Brachychiton – a showy Australian native
This one is summer deciduous, dropping its leaves before flowering. We are used to magnolias and flowering cherries blooming on bare wood in spring but I can’t think we have any fully summer deciduous trees here. From looking at the internet, I am putting my money on it being B. discolor rather than B. bidwillii. If I am right, it places its natural habitat amongst the eastern rain forests. There are 31 different brachychiton species, 30 from Australia and a solitary specimen from New Guinea. The Illawarra flame tree is perhaps the best known variety (B. acerifolius) but as these are large trees (anything up to 40 metres in their natural habitat although they won’t get that big in less than ideal conditions), these highly ornamental trees are not much favoured in suburban gardens in this country, even in areas where they could be grown. Some can also be very prickly.
The showy brachychiton does at least give lie to the idea that all Australian native trees are either gum trees or something with greyish foliage and bottlebrush flowers.
First published in the Waikato Times and reprinted here with their permission.
Garden lore: A Flower Fairy Christmas
It is both a blessing and a curse to have a garden with very large trees. The pines (mostly Pinus radiata), native rimu trees (Dacrydium cupressinum) and Australian eucalypts all date back to 1870 to early 1880s when Mark’s great grandfather planted them. The rimus are rock solid with a life expectancy of many hundreds of years but from time to time we lose a pine or gum.
While we can manage most of our tree work ourselves, this one posed a major problem. It broke about 6 metres up where Mark’s grandfather had topped the row in the early 1900s, creating a weak point. But it didn’t break cleanly and the top formed a major swinger. We did the initial cleanup but dealing to the body of the tree required specialist attention.
Enter the arborist crew this morning.
There was a lot of consultation for this was a tricky operation.
And a lot of supervision.
Cuts were made but things did not quite go to plan.
Soon, more equipment was needed. Do not laugh at our baby tractor. It is enormously useful, though not quite equal to this task.
Both ends of the tree were cut through but it remained determinedly in position, defying all attempts to unbalance it.
There was much manly consultation.
And even more consultation. Lots of consultation. A winch was needed, they decided. The crew departed for more gear.
In the end, the crew returned with us not even noticing and both Mark and I missed the final rites when the tree was winched down. We were a little disappointed. It all seemed a bit of an anticlimax but is at least a major problem solved. It is remarkable how a tree some 40 metres high can eventually come down with minimal damage.
1) I want to try and capture the magic of a particular garden in a few words and photos. This is Wildside in North Devon and was quite simply one of the most exciting modern gardens we have seen. It is not that we will try and re-create it at home, but we found it interesting, stimulating and inspirational in many ways. It has been about 10 years in the making to this point.
2) The creator, Keith Wiley (and let us acknowledge the active assistance from his partner, Ros) has taken a 4 acre (1.6ha) flat field and created a landscape. When he started, it looked identical to this neighbouring field. All the top soil was removed and substrata redistributed to create ponds, canyons, shallow valleys and hills. At this stage, it is still possible to see this process in the upper garden which has yet to be planted. Once shaped, Keith returned the top soil in varying depths, depending on what plants he planned to grow in each area.
3) The interaction between the created landforms and the plants are the key components of this garden. When we visited, the upper garden was dominated by oranges, golds, yellows and whites. We would love to have been able to return a few weeks later because we could see that the dominant colour was going to change to blue and it would have looked very different. It takes exceptional plant skill to be able to get that transition and successional planting across seasons, let alone within the same season.
4) These are dierama, commonly called Angel’s fishing rods, one of the few corms and bulbs that were in flower in midsummer but this was a garden which was rich in drifts of bulbs – another layer of plant interest and a means of ensuring colour and detail when most perennials are either dormant or resting. In keeping with the modern perennials movement, there were grasses used but in moderation. Plants were in good sized clumps and often in drifts, but always in combinations, not chunky blocks standing in their own right as seen in many modern gardens.
5) There is very little hard landscaping and very little ornamentation. There may have been one small lawn, from memory, but this is a garden of plants and flowers. Some may consider the lack of formality and structure to be a shortcoming, certainly in a country with a long history of landscaped gardens full of permanent features. We saw a garden that pushed the boundaries of the prairie style and New Perennials movement, combined with the creation of sustainable ecosystems, underpinned by exceptional plantsmanship.
6) We travelled a long way to visit Wildside which is on the edge of Dartmoor, near Yelverton, and we would gladly travel a long way to see it again. However, it is currently closed to the public and it is uncertain when it will reopen. The owner told us that he needed to get the house built. After a decade of living in temporary quarters while giving priority to the garden, they had reached the point where the house had become a priority.
Yes, a prologue. We first became aware of Keith Wiley’s style when we visited The Garden House in 2009 – the garden of the late Lionel Fortescue which Keith managed for many years. True, he had no hand in the first sight to gladden our eyes. As we went to enter the garden, lo and behold there was Mark’s very own Magnolia Felix Jury in prime position. To say we felt proud would be an understatement.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 