Tag Archives: gardening

Schooling the foxgloves

White foxgloves, though at Tikorangi, not Hidcote

White foxgloves, though at Tikorangi, not Hidcote

An enduring memory of our visit to Hidcote Manor Garden in Gloucestershire was a simple planting of white foxgloves. They stood like grand white sentinels, belying their humble botanical status. A packet of white foxglove seed was top of the list on our next seed order.

Common foxgloves – and the white is just a form of the common Digitalis purpurea – are not difficult to grow. Not at all. We let some pink ones seed down through the park and in outlying garden areas. I think our widespread, dismissive attitude to foxgloves has to do with an earlier rural orientation in this country where such plants are seen as noxious weeds. But we are not farmers, so some seeding wildflowers naturalised on our property are not a problem, adding to biodiversity and providing a food source for insects.

Common Digitalis purpurea seen here with Rhododendron Caroline Allbrook

Common Digitalis purpurea seen here with Rhododendron Caroline Allbrook

???????????????????????????????The whites I wanted for my rose and perennial garden. After a few years, I am now moving them. They are too big and choke and swamp the smaller perennials I have in that area. I have found a couple of spots which they can have all to themselves. I was amused to see English gardener, Keith Wiley – for whom we have huge respect – on TV talking about growing plants in colonies but noting that some plants are so dominant that they do not want to grow in colonies. He cited foxgloves as an example. They are way too thuggish to co-exist happily with many other plants.

I could have saved myself a lot of trial and error if I had looked to the ground where the Hidcote foxgloves grew and taken note of what else did or did not grow there and how much space each huge rosette of leaves occupied. Instead, I was so enchanted by the summer display at eye level that I failed to observe further.

???????????????????????????????Carol Klein on BBC’s Gardeners’ World, once said that she sorted her foxgloves as juvenile plants – the pink ones had pink veining in the leaves and the crown whereas the white ones were all green. I am not convinced she is right though I went through a stage of culling all pink-veined seedlings. I am happy to stand corrected if somebody has been more systematic in assessing this, but I am pretty sure that I have pink-veined ones flowering white and vice versa.

What I can tell you from experience is that foxgloves have very large tops but small root systems so are easy to transplant even when quite large, as long as I reduce the foliage by anything up to 75%. They are tough. I am hoping by next year to have my white Hidcote sentinels flowering in abundance in positions where they can be glorious without smothering other plants.

Seedling variation showing a white centre to the common purple

Seedling variation showing a white centre to the common purple

Tikorangi Notes, Feb 8, 2015: In search of a missing tennis ball

New dog Dudley lacked application when it came to searching for his missing tennis ball in the shrubbery

New dog Dudley lacked application when it came to searching for his missing tennis ball in the shrubbery

When we first plant a garden, we all experience impatience – waiting for the plants to settle in, to grow and to fill the space. At some point, often without us even noticing, the garden morphs over to the point where it is all about trimming back, shaping and letting in light. This thought came as I spent my weekend on an entirely different task to that I had planned. The shrubbery beside the driveway had indeed reached the point where it would benefit from some serious attention.

Our new dog Dudley was the unwitting catalyst. Dudley, or Dudders to give him his cricketing nickname, is a four year old fox terrier – a re-home from the SPCA (as opposed to a rescue dog). He was clearly a much loved dog but a townie dog and it has been a steep learning curve of liberation for him to move to the country and space. In his nine short days with us, he has won a place in our affections already and settled in better than any of us ever anticipated. Dudley plays and therein lies the connection. Yours truly was never a sporty gal at school and my ball skills were always a little lacking. Out entertaining Dudders on the lawn with a tennis ball, I hurled it into the shrubbery in error. He quickly gave up the search.

I have removed a prodigious amount of material - to the left for compost, to the right to be chipped and then composted

I have removed a prodigious amount of material – to the left for compost, to the right to be chipped and then composted

I, on the other hand, have spent two full days cutting back and clearing out a prodigious amount of plant material. Yet the tennis ball remains missing. Each time Mark passes, he asks whether I have found it yet. He has suggested I may not know my own strength and maybe launched it further than I realised. That seems unlikely but its whereabouts remains a mystery. The shrubbery, however, is now open to the light and there are gaps to be filled when the autumn rains arrive. I expect it to look well furnished and handsome again by spring and I am keeping it largely true to my original theme of blue and white flowered shrubs only.

I have long thought that shrubberies are one of the lowest maintenance forms of gardening and they probably are but even they need a major clean out once every five years.
???????????????????????????????In the garden it is still all about lilies. Big, blowsy, over the top auratum lilies. I am not picking the ones in the garden but in a small area of Mark’s new vegetable garden is a congested block of his seedling auratums, raised in anticipation of our new summer garden. There I can pick by the armful and oh, how I love these extravagant blooms. Auratums are a strong argument for the vigilant border control we have in this country. We do not, repeat NOT, need the lily beetle here. It is a nasty critter that takes up residence on auratum lilies and covers itself in its own excrement. We have seen it in the UK where it is an unwelcome arrival which has all but destroyed the auratum display in some areas.
DSC01258 (Small)DSC01260 (Small)2013_0105carol0023 (Small)Following my final photo feature for the Waikato Times on the topic of washing lines, Times reader Carol Lodge sent me a lovely email of appreciation and sent me photos of her new washing line which struck me as genuinely creative and resourceful. She says: “The insulators and stays for the washing line came from a trade with the power board gang who were replacing poles down our road- morning tea in return for the insulators…. My husband is a radio ham and apparently , and not by coincidence my clothesline is tuned to the 80 metre band.”

It is a bit like the final word on washing lines, isn’t it? But I am off garden visiting with friends in Auckland this weekend at the Heroic Garden Festival. It appears to have lost many of its heroic origins now – become “straightified” a gay friend observed – but I may well find additional examples of washing lines and other ideas to share from these smaller urban gardens.

I have ALL the lilies

I have ALL the lilies

Plant Collector: the cream poinsettia

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Christmas is over and my time is running out. But having featured the traditional red Christmas poinsettia in Plant Collector in December, I could not resist sharing this variation. This is the cream poinsettia, spotted outside a Sydney florist. Before you get too excited at this novelty, I must tell you that the photo is flattering. The reality was that the plants appeared somewhat murky in colour and insipid to boot. Not chic.

A net search tells me that this is just another form of Euphorbia pulcherrima from Mexico and is but one of many variations of this species. The poinsettia market may be predominantly – almost solely, even – disposable house plants but it is clearly huge. Any such market has a taste for novelties and new releases. Who knew that there were poinsettias that resembled curly kale? Nasty variegations that could pass for coleus? All manner of colours and combinations are attainable for the poinsettia. To be honest, merely being a somewhat insipid and off-colour cream is the least of the transgressions.

Keep to the red Christmas poinsettia is my advice. While not original and arguably lacking in sophisticated allure, it is at least a handsome plant of merit in its place and time.

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

Garden Lore

“Hollyhocks are very aspiring Flowers.”
The Flower Garden by John Lawrence (1726)

Clivia seeds and blooms

Clivia seeds and blooms

In the world of wonderfully random bits of gardening information, I thought I would demonstrate to you that red and orange clivias have red seeds while yellow clivias produce yellow seeds. Is that not an interesting fact? These seed are from last year’s blooms. They take a long time to mature. While you can, as we often do, leave them to seed down naturally where they are, picking them and sowing them in trays in more controlled conditions will usually give you a higher percentage.

The reason why clivia plants are often expensive has nothing to do with their being difficult to grow or propagate. It has to do with the time it takes for them to grow and reach flowering size. In this age of instant gratification, people want to buy big plants which will fill a space now and flower beautifully but all for $15, thank you. That is fine if it only takes three months to produce the plant but when it may be four years, you have to be prepared to either pay more or to buy small and be patient. If you have access to an established clump, these are not difficult plants to dig and divide.

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

Garden Lore – witches’ broom

Indubitably witches' broom, not two trees

Indubitably witches’ broom, not two trees

I came across this fine example of witches’ broom in a roadside tree planting of Prunus Awanui. That particular flowering cherry is known to be vulnerable to witches’ broom. It is the green section coming into dense leaf earlier than the rest of the tree and without flowers. Left to its own devices, over time the witches’ broom will take over the tree and you will no longer see much in the way of spring flowering. If you leave it for a few seasons, it also becomes harder to remove the affected sections without destroying the shape and structure of the tree.

Basically, witches’ broom is a mutation within the tree – possibly similar to an immune disorder in humans – which causes dense, twiggy growth in that section. It does not appear to heal itself and it does not grow out of it the following year. There are multiple causes but no general treatment beyond surgery – removal of all affected parts of the plant. Cherry trees are particularly prone to it, although you won’t find them in the campanulatas or Taiwanese cherries. Generally it is seen in the Japanese cherries and the hybrids. If you spot it now, mark it because it is harder to identify later in the summer when all the branches are in leaf. Spray on paint is handy for this, or a tie. Pruning cherry trees in high summer is recommended to reduce disease getting in.

On the bright side, witches’ broom mutations are what have given us many of the dwarf conifers so they are not all bad.

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