Tag Archives: Jury magnolias

New Jury Magnolias

Lead photo: Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™

It can take a long time for a new plant from Mark’s breeding programme to reach the point of sale on the market. We have long since moved on to looking at more recent plants but it is a thrill when the time comes to seeing the plants finally released commercially into the wider world.

It was different when we had the nursery and we would release new plants onto the domestic market. There could be a quick turnaround on those. Nowadays, we focus internationally and that is a very different ball game. It has become increasingly difficult and eyewateringly expensive to get new plants into other countries, through quarantine, trialled and then built up commercially for release. Aside from controlling the initial selection and supply of plant material for propagation, everything is done by our Australian-based agents these days – Anthony Tesselaar Plants – and for this we are truly grateful because it is a plant mission.

This year heralds the start of a new round of plant releases – three new deciduous magnolias and the next evergreen in the Fairy Magnolia® series – but not simultaneously.

First up, there will be a limited release this year in Aotearoa New Zealand of the three deciduous magnolias, 2026 for Australia and then or soon after for Europe. Don’t even ask about USA – a work in progress there but likely to be longer.

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ will the last of the Jury red magnolias to be named and released. It all started with Felix’s ‘Vulcan’, a breakthrough that has well and truly stood the test of time. Mark followed up with ‘Black Tulip’, ‘Burgundy Star’ and ‘Felix Jury’ – the latter varying in colour from deep red to rosy pink, depending on growing conditions. ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’ in particular have become influential in international magnolia breeding. I see many photos of plants that have one or other of them in their parentage. I may be biased but I don’t see many that are an improvement on their parent.

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ – the original plant is a stand out in our park but small enough to fit in most domestic gardens.

It seems fitting that we end the Jury reds with Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ because we regard it as a significant upgrade on ‘Vulcan’. It has all the desirable characteristics of ‘Vulcan’ – rich colour, smaller tree, flowering from a young age and very floriferous. But better. It loses the less desirable aspects of ‘Vulcan’. It blooms a little later in the season which is better for colder climates; it has a long flowering season and the later season flowers are as good as the earlier ones (which is not always the case with magnolias). But best of all, it has lost the purple undertones that were the main problem with ‘Vulcan’ – especially as the season progressed when the brilliant early blooms could give way to smaller flowers which tended to be rather murky and paler in colour. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ stays the same clear red from start to finish. We describe it as ‘garden friendly’ which means it is a suitable size for smaller, domestic gardens – still a tree but a smaller specimen. We are very proud of it.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ and yes, I do think it is pretty fabulous

Second up is Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™, the only white magnolia Mark has named. His initial code name has stuck – it is named primarily for me with a nod to Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley and I feel in excellent company there. It has a huge white bloom with just a touch of pink at the petal base and we do like big flowers on our magnolias here. So, in flower size, it sits alongside Felix’s ‘Atlas’ and Mark’s ‘Felix Jury’. I was amused to be sent a photograph of it flowering in a European nursery – in Germany, from memory – of a bare stick about 1.5 metres high adorned with several excessively large white blooms. It looked impressive but is even more impressive on the original plant. It is a larger growing tree and we worried for a while that it may be too large but growth rates and size are heavily determined by climate and most magnolias around the world are grown in harder conditions than we ever get here so it is unlikely to reach the same stature that we see.

The habit of growth on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ is tall but slender

We have really struggled with naming the third one. In the end, I crowd-sourced a name on the social media platform, Bluesky. Out of hundreds of suggestions, we came up with a short list of of nine good names and I think we have settled on Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™. Our problem came with trying to nail down the colour. Depending on light conditions, it is somewhere between rich pink and purple. I lined up petals alongside Magnolia campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’, one of the purplest of the species and the petals of the hybrid were darker but it doesn’t always look that way on the tree. It is not blue enough to be able to say it is purple, lilac or lavender, not brown enough to be puce, but possibly too many blue hues to be rich pink. Hence ‘Dawn Light’™. Whatever the colour, it is lovely and has been a consistent performer in a prominent position here year on year. It is another taller, upright grower – rather than spreading – but is not likely to be as tall in different climates.

This is why we had such trouble naming Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ – it can look purple or pink, depending on the light

I once lined up petals to try and determine the colour. That is Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ at the top, ‘Dawn Light’ below but it can still look too pink on the tree. Mark quipped that he wanted to call it Purple Haze – to go with Ruby Tuesday, you understand. Showing our era, I wondered whether ‘Ab Fab’ should therefore be named A Whiter Shade of Pale.

These three cultivars have been under our watchful eye for years and we are confident on their merits. Magnolias are a long term plant. You don’t want to be casting a plant out after 5 or 10 years because something better comes along. We think these three will stand the test of time.

Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ and some very fine plants about to go on sale from Warners Nurseries in Victoria, Australia

Australia is as difficult to get through border control as Aotearoa NZ is so it has taken a long time for Mark’s Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ to be released there, even though it has been sold in this country, in Europe and the UK for some time. But at last it is ready for release in Australia this year.

However, Australia gets the first chance at Fairy Magnolia ‘Petite Peach’™ which will be released this year (2026 in NZ and 2026/27 in Europe). Sharp-eyed garden visitors may have spotted the two clipped, smaller pompoms at our gate. ‘Petite Peach’ has been well trialled down the years here. It is much more compact than the three Fairy Magnolias® already released, with smaller foliage and a mass of smaller blooms in peach shades. It is what we would describe as a ‘good garden plant’ – reliable, consistent, extremely healthy, able to fit into gardens of any size and pretty, rather than spectacular.

The two plants in the foreground are Petite Peach, over 20 years old now and clipped once a year. The front plant hadn’t been fully clipped on account of Mama Blackbird and her babies in the middle of the top knot.

Meantime, we are into the final year or maybe two of assessing what is likely to be the last tranche of Jury hybrids from this generation of the Jury family. It is likely there will be a couple more deciduous magnolias but yellow this time, and maybe another three or four different colours in the ‘Fairy Magnolia’® series. But don’t hold your breath. These will be years off being released internationally. Plant breeding with the magnolia genus is definitely a long term project.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ resembling fluffy meringue, maybe

Postscript: For the magnolia aficionados who are going to ask about the breeding, these are largely from crossing hybrids but if you take it back to the originating species it works out to the following:

Magnolia ‘Ruby Tuesday’™ M.soulangeana x ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta} x {M. liliiflora hybrid x ‘Lanarth’}. Which translates to 3/8 ‘Lanarth’, around 3/8 different forms of liliiflora with some sargentiana robusta and a few unknown genes to make the full quota.

Magnolia ‘Ab Fab’™ (M. soulangeana x ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}) x M. x ‘Lennei alba’ (liliiflora genes again with some denudata) x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M. sargentiana robusta}. Which makes the dominant genes liliiflora followed by ‘Lanarth’ and sargentiana robusta.

Magnolia ‘Dawn Light’™ (M. soulangeana X ‘Lennei’ – so some liliiflora – x {M.campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ x M.sargentiana robusta} x ‘Lanarth. So the dominant genes in this one are ‘Lanarth’ with lesser amounts of M. sargentiana robusta and M. liliiflora.

In layperson’s terms, Mark has continued using his father’s lucky break with the hybrid seedling he was sent which he named Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’ (back in the 1950s), crossing with the downstream Jury hybrids both he and Felix created, plus ‘Lanarth’.

AI and me

I only took three photos while away, but sharp-eyed readers may work out where I went.

A family matter required some unexpected travel away this week. Mark has at least mastered answering his mobile phone at last but expecting him to link to Messenger or texts was a step too far with my speedy departure. I deputised Our Zach (our relatively young gardener, for those of you new to this site – when I say ‘relatively young’, I mean a generation younger than Mark, me and Our Lloyd) to relay messages via Messenger. It yielded an unexpected delight.

As background, I do not lead a life dogged by a sense of failure but one of my nagging regrets has been that, despite 30 years of published garden writing, I have never written an entire book. I have two partially written on my computer and I had plans but they have never been completed. After feeling it weighing on my shoulders, I decided that maybe my skills lay in shorter articles in the 700 to 1200 word length range and that is okay. Maybe I don’t have an entire book in me waiting to be written and published. Or maybe I just don’t have a publisher.

No matter. It seems that I will go down in history as a published author, at least according to artificial intelligence. Zach messaged me the following:

I was searching for you on messenger and the Ai feature thought I just wanted to know about you. Anyway this is what it said:

I laughed. Zach laughed. We all laughed. Four books! Apparently.

This spurred me on to try something I had been intending to do – ask Chat GPT to write something in my writing style on a topic in which I have some expertise. It took maybe 20 seconds to come up with its reply. I am not going to list the errors; the omissions are rather more important. It doesn’t once mention Felix or Mark by name, nor does it mention their pioneering work in breeding red magnolias or the international awards that have followed. Aotearoa New Zealand does not get a mention. It takes the generic and unrelated info on pest management from other places.

Magnificent it may be, but hardly ‘deep purple’. Lilac, in the right light.

What reassured me most as a writer is that it failed entirely to capture my writing style. It reads like a generic promotional blurb. There is no danger of me resorting to using artificial intelligence on this site which I control and which is near and dear to my heart.

Being rural and of an older generation, AI may continue, in the first instance, to be the abbreviation for artificial insemination rather than artificial intelligence.

Magnolia delight

The roadside. On the far left is Honey Tulip and there is a Black Tulip also there that is not visible. Fairy Magnolia Cream, Serene, Iolanthe, Felix Jury, Athene and Fairy Magnolia Blush.

I see it was twelve years ago that I wrote about generous gardeners. Not those who readily share plants but those who plant up areas for other’s enjoyment. I remembered that article this week because of a beautiful stretch of roadside on the outskirts of our small town that I drive by almost every time I leave our property. It is a spectacular row of magnolias that goes from strength to strength every year. It edges grass paddocks where the owners graze a few stock.

The thing about this row of magnolias is that its purpose is to delight passers-by. The owners, Pat and Brian, can’t see it from their house which is on the adjacent section. Pat, in particular, is a keen gardener and they keep a detailed and heavily ornamented garden around the house but the row of magnolias is for the benefit of passing traffic, be it in vehicles or on foot.

I called in yesterday to ask their permission to share the photos and, with their usual generous spirit, they said ‘any time. Our garden is your garden’. I had thought I might ask Pat if I could photograph her but it was a rushed visit and I didn’t want to embarrass her. She commented that she thought the magnolias were better this year than ever before and many people are admiring them. “I tell everybody they are Abbie’s magnolias.”

Magnolia Felix Jury just finishing flowering in Pat and Brian’s roadside row

We have had this conversation before. What you have to understand is that this row of magnolias is not far off being a complete collection of Jury magnolias. In vain, do I tell her that they are Felix and Mark’s plants. In Pat’s mind, they are mine.

I do remember giving Pat this plant of Honey Tulip

Honey Tulip – Mark’s only yellow on the market. So far.

She remembers me giving her most of the plants. I remember giving her one and may have given her a few more but she was a very good customer of ours in the days when we used to retail plants. I have always admired Pat’s eye for a good plant. She lacks any curiosity about plants, rarely remembers names, won’t grow bulbs because they are untidy when they finish flowering but she has a good eye and picks out plants she likes solely on their appearance. She has a garden with plants like Camellia yuhsienensis, Rhododendron veitchianum and other choice varieties tucked in with garden centre utility options and plants she has picked up on special. I find her approach to gardening refreshingly honest and unpretentious while also being very capable.

Pat’s plant of Rhododendron veitchianum. It wasn’t until I got up close to it that I realised the striking colour contrast was cineraria.

What makes these magnolias interesting to us is that Pat and Brian garden very differently to how we do. The magnolias are planted in the open, exposed to pretty much every wind that blows. They are not mulched and the ground around them is kept bare. They are not trimmed or clipped. I would guess that they were well fertilised when getting established but are now left to their own devices. In those exposed, open conditions, they are performing better than many of the ones we have here in our own garden which is sheltered from most winds.

Serene is one of Felix Jury’s lesser known hybrids but worthy of more attention. A later season magnolia, it is very lovely.

Wind is a big issue in this country of long thin islands set amidst vast oceans. Wind hardiness is a big factor in the selection of magnolias in our breeding programme. Petals that are of a softer, thinner texture and flower forms that are looser in structure fall apart when it blows hard. We see it every year on some of the magnolias here – particularly M. sprengeri ‘Diva’, M. sargentiana var. robusta and even the stellatas (star magnolias) and their hybrids. We have seen spectacular displays on some of these and similar magnolias in less windy countries – memorably in the Dandenongs in Australia and in the north of Italy. We don’t have that leeway here. So, it is interesting to see the Jury magnolias in very open conditions, still putting up mass displays of blooms that are largely untroubled by the many storm fronts that pass over in our early spring time.

A small plant of Magnolia Iolanthe with many OTT blooms

A few doors down from Pat and Brian’s home is a house with this little Magnolia ‘Iolanthe’ in bloom – showy enough for me to stop the car and photograph from the roadside. The plant can only have been in the ground two or three years and I haven’t noticed it in flower before, although there is a young plant of ‘Felix Jury’ a few metres away in the same garden that catches my eye when in flower, every time I drive past. But look at ‘Iolanthe’ strutting her stuff! I counted around 30 blooms and opening buds on this very small plant.

I am a big fan of front gardens and roadside plantings. They make the world a better place for us all, or at least for those of us who notice them.

The legacy of Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ and modest Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’

Not the best photo but I can assure you it was the best sight on its day – looking through trees to ‘Lanarth’ in the distance

As I paused to admire the glorious purple of Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ through the trees, the thought occurred to me that the vast majority of the red magnolias raised and released around the world since the mid 1980s have descended from this particular tree down by the stream in our park. Some are several generations down the line but they trace their genes back to our tree.

Our plant of *Magnolia campbelllii var mollicomata* ‘Lanarth’

Botanically, our Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ is the form distributed by leading UK nursery, Hilliers, back in the 1960s, Magnolia campbellii var. mollicomata ‘Lanarth’. Felix Jury imported it at considerable expense and thank goodness he did.

*Magnolia liliiflora Nigra* – red but otherwise unremarkable

and the shrubby tree of *M liliiflora Nigra* at about 60 years of age. It flowers later in the season so we think must have been the mother of the red hybrids, not the pollen donor.

To be fair, it wasn’t just ‘Lanarth’ that launched the platform for new generations of red magnolias. The plant of Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’ in the garden border behind our house was the other parent, almost certainly the seed-setter. In the heady world of magnolias, liliiflora is not a showstopper. Our plant is more sturdy shrub than tree, the blooms are not large, typical liliiflora form which is not showy and the flower colour has none of the rich glow that magnolias can have. But it is red both inside and outside on the petals. Mark tells me we are reputed to have a particularly good form of liliiflora ‘Nigra’ in this country in terms of its solid red bloom without the inner petal being white.

Breeders and enthusiasts around the world had been trying to create good red magnolias before, like the optimistically named ‘Chyverton Red’, ‘Pickard’s Ruby’ and ‘Pickard’s Garnet’. We have one example here but I only have one tiny photo of it and I have just found out that the name we have on it is wrong. I will have to take more notice of it when it flowers this year and try and work out what it is, only out of curiosity because it is not remarkable.

Felix looked at his plant of ‘Lanarth’ and wondered if he could get a good-sized, red campbellii-type flower. He had already done his other breeding to reach ‘Iolanthe’, ‘Milky Way’, ‘Athene’ and the other four Felix Jury cultivars. And so he created ‘Vulcan’, a breakthrough in its day. ‘Lanarth’ contributed the flower size and form, solid colour inside and out but also the translucence, tree form and scent. M. liliiflora ‘Nigra’ contributed solid colour, smaller tree stature and, importantly, red.

We first released ‘Vulcan’ in 1989, in that wonderfully under-stated way of that era. I don’t think we sent any plant material overseas at the time but bits of it soon winged their way around the world and the rest, as they say, is history. ‘Vulcan’ is not without its flaws. It flowers too early for frosty areas (as does ‘Lanarth’); it only achieves its density and purity of colour in warmer climates and even then tends to fade out to murky purple as the season progresses. But for its time, it was a breakthrough. It was the only plant we ever released that we could track its flowering from north to south of the country by the telephone calls we received. Even today, 35 years on, it is a showstopper at its best. I had two young tradeswomen painters in a couple of weeks ago and one of them asked me about the ‘black magnolia’ as she spotted the first buds opening, declaring she had never seen anything like it before.

Felix didn’t go any further with breeding magnolias after ‘Vulcan’ but encouraged Mark in turn. And it was Mark who created the next generation which included ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’. Other NZ breeders followed suit – notably Vance Hooper and Ian Baldick.

It seems that ‘Black Tulip’ and Felix Jury’ have become two of the more significant breeder parents around the world. I see many, many red seedlings on international magnolia pages and they are clearly descended from those early red hybrids here.

Felix named one red magnolia, Mark has named and released three but there is a fourth in the pipeline. We are hoping it will be ready for release internationally next year or maybe 2026. We describe it as a ‘Vulcan’ upgrade. It flowers a little later and has an exceptionally long blooming season and is a different hue of red, without a tendency to the purple undertones inherited from ‘Lanarth’. Solid colour and cup and saucer form which is our preference – it stands out here as good and we have high hopes for it across a range of climates. I won’t share photos until we have a release date.

*Magnolia campbelli var mollicomata* ‘Lanarth’

The new selection also traces its origin to the lovely ‘Lanarth’ in our park. That ‘Lanarth’ originated from a seed collection by plant hunter, George Forrest, in 1924 in southeastern China, near the Burmese border. Only three seed germinated back in the UK and this one was the best, named for the garden where it was raised in Cornwall. Those are quite long odds for what turned out to be such a significant plant.

While we may only have named and released four red magnolias from the Garden of Jury, with one more to come, we have many, many magnolias on the property that come from the same breeding lines. This lovely one that won’t be selected for release is another seedling from the batch that gave both ‘Black Tulip’ and ‘Felix Jury’.

Magnolia time

Blue skies and space to let magnolias grow to their potential certainly helps the display

We are currently at peak magnolia and this year has been a relief. Flowering in the past two years has been – dare I say it – pretty damn disappointing. Very wet springs saw blooms weather-mark badly, infected by some form of blight, and turn to droopy brown slush. They were not inspiring at all and I was beginning to wonder if one effect of climate change might be to take out the impressive splendour of our flagship plant family. This year they are magnificent after a bit of a stuttering start. Mind you, we have been blessed with perfect conditions – clear, calm and dry with only the occasional storm or downpour.

June 13, which is very early for us. The display this year never actually improved on this although more snow fell.

The season started unusually early. The first flowers on M. campbellii var campbellii opened at the end of May before the leaves had even fallen and winter was upon us. Every year I like to get out and photograph our tree against the maunga, Mount Taranaki, and the first photo of that was on July 6, before the mountain even had its full cover of snow. Similarly, ‘Vulcan’, ‘Burgundy Star’ and M. campbellii var mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ all opened their first blooms in early June and early July which is mid-winter here. Interestingly, that early start proved to be a false start on all four of them. They never really recovered from it to give us their usual mass display of splendour. Some are limping on, still with flowers, but the overall display from them has not had the usual breathtaking oomph. There are always some disappointments and this is the first year I can remember when those varieties have been rather ho-hum. We are concluding that an early start can in fact be a problem more than a promise.

Magnolia ‘Felix Jury’ on the left with white ‘Manchu Fan’

The main flowering on the rest has more than made up for the disappointing. Day after day of blue skies have delivered us perfect blooms with none of the previous problems of blight turning petals to mush. We know it is a good season because Felix’s Magnolia ‘Atlas’ is looking splendid. When we first released it, Mark described it as being like a giant pink cabbage and one of the largest magnolia flowers in the world at the time. It is the only one of ours that seems to perform better overseas than here. Year after year, I have struggled to get good photos of unblemished blooms because it does not like our spring storms but this year, this year it is perfect.

*Magnolia nitida*, for those of you who like to see something different

We have many magnolias. I have no idea how many. We also have space so we can allow trees to grow to the size they wish. Some of our magnolias are species and some are named cultivars from other breeders but the vast majority of our plants are seedlings from the breeding programme and there are literally hundreds of those. While we have only ever named twelve Jury magnolias (eight from Felix, four from Mark and another four of Mark’s are in the pipeline for release), they are the pick from several thousand seedlings. The majority end up getting chainsawed out as being of insufficient merit to retain but some are very good. They don’t meet our stringent criteria for releasing a new plant but they are good enough to keep across the property.

Just an unnamed seedling but looking very pretty this week

Finally, I saw a death notice recently for writer, gardener and magnolia lover, the inimitable Biddy Barrett. We have always referred to this pretty pink seedling as ‘Biddy’s Pink’ as she was adamant it should be selected for release. Mark didn’t agree so it remains a one-off plant but R.I.P Biddy. Your pink lives on.

Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Tag Archives: Jury magnolias

New Jury Magnolias

AI and me

Magnolia delight

The legacy of Magnolia ‘Lanarth’ and modest Magnolia liliiflora ‘Nigra’

Magnolia time

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