

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

Grow it yourself: cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana)

Physalis peruviana - commonly known as cape gooseberries

Physalis peruviana – commonly known as cape gooseberries

Few people know the proper name of the cape gooseberry, though Physalis peruviana gives a handy clue on origin – Peru. So it joins other South American fruits such as feijoas, the NZ cranberry and the tamarillo which are easy to grow here. This is a wild fruit that you leave growing more for browsing upon or for encouraging children out to forage rather than for substantial harvests. That said, if you can get enough, it stews well and makes a fine, tasty jam.

Cape gooseberries are a solanum and you may spot the physical similarities to other solanums like tomatoes, aubergine, potato and even the nightshades. Tomatillos are also related. They all look even closer relatives at this time of the year when mildew blights the foliage. Theoretically, you can certainly grow them as a tidy row in the vegetable garden but in practice, most people just let seedlings go in rougher areas or margins of the garden where a bit of untidiness doesn’t matter. The little green fruit which turn yellow when ripe are extremely decorative in their papery sheaths, but the rest of the plant is pretty scruffy. In mild conditions, the plant will stay as a short lived perennial but in colder areas it is generally treated as an annual. The more summer heat it receives, the better crop you will get.

If you have a friend with a plant, get a ripe squishy fruit and grow the seed. Once you have it growing, it gently seeds down. It is sometimes available for sale in the garden centres but all plants grown in this country will be seedlings, not named selections, so you might as well start from free seed if you can.

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

Plant Collector: Vireya Rhododendron Satan’s Gift

Satan. I'm afraid it is vireya rhododendron "Satan's Gift", not Santa's Gift

Satan. I’m afraid it is vireya rhododendron “Satan’s Gift”, not Santa’s Gift

The trouble with vireyas is that they have an aversion to frost so they are really only a garden option for those in mild, coastal areas. Inland (where frosts are much greater), you need to be a careful gardener willing to give them protection and maybe bring them under cover. But they can be such a rewarding plant with their extended flowering habits. This one is Satan’s Gift, one of the best varieties named by the late Felix Jury and certainly the showiest and the most fragrant.

Felix was a complete agnostic so the word Satan merely evoked hot colours to him but over the years, we have seen more religious people struggle with the name. Indeed, we have seen it offered for sale as Satin Gift, Jury’s Gift and the hilarious Santa’s Gift. (Note to such people: it is fine to shun a plant because you don’t like its name, but it is not okay to rename that plant to something you find more acceptable). We were once told that it was the only plant in Eden Gardens in Auckland, a memorial garden, without a name plaque. We just think it is a splendid cultivar to have in the garden.

This is a cross between two different species (konorii x zoelleri) which gives it hybrid vigour. It is particularly bushy and well furnished and flowers more than either of its parents.

Besides not liking the cold, vireya rhododendrons need great drainage. The fastest way to kill one is to keep it with waterlogged roots, whether in a container or the garden. In the wild, most are epiphytes and grow up in the trees.

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

Being thankful for gardening in a benign climate

We tend to take it for granted that our gardens are green and lush all year round

We tend to take it for granted that our gardens are green and lush all year round

As the days get shorter and the nights get colder, it is easy to lose sight of quite how benign our climate really is. There is a tendency to take our bright, clear light for granted and the fact that we can sit outside for morning coffee all year round on sunny days comes as a surprise to those from harsher climates. Of course it means we have to keep mowing the lawns, though the interval between cuts will stretch.

True, down the southern half of the South Island, it is cold enough to stop growth (and therefore stop mowing lawns in winter) but at least they keep the bright light which is a hallmark of both this country and Australia. I recall visiting London one December. Quite aside from the fact that darkness fell soon after 3.00pm, when the sun did struggle above the horizon, it was a poor watery thing. On that visit, we headed out to Leeds Castle which has a notable garden designed by famous English gardener, Russell Page. It had been put to bed for winter. Literally. There was only the formal structure to see. Beds were smothered in straw to protect the plants below. Some plants were wrapped up in their own padded sleeping bags – layers of straw, sacking and insulating material and that was just for echiums which are clearly prized a great deal more there than here. It is altogether a different way of gardening.

Autumn cheer in the earliest azalea flowers

Autumn cheer in the earliest azalea flowers

Here we may moan about miserable winter days, whinge about winter wind and stress over storms (enough alliteration!), but the bottom line is that we are green and verdant with flowers all year round. For most of us, temperatures are high enough to be out in the garden in fine weather, even in June and July. Autumn is recommended as the very best planting time for trees and shrubs because it gives plants a chance to settle in over winter and start getting their roots out before the spring flush. Similarly, many perennials can be dug and divided throughout winter. In cold climates, this is a spring and summer activity only because the plants can rot out when dormant in their cold conditions. The timing of pruning is a great deal more critical in colder climates. This applies to deciduous plants like roses, hydrangeas, wisterias, as well as evergreens such as hedges. Pruning can force plants into growth and, when carried out too early, the tender new growth gets burned off by frost and cold.

In cold climates where you only get to view your garden through the window in winter, design, shape and form become all because that is all you see. Most cold climate gardens have a large quantity of deciduous plants, punctuated by a few hardy evergreens such as buxus, conifers, or laurels. Even if the design is good and strong, it can be a bit bleak.

But unless you live in a really cold winter location by our standards (National Park, Ohakune or the like), it is reasonable to expect to look around your garden and see flowers and fresh foliage for twelve months of the year. Sure you may get frosts. Anywhere more than five kilometres from the coast can expect frosts, even in Northland. But we can still grow winter flowering plants.

The gordonias are opening. This is an unidentified Vietnamese species

The gordonias are opening. This is an unidentified Vietnamese species

The sasanqua camellias are opening now and will take us into winter when the early flowering japonicas open. Early season evergreen azaleas are flowering. I see flowers on the gordonias. These look like big, white camellias on steroids but they are only very distant relatives. The first of the luculias is in flower and we always have sub tropical vireya rhododendrons blooming, no matter what the season. These last two plant types are more problematic if you have hard frosts, but in favoured positions or closer to the coast, they are a delight. In the depths of winter, the Magnolia campbellii, michelias and rhododendrons will be opening. None of these flowering trees and shrubs are particularly viable in cold climates. Even the utility camellia can be hard to grow in colder parts of Britain.

There are plenty of autumn bulbs still in flower. Hot on their heels are the winter bulbs, already rocketing through the ground and some showing the first flowers. The earliest narcissi are opening. Most of the dwarf and miniature types flower much earlier than the classic daffodils. In so doing, we find they are less susceptible to narcissi fly which lays its eggs in the crowns of bulbs later in the springtime. Narcissus bulbocodium citrinus “Pandora”, the pale lemon hooped petticoat type, has its first flowers out. The peak display of our dwarf collection is in the depths of winter. The earliest of the lachenalias will be opening soon. The first to flower here is the easy to grow red L. bulbifera which has naturalised happily around tree trunks.

In some places, our common NZ pongas are so highly prized, they are lifted from the garden and moved under cover for winter. True. I have seen it done in the north of Italy. It really does seem churlish to complain about colder seasons here.

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