Tag Archives: magnolias

The graveyard incident

Truly I have a terrible story for you this week. Well, maybe not terrible in the greater scheme of things but fairly astonishing. Despite its location, it does not involve death.

Does the world really divide in two groups of people? There are those who understand instinctively that pretty, seasonal floral displays in public places are there to bring pleasure to all.

And then there is the other lot. Those who think that the same pretty flowers are in fact their personal picking garden and it is their right to pick bouquets with no thought at all that they might be depriving others of pleasure. First in first served and all that.

Magnolia Athene

The Te Henui cemetery in New Plymouth is known to many, not just locals but also from further afield. The repository of the dead going back well over a century, it is also a popular dog-walking route. But, for many of us, it is a place to visit to see the flowers.

Magnolia Milky Way

Part of that is the designation of the cemetery which allowed for recreational use (hence the urban dog-walkers) but also the planting of trees which are less common in graveyards on account of their root systems breaking up all that concrete. But most of the credit for the current floweriness all through the year must go to a small group of dedicated volunteers who spend a large part of every week tending the detailed plantings on and around the graves.

Theft is always an issue, especially with plantings in public places. The volunteers at the cemetery have learned to deal with it but it doesn’t stop their frustration and disappointment.

Last week, one entitled woman took it to new heights. She was seen helping herself to tulips and daffodils. When challenged about her actions, she became angry. How dare anybody rain on her parade? Most of us would be embarrassed but not her. She phoned the police and claimed she was being intimidated. Two officers turned up with remarkable promptness. She was waiting for them, holding just one daffodil (having dropped the others along the way to the exit, you understand), claiming she was being harassed for picking a single flower.

No further action was taken but it is hard to believe that this woman has learned her lesson. Volunteer gardener, Susan, made sure to retrace her steps and retrieve the flowers she had thrown away, showing them to the police after the woman had left. While this woman is by no means the only person picking flowers, she is the only one who had the nerve to call the police in retaliation for being challenged.

The poor tulips, being taken before they have even opened.
Evidence!

Susan tells me: “We have lost 17 tulips from the grave opposite the tomb and 8 from the grave on the eastern side – so far. It doesn’t sound many but the season is not over yet and the tulips are expensive and don’t reliably re-flower in subsequent years. So tulip losses in particular are very aggravating. We pay for the tulip bulbs.

We deliberately plant the tulips by the road so that the rest home vans can drive past with residents and the residents can view them from the van (most have mobility issues).”

The moral is clear. Don’t steal flowers (or indeed plants). Especially don’t think it is okay to raid them from public places where they are tended by volunteers. Also, the police have better things to do than to be used as a back-up for some entitled, selfish person.

What is wrong with some people?

Magnolia Atlas

On a more positive note, the magnolias in the cemetery are looking splendid this week.

Magnolia Apollo
I took this photo as an illustration of a recurring theme – narcissi where the flowers are too large and heavy to hold up straight. Excellent cut flowers – but not if you are helping yourself to them in a public space – but not so good as garden plants.

FAQs, as they are called. Magnolia questions answered.

Just an unnamed seedling but glory, glory glory.

Is there a lovelier plant than a magnolia in full bloom? Maybe that is too extreme, but at this time of the year the absolute glory of magnolias all around me truly makes my heart sing. I will be talking about them with Tony Murrell on Radio Live tomorrow morning – tune in at about 7.45am these days.

Herewith, my answers to frequently asked questions.

A stomach full of red magnolia buds

  • If your magnolia looks as if it still has furry buds (the outer casing of the flower bud that our children used to describe as sleeping bags for mice) but they fail to open to blooms or only show a splash of damaged petal, the culprit is almost certainly a possum. If you examine a bud, you will see where it has eaten its way in to take out the tasty centre. A single possum is capable of destroying most of the buds even on very large trees. Mark has been shooting possums most of his life and has carried out autopsies on the stomach contents of literally thousands of them over the years. This is because he wants to know what they are eating and it is part of the process of skinning them and jointing the carcass to feed the dogs. Old habits die hard and it seem a waste to discard both the fur – which can be sold – and the meat. At this time of the year, he can find a few possums wreaking havoc with stomach contents entirely comprised of magnolia buds. Red buds from early varieties on this one in the photo.

    A kereru eating early blooms on Magnolia Vulcan

  • Once the flowers are open, we have seen kereru eating the petals, particularly of the early varieties. But they don’t destroy an entire tree and we are willing to accept the damage. We have heard of the Eastern rosella parrots stripping trees up north but we have not seen it here, even though we have some of this Australian import here.
  • This is your annual advice NOT to spray your lawn from here on. Without fail, every year, we get enquiries about magnolias opening with distorted foliage and without fail, when we enquire, the person has used lawn spray nearby in early spring Most lawn sprays are hormone-based and will cause damage to a number of crops including tomato plants, kiwi fruit and grapes. Magnolias are particularly vulnerable at the point when they are about to break into fresh leaf and because they are often used as specimen plants in or close to the lawn, they cop the spray drift. If you must spray your lawn, at least wait now until later in spring when the trees have put on their new foliage.

    Just more pretty skypaper

  • As far as we are concerned, it is a myth from England that magnolias cannot be moved. We have moved large trees but do it in late autumn or winter, not spring.
  • If your coloured magnolia is flowering for the first time and the colour is not what you expected, take a look at the flower form. Some magnolias will put up pale blooms to start with. If the flower shape is more or less correct, then be patient. With a bit more maturity, the colour should deepen. This is particularly true of the deeper coloured reds and purples.
  • If your magnolia has two totally different flowers on it, it is most likely that the root stock has escaped and is growing too. Most magnolias are budded onto a strong growing root stock. Over time, a root stock that has put out shoots will out-compete the chosen variety budded onto it, so it really does need to be removed. Examine the base of the trunk. Budding is done just above the soil level so you will find the rogue growth on the lowest branching level. Anything below the bud (or graft) is rootstock, above is the chosen variety. The sooner the escaped root stock is removed, the better.

Finally, I posted the two photos below on our Facebook garden page but I wanted to include them here too. This is the sight I see when I look out of the window every morning – upstairs, looking across to one of our boundaries. That stand-out magnolia is Mark’s Felix Jury, named for his father. The white adjacent to it is Manchu Fan, the pinks are all unnamed seedlings. It is an absolute stand-out magnolia and I can boast because Mark won’t.