Magnolia campbellii ssp mollicomata ‘Lanarth’
Lanarth down by the water in our park
As August arrives, there is so much happening in the garden. Every day sees something else in bloom and now I get anxious that if I forget to look for a few days, I might miss something. I tell you, spring can be stressful.
Mark’s yellow Lachenalia reflexa hybrid
But our thoughts go out to overseas readers whose lives continue to be disrupted, discombobulated and sometimes turned upside down by Covid-19. Never has New Zealand felt so comfortably remote and self-contained, a small cluster of islands holding the unpredictable forces of chaos at bay, so far. May you stay safe and well, wherever in the world you are.
We are inching ever closer to finishing the new summer gardens, or at least to completing this stage of development. There are just the path surfaces to be laid and that has to wait until the man I hope can deliver the materials and arrange a bob-cat returns from holiday next week. We solved the problem at one end where the steps down to the garden were at a lower level than the camellia and michelia hedge that forms the backdrop. It was always going to involve some means of separating the levels. We priced steel edging because I really like that au naturelle, unobtrusive, thin look of gently rusted steel. Buying the branded product specifically designed for garden edging was very expensive indeed and that was without factoring in freight. Ever-handy Lloyd priced buying the steel locally, cut to suitable size, and it came in at about a third of the price but still somewhere over $1000. It was not going to bring me enough pleasure to warrant spending that amount of money.
Compromising with a stained timber edging
Much and all as I dislike tanalised timber in the garden, I compromised and said that would be okay as long as we stained all bits that will be visible to charcoal black. It was a solution that cost $103 (to buy six metre lengths of timber) and once the paths are laid, I do not think it will be obvious at all. The paths will be built up by about eight centimetres so there will not be a whole lot left visible.
A handy bobcat back when we started work on these gardens
Because it is going to take up to 30 cubic metres to lay all the paths, our plan – subject to the advice from the man currently on holiday – is to lay a base core of pit metal compacted to about 3 or 4cm deep and then lay the crushed, creamy yellow limestone on top of that to another 4cm. We think the pit metal will be much cheaper than limestone. We need to hire a bobcat and operator because none of us want to be carting 30 cubic metres of anything and the bobcat will be able to do a lot of the compacting that is necessary. If you have never seen a bobcat operating, believe me they are fast, manoeuvrable and quite mesmerising to watch.
On another practical level, a packet of Cold Water Surf washing powder entered my life. I had forgotten about its existence. It is vile, over-scented stuff that I would never use in the laundry but others may not mind that overpowering scent of chemical fragrance. We use unscented washing powder in this household of sensitive skins. But damn, that Cold Water Surf is a whizz on killing moss. 
People in drier climates will not relate to the issues of excessive moss and lichen growth that we get here. There is nothing wrong with some, but we can get way too much. Sometimes we water blast (jet wash) the paths but that also takes off the surface of the concrete and flushes out any filling between pavers. It is just as fast for me to scrape off the top layer of moss, sprinkle Cold Water Surf to kill what remains and then use a stiff broom to sweep the residue off. 
And it can kill very fast. This rather deep-rooted moss browned off within hours and died soon after.
I am no chemist so I struggle to get a grip on the difference between carbonate, bicarbonate and percarbonate. But as far as I can see, the active ingredients in many of the expensive, branded moss killers are often sodium carbonate (washing soda or soda ash), or sometimes sodium percarbonate (which is washing soda and hydrogen peroxide – a common ingredient in eco-friendly bleaches and other cleaning products).
You can buy both sodium carbonate and sodium percarbonate in powder form and I have done so but it worked out relatively expensive to use in the garden when cheap Cold Water Surf works just as well. Logically, this must mean that I was spreading the pure product too thickly when it can be extended by adding some sort of neutral carrier (Mark suggested sand). At a practical level, the products were fine powder and the coarser texture of the laundry powder makes it easier to spread evenly. Also, logically, any proprietary laundry powder should work unless some have a higher percentage of washing soda than others and that I do not know.
I am wondering whether it will work on our sandy coloured pavers in our front entrance courtyard. I water blasted these a few years ago. It was my first ever go on the water blaster and it took a lot longer than I thought it would. It was also wet and messy and blew out the sand between the pavers which Lloyd than had to refill. But they looked like new when done. Now they are blackened and discoloured again. I know there are branded products that attach to the hose that will also work and are quicker to use, albeit expensive. If laundry powder will do it, that appeals to my economical nature and avoids buying another product sold in a hard plastic container. I shall experiment and report further.
Narcissus Peeping Tom
Finally, an animal story. When we first adopted poor, unloved Spikey dog in 2009, we worried that he felt the cold badly. His coat was very thin – at least compared to the Shetland sheep dog we also had at the time – and he had not one ounce of body fat. Daughter made him a coat of many colours. I put it on him one chilly morn and Mark laughed at the ridiculous sight. Spike then hurtled down the avenue gardens after a rabbit and reappeared without his coat. Suggestions ranged from him being too embarrassed to be seen in the coat to Mark’s idea that he had regifted it to a needy rabbit family. Years passed and we never found the Joseph coat – until this week. It is a little brittle after 8 or 9 years in the open but a triumph to the resilience of yarn blends. One minute – that is how much wear that coat had.
In the meantime, he had been gifted a genuine Harrods coat and I had bought him a little number that made him look like the canine version of Julian Clary. But we always knew that as a bogan, freewheeling dog, he would have preferred a black vinyl number with chrome studs. These days he is over 14, stone deaf with a heart condition and possibly some level of dementia so he has passed the winter days sleeping in his bed by the fire. Yesterday, with spring in the air, he came out of hibernation and could even have been described as frolicking as he accompanied us around the garden with visiting friends. There may be life in the old dog yet, if he doesn’t get taken out by a heart attack.
The true ‘Lanarth’ finally flowered here in the 1960s and it became the key to Felix’s best known success – the colour breakthrough from purple into red tones, first seen in Magnolia ‘Vulcan’. The rest, as they say, is history and New Zealand is now recognised internationally as the home of the best red hybrids. These days with the downstream breeding, the purple tones of ‘Lanarth’ are being eliminated in favour of purer red shades. Now it is the case that there are several good red magnolias on the market, but no large, purple-flowered, garden-friendly improvement on the original ‘Lanarth’ that we have seen. It has been attempted. We just haven’t seen one yet that we think is as good as, let alone better than the original.
