Tag Archives: gardening

Grow It Yourself – capsicums

I have just been told He Who Grows the Veg here that he is not planting capsicums this year. He suggests I go and buy a plant or two if I feel I must have them. The problem is that capsicums need a long growing season in order to get a good harvest. That means a good four months of continual warmth. Even cold nights will set them back. You can hurry them along by planting them into black plastic or using a cloche but the resident veg gardener does not like them enough to lavish the same level of care that the rock melons get. Best guess is that most of the lovely big red, yellow and orange capsicums you see in the supermarket are grown in glasshouse conditions.

It is too late to start them from seed now, so if you want to grow them you will have to buy plants. Seed has to be started under cover in late August or early September. Capsicums are in the same family as tomatoes (solanum), but require more heat. They like similar conditions – full sun, plenty of warmth, friable soil full of humus and a position where they don’t dry out. Plant them about 50cm apart. Room for good air circulation can help reduce leaf diseases. You will get larger fruit if you thin the crop. Most capsicums start off green and can be picked at that stage. As they ripen, they can change through to yellows, reds and oranges. It is because these are riper that they taste sweeter and milder.

Paprika is, of course, ground mild capsicums – presumably at the point where they have ripened to red. Chilli and cayenne pepper are ground hot capsicums which we normally call chillis. Some chilli varieties are just hot selections of the same species as capsicums (C. annuum) while some are different species. They grow in the same way with the same heat requirements. If you like fresh chillis, they make a decorative container plant but you need to be reliable with summer watering.

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

Gardening is not exempt from fashion trends

We are hoping the next garden fashion may be the revival of romantic naturalism

We are hoping the next garden fashion may be the revival of romantic naturalism

I was reading an interesting review on line when I came across the following comment: “… New Zealand gardens are getting more conservative with time”. I have not gone back to the original source yet, so will not attribute the comment except to say it is apparently local to Hamilton. It certainly gave us food for discussion here.

Are our gardens getting more conservative and less adventurous? On balance, the unanimous opinion of two was: probably not. We are currently in the meshes of a deeply conservative garden fashion where mini Sissinghursts are all the rage (clipped buxus hedges and balls, white standard roses or bay trees, the odd limbed up hornbeam that claims to be pleached) but it is only a fashion. It too will pass.

What has changed, we suspect, is disposable income, the trickle down of wealth and status to the hoi polloi and the linking of garden to fickle fashion. In other words, the democratisation of gardening. In centuries past, garden fashion was dictated by the rich and powerful across the globe. From the Islamic water gardens, through the classic revival of Italy, the British landscape tradition of Capability Brown, the Arts and Crafts revival in Edwardian times – none of it had anything to do with the common people.

Now we have a whole breed of property owners, some of whom are gardeners, who want an outdoor environment which complements their lifestyle, marks their social position and brings some level of reward in pleasure or productivity. And just like everything else, the cycles have sped up. Clothing fashions change. Colours change in interior design. Why would we expect gardening to be timeless?

The gardening genre of suburban Sissinghurst

The gardening genre of suburban Sissinghurst

Some of us can remember the conifer garden of the seventies – the first instance of a mass fashion in gardening that I can recall. It wasn’t just conifers. It was the meeting of small conifers and the easy-care pebble garden that gave us a certain genre which is widely regarded with horror these days.

We were already in the plant nursery business when flowering trees and shrubs took a dive in the eighties. It was the time of the cottage garden, filled with a froth of annuals, perennials and roses. Anecdotally, we attributed it to the sharemarket crash of the time. Back in those days, you could buy three or four perennials for the price of one good tree or shrub. The price of woody plants has never recovered and these days you can pay about the same for a good perennial as you do for a woody plant which has taken at least five times longer to produce.

But cottage gardens are not low maintenance and in due course they morphed into the short-lived fashion of minimalism – large rocks, ground cover scleranthus and three vertical plants, one of which should be a sanseveria or yucca. That was a fashion driven by a new breed of landscaper who knew about design and space but not plants.

Somewhere along this timeline, natives became the vogue and we saw a fair number of Idealistic Young Things who would only buy a plant if it was a native.

Then we had the tropical garden – lots of palms, clivias, vibrant vireya rhododendrons and that burgundy aeonium with the unpronounceable name (Aeonium “Zwartkop” and I don’t think I ever spelled it correctly in years gone by). The trouble is that most of us do not live in tropical climes and those tropical gardens didn’t take winters too well.

The Auckland bromeliad garden has survived a little longer and is still de rigueur in some circles – for all the world the conifer garden of the new millennium. The overseas trend of prairie or meadow gardens has largely bypassed us in this country. It is damn difficult to do a prairie garden unless you live in prairie conditions with dry, hot summers and dry, cold winters.

Enter the edible garden and the Bright Young Things who would only buy native plants in the past decided they would only buy a plant now if it was edible. Raised beds, nasty mulches of used woollen carpet, no dig gardening, watered down organics – aiming for self sufficiency in food has never been easier, or so it is widely claimed. I know I am not alone when I say many of us have tired of vegetables dominating the gardening media. There are not many aesthetics when it comes to vegetables which are utility things at best.

Gardeners who weren’t into growing vegetables followed a parallel path with their recreations of suburban Sissinghurst, sometimes adorned by a pretty potager if they wanted to adopt both fashions. Even the gals at the New Zealand Gardener appear to think that vegetables have passed their peak and they are onto new branding with Grandma’s flowers – from dahlias to rhododendrons if recent pieces I have read are any guide.

The hope here is for the next fashion trend to be sustainable gardening and to see a revival of romantic naturalism replacing suburban Sissinghurst. Gardens don’t freeze in time any more than their owners do but by definition, few people are trend setters and most people are followers of fashion.

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

A New Zealand Guide to Growing Year Round by Dennis Greville

Same author-photographer, similar content but different publisher to last week’s book “Salads Year-Round”. This one is more encyclopaedic in range but certainly not in detail (there is not even an index at the back of the book which seems a major oversight), the writing is a little more personal and the photos are a little smaller and more illustrative rather than sumptuous. But it is another of the style of edible garden book we have come to expect in this country – encapsulated in the bold claim on the front cover: “self sufficient in no time”. Yes folks, you too can be self sufficient in fruit and veg with next to no experience and very little effort – it is all so easy peasy. Just buy these books that NZ publishers keep churning out for you. A low grade, lightweight cover, allied to the lack of index, means that this one was clearly never destined for longevity on the gardening bookshelf.

A New Zealand Guide to Growing Year Round by Dennis Greville (Hyndman Publishing; ISBN: 1877382 68X) reviewed by Abbie Jury.

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

Plant Collector: Dracophyllum latifolium (or neinei)

This is a seriously cool small tree to have in the garden. What is more, it is a native. It is often referred to as a grass tree because the long, thin leaves grow in tufts at the tips of branches but Mark has always thought of them as being like the trees from a Dr Seuss picture book with their wavy candelabra branch structure.

D. latifolium is reasonably widespread across the upper half of the North Island, occurring naturally as far south as North Taranaki but you don’t see a lot of them in the wild. They are an under canopy tree but not in dense forest as they prefer more light and less competition. In a garden situation, this tends to translate to woodland conditions – never too wet but never drying out and with filtered light. They are happier in company, so even though they are curious enough to warrant pride of place, they don’t want to be specimen trees standing alone. Apparently they have been recorded up to 10m high in the wild but our specimens have never got much over 2.5m in several decades.

The particularly curious Dracophyllum latifolium
The particularly curious Dracophyllum latifolium

It is now thought that our dracophyllums originated in Australia and arrived here (presumably by wind blown seed) a mere few million years ago, since when they have evolved into 40 different species. They have alkaloids in the foliage which make them unpleasant to browsing animals and these also inhibit fungal growth so the fallen leaves don’t break down but instead form long lived carpets beneath the tree.

The trick to gathering seed is all in the timing. Gather it too early and the seed will not be ripe. If you leave it too late, the seed pod will have dehisced – cracked open on the tree and released the seed. If you do gather seed, sow them immediately in seed trays and be patient. We do not get seedlings sprouting up naturally in our garden, despite having several trees.

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

100 Gardens by Jamie Durie.

Jamie Durie is the pin-up boy of Australian landscaping who has also made inroads into the USA. But this is not a book about gardening. It is a book about designed outdoor living spaces which have a few plants included. Sumptuous set design, frequently for the rich, beautiful and probably famous, not a how-to manual. It is an ideas and inspiration book largely comprised of full page or double page photographs of 100 different outdoor spaces he has designed around the world. The man is a human dynamo and versatile – which is to say the spaces look different, avoiding a “signature style” which can make them all look very same-y. There is minimal text but the sumptuous photography tells the story. I admit I spotted a few gabions, there are coloured feature walls and I must warn readers that he is clearly the undisputed King of the Scatter Cushion. Let that not discourage you from a good ideas book if you are seeking inspiration, particularly where space is tight and you want outdoor living areas which show panache. Just be aware that it is dry climate living done with a hefty budget.

100 Gardens by Jamie Durie (Allen and Unwin; ISBN 978 1 74237 890 9) reviewed by Abbie Jury.
First published in the Waikato Times and reproduced here with their permission.