Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

Farewell to the trees

To the left has been “beautified”. To the right are the 60 year old trees to be clear-felled for more such “beautification”

To the left has been “beautified”. To the right are the 60 year old trees to be clear-felled for more such “beautification”

“Imagine if trees gave off wi-fi signals, we’d be planting so many trees and we would probably save the planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.” So runs the meme that swept social media recently. Truly we despair here at how hard it is to keep established trees and how ready are so many people to take the chainsaw to them.

Perhaps it is due to our recent pioneer history that we have failed to develop a reverence for big trees. That, and the fact that our houses are notoriously cold in winter and we want every bit of sun and warmth we can get.

There is no argument that large trees in suburban settings can be a problem for residents, especially as sections get ever smaller. That is why we have always advocated for trees in public areas where they have the space to reach maturity and to give grace to our environment. All power to council arborists and parks staff who are tasked with looking after such vegetative assets. For assets they are, although not in a financial sense. A tree can be chainsawed down in a morning but it may have taken a very long time for it to ever attain stature.

What would Cambridge be like without its street trees like these on Taylor Street (Photo: Michael Jeans)

What would Cambridge be like without its street trees like these on Taylor Street (Photo: Michael Jeans)

Leave it to the populace – the ignorati – and we would have nothing taller than 3 metres and older than 20 years in urban settings. Can you imagine the main streets of Cambridge without the trees? I do not know the history of those trees but it is a fair bet that there have been efforts by some people over time to take the chainsaw to them. Thank goodness those tasked with the civic environment have stood firm for, without those trees, Cambridge would just be like any other unmemorable small town in New Zealand.

There is no doubt that trees can make a mess. It is called the cycle of nature. Do they make a bigger mess than humans? Would we rather live in paved, concrete wastelands to avoid the leaf drop, the seed dispersal, the spent flowers, birds’ nests and occasional fallen branches?

Imagine the lake scene at Te Ko Utu in Cambridge Domain without big trees (Photo: Michael Jeans)

Imagine the lake scene at Te Ko Utu in Cambridge Domain without big trees (Photo: Michael Jeans)

I write from the heart. We are truly distressed because it appears that we have lost a local battle to save the row of handsome pohutukawa that line the Waitara riverbank. They are sixty years old, just achieving the beauty and stature of established trees, but they are to be clear felled.

“Those trees are past their use-by date.” Ah, no. Pohutukawa have no use-by date. They are a very long-lived tree. “We don’t want them getting too big.” “They are messy.” The fact that they are in a position where they do not shade any buildings and their natural fall of litter does not affect any private property is irrelevant to these folk. “They are not native to this area.” That argument is specious. Not only is the natural occurrence of pohutukawa a mere 10km north of here, but these same folk will think nothing of replacing them with a golden robinia or flowering cherry.

In a battle of jurisdiction between local authorities, where power has been vested in an engineer, the good burghers of our local community board have reportedly been out asking people: “Do you want to keep the trees or do you want the area beautified?” That is a Tui billboard moment.

There is no way to reason with people who see no merit in trees. There’s none so blind as those who will not see and minds have been made up. To such people, trees are completely expendable and of no beauty. They will be long dead before any replacement plants can reach maturity and in the interim there will be decades of a windswept, bare riverbank. It will have an expensive boardwalk and some seats painted sky blue, however, for beauty and history lie only in man-made objects. We could weep.

This is not a story unique to our area. It is repeated often up and down the country in some form or other. Trees need human protection if they are to hold the chainsaw massacre brigade at bay.

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

POSTSCRIPT
I see back at the start of 2007, I wrote about these trees in the Taranaki Daily News, saying: “Waitara would be a bleak little town without these splendid trees.”

These trees were planted to hide the ugly sight of the old freezing works. Unfortunately the trees are to be removed but the arse-end of the freezing works will remain. This is, apparently, “beautifying the area”.
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Garden Lore

“Did you ever meet a gardener, who, however fair his ground, was absolutely content and pleased?…Is there not always a tree to be felled or a bed to be turfed?…Is there not ever some grand mistake to be remedied next summer?”

The Rev Samuel Hole (1819-1904)

Magnolia Sweetheart (AGM)

Magnolia Sweetheart (AGM)

It was a nice surprise this week to discover that Britain’s Royal Horticulture Society has conferred an Award of Garden Merit (commonly called an AGM but not to be confused with annual general meetings) on our Magnolia Felix Jury. This is assessed on how it performs in UK conditions so it is not particularly relevant to NZ. Two of our flagship magnolias – Vulcan and Iolanthe – perform consistently well here but don’t like the cooler, greyer conditions over there. But any international recognition is gratifying.

Mark named the plant for his father, Felix, because it was what the latter had been aiming for in his magnolia breeding and it was only possible for Mark to achieve it by building on the work his father had already done. There are only four other NZ deciduous magnolias which carry an AGM. Athene and Milky Way are earlier hybrids from Felix Jury. Starwars was bred by the late Os Blumhardt in Whangarei and is still widely sold. We have seen it flowering in both Northern Italy and the UK and it looked better there than it does here, in our opinion. And finally, Sweetheart was raised by Peter Cave (formerly Cave’s Tree Nursery near Cambridge) and remains one of the prettiest small to medium-sized pink flowered magnolias that we know.

Magnolia Felix Jury (AGM)

Magnolia Felix Jury (AGM)

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

Garden Lore Friday 25 April, 2014

“It is something of an urban myth that a worm will be perfectly happy if you cut it in half. It may continue to wriggle for a while (so would you after you had been shot or stabbed) but it will die not long afterwards. Only if you nip off just a little of its tail end does it have the capacity to repair itself.”

The Curious Gardener’s Almanac by Niall Edworthy (2006)

048Garden Lore

Today’s Lore is brought to you from an intensely irritated husband here who despairs at the ongoing affectation of referring to “worm wees” and “worm poos”. We are not juveniles struggling with potty training though I guess we should perhaps be grateful that we have not yet descended so low as to talk about worm “number ones” and “number twos”. Worms do not urinate and defecate in the same way as humans. Perish the thought, we would not want to put our hands in the soil. What worms produce is correctly referred to as vermicasts or worm casts. They pass the soil and decaying vegetation through their gut and in so doing aerate the soil, create better drainage and make the nutrients more accessible to living plants. The resulting vermicasts are rich in accessible potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen. Can we cast out the baby talk now that we grown up gardeners? Please.

Sydney daughter lives in a local authority zone that, in return for attendance at a free half day course, supplies free of charge to inner city residents either a worm farm or a compost bin. The choice is dependent on what best suits the individual’s circumstances. It seems an innovative initiative to tackle the huge problem of urban household green waste. I have not heard of local authorities following suit in this country.

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

Outdoor Classroom: Sowing seed in trays

Photo 11) Sowing seed should save you money, especially with vegetables and annuals and it is also the way of getting plants which may not be available otherwise – such as dwarf daffodils, English snowdrops or rhododendron species. We use polystyrene mushroom trays which we have been continuing to use for up to 20 years. Wooden or plastic trays can also be used but you need around 10cm in depth and plenty of drainage holes. Egg cartons can be used for quick turn around crops such as lettuce or peas. You can also reuse the punnets that come from garden centres. Mark likes small individual pots for vegetables.
Photo 22) It is preferable to use proper seed raising mix which has less fertiliser in it than potting mix because fertiliser can burn young plants. These mixes are sterile, so you know when you see shoots that it is your seeds germinating. You can use garden soil if you want to but coarsely sieve it first to get rid of larger lumps and you need some fine sand or similar to sprinkle over the seeds on top. A home made sieve is fine. You can’t use unwashed beach sand because plants don’t like salt. A bag of seed raising mix is easier and goes a long way so is not expensive.
Photo 33) When filling with mix, tamp it down to get rid of air bubbles by pressing on top of the tray. If you are using egg cartons or individual cells, sharply rap the container on a hard surface to get the mix settling further. However, if you are using garden soil, don’t compact it.
Photo 44) Large seed can be hand placed but fine seed is traditionally tapped out of the hand as shown in the photograph or dispersed in small quantities from a piece of folded paper. It can also be dispersed by pinching it between fingers like salt.
Photo 55) Spread a thin layer of mix on top of the seeds. The smaller the seed, the lighter the covering but almost all seeds need a complete cover (primulas and rhododendrons are an exception. These are surface sown – ie not covered). Water carefully. A misting bottle (a well-washed window or shower cleaner bottle with a pump spray) is ideal for fine seed. A watering can with a fine rose to disperse the water is also good. Don’t flood the seeds.
Photo 66) Label the tray. We favour a soft pencil and hard plastic labels which we scrub and reuse for years. Pencil lasts longer than marker pen and is easier to clean for reuse. Precious, fine seed can then be covered with a protective sheet of glass. Stretched plastic can also be used. Until seeds germinate, place the seed trays out of direct sunlight and in good light. It is usually wise to elevate the seed trays away from slugs and snails or cats who think it is a litter box. Check your seed tray daily for moisture levels but do not scratch around looking to see what is happening. When the seeds have germinated, move the tray to sunny conditions and increase the watering as required.

Windflower romance

Wind flowers are a personal marker of our wedding anniversary

Wind flowers are a personal marker of our wedding anniversary

On the evening before we married, Mark turned up with an armful of Japanese anemones that he had gathered from the Taihape roadside. Don’t even ask why we got married in Taihape when we neither lived there nor came from there. It’s a complicated story. Wind flowers, he called the anemones and believe me, although back in the mists of time, it was a romantic gesture I have never forgotten.

Every year the wind flowers bloom on our wedding anniversary and he often brings some indoors. Last week he followed the old cut flower wisdom – re-cut the stems and burned the ends and they have lasted a full week in water.

We have three different Japanese anemones, in light pink, white and a semi double dark pink which is more compact in growth. It seems that the first two are the straight species, A. hupehensis. Although known throughout the world as Japanese anemones, they are originally Chinese – from the eastern province of Hupeh, in fact. They have been grown so widely in Japan for so long that common parlance attributes them to that country. It is no surprise that the Japanese, with their cultural penchant for simplicity and natural form, took a liking to them.

Japanese anemones are commonly found in pinks and white although selections are being made to extend the colour range into lilac blues

Japanese anemones are commonly found in pinks and white although selections are being made to extend the colour range into lilac blues

The semi-double darker one will be a hybrid and a named form that was purchased. Mark commented vaguely that he thought it may carry a woman’s name but I see that this plant family is more highly prized overseas than in New Zealand and there are a fair number of named forms, several of them named after women. For the botanically inclined, the Japanese anemones classified as A. hybrida are likely to be mixes of A. hupehenis with A. elegans and A. vitifolia. This is a plant family that crosses readily – though to get a cross you generally need plants that flower around the same time.

Weeds, I hear some readers saying. Weeds. Yes they can be overly vigorous, given the right conditions and become rampant, bordering on invasive because they spread below ground. You probably don’t want to unleash them in areas with plant treasures which they may out-compete. Lovely though they are in flower, you can have too many of them.

That said, I see that there is general agreement that they are not always easy to establish which made me feel better about our meagre showing of white ones in the woodland garden. I had spotted a pretty patch down the road, growing as a roadside wild flower and it is those I photographed. I love the combination of the single, white flowers dancing above the dried grasses.

The white Japanese anemone down the road looks better than the patch we have in our garden

The white Japanese anemone down the road looks better than the patch we have in our garden

Our pink ones are planted on our roadside and come into flower after the summer colour has largely faded. We have designated our rural road verges no-spray zones with the local council so we carry out our own maintenance. We mow a grassy strip immediately beside the road, get rid of noxious weeds like the dreaded bristle grass and we can do what we like with the rest. And what we like are roadside wild flowers – agapanthus, hydrangeas, robust begonia species, oenothera (evening primrose), belladonnas, crocosmia and the like. It is not just for passing motorists. It is also to feed the bees and to keep some roadside cover in an intensive dairying area which can otherwise resemble a green grass desert.

There are actually somewhere over 120 different anemone species. By far the most common in gardens are A. coronaria. These are the spring flowering corms that you buy as de Caen (the singles, mainly in blue and red but also in pinks and whites) and St Brigid (the doubles). They are very cheerful and cheap to buy. If you get a bulk pack, split it into four and soak one batch at a time overnight before planting. Done at weekly intervals, you can extend the flowering for the first season.

A. blanda is a little Greek species with predominantly blue flowers, more like a carpet if mass planted. A. nemerosa is the European wood anemone. We would like both of these dainty species to naturalise far more widely in our garden than we have achieved so far. They are transient early spring delights.

But in autumn it is time for the wind flowers to star.

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