Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

The story of the red magnolias

Vulcan to the left, Lanarth to the right

Few people realise that the story of the red magnolias is a New Zealand story. Probably even fewer realise that when it comes to stronger colours in magnolias, we get the best colour in the world here.

I am talking about deciduous magnolias. The evergreen grandiflora types are resolutely white in bloom and adding colour to the softer-leafed, evergreen michelias is very much a work in progress. But deciduous reds, we do well.

Most deciduous magnolias are in the white and pink colour range and very lovely many of them are too. But with many plant genus, there is always that quest to extend the range of flower form and colour, to build on what happens in nature to get a better performing, showier garden plant. Some of it is about pushing boundaries to see what can be done. A truly blue rose is still an unfulfilled quest but it is highly likely it will come sooner or later.

Some would argue that we do not yet have truly red magnolias and there is truth in that. There is no scarlet, no fire engine red. All the red varieties on the market still retain a blue cast to them and fade out to pink or purple tones rather than to the orange end of the colour spectrum. But if you line one of the red magnolias up against a purple one, it is clear that they are a different colour.

This (liliiflora ‘Nigra’)

I started by saying that the story of red magnolias is a New Zealand story. In fact it started as our family story. Back in the 1970s, Felix Jury wondered if he could get a large flowered, solid coloured red magnolia on a smaller growing tree. He started with the red species – M. liliifora ‘Nigra’. In itself, ‘Nigra’ is a nice enough, low spreading magnolia but nothing showy. He crossed it with the very showy, indubitably purple ‘Lanarth’ (technically M. campbellii var. mollicamata ‘Lanarth’). The rest, as they say, is history.

crossed with this (Lanarth)

‘Vulcan’ took the magnolia world by storm. This was the break in colour and form. It is not perfect. We know that. The flowers do not age gracefully. It flowers too early in the season for some areas. It does not develop its depth of colour or size of bloom in colder climates and is a shadow of its own self in most UK and European destinations. But after more than 20 years, it is still hugely popular and very distinctive, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. It set the standard and it opened the door to other cultivars.

… and the result was this: Vulcan

In due course, but slowly, slowly, Mark followed on from his father. He raised hundreds of seedlings and named ‘Black Tulip’ (the darkest of the reds), ‘Felix Jury’ and ‘Burgundy Star’.

Fellow breeder, Vance Hooper, started his programme on the reds and he has named several. The best known is ‘Genie’. Like Mark, he is continuing determinedly down the red magnolia line in the quest for perfection, although improvement or variation will do as steps along the way.

There are other reds on the NZ market now, though none from sustained breeding programmes to match those undertaken by Mark and Vance.

Black Tulip – the first of the second generation red magnolias

It appears that it is ‘Black Tulip’ that has enabled the rise of new selections in UK and Europe. It sets seed and every man and their dog is now raising seed and naming selections. Mark is a little wry as he comments that he raised hundreds of plants to get one ‘Black Tulip’ whereas others raise a few seed and name several. He has an ever-decreasing level of patience for amateurs who, as he says, “raise five seedlings and name six of them” based on the first or second flowering only, when he is still assessing seedlings which are 20 years old and showing their adult form, habit and performance.

So New Zealand is about to lose its position of world domination in the red magnolias. But we still get better colour here than others do overseas. There is no certainty yet as to whether that is related to our mild climate, our soils, the root stock used or the quality of light – likely a combination of all. ‘Felix Jury’, which can flower strong red for us is more an over-sized pink flamingo so far in European gardens. We are just relieved that it achieves full-sized flowers and plenty of them, even if it is not red in their conditions.

Magnolia Felix Jury at its best here

The quest for truer reds continues. A red that loses the magenta hue. Mark is assessing several with which he is quietly very pleased. They are not scarlet but they are an improvement in colour. Just don’t hold your breath. This is a long haul.

Finally, while NZ leads the world in reds, it was USA which gave us yellow magnolias. These all descend from one yellow American species – M. acuminata. I just say that for the record. Credit where credit is due.

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

The pros and cons of the campanulata cherries

Manna from heaven for the tui

Taiwanese cherries, Fomosan cherries, Prunus campanulata – they are one and the same and around this time of the year are explosions of candy pink which bring tui to the garden. In our case, it is not one or two tui. We could count them by the score if they would just sit still long enough for us to carry out a census.

Mark was not too sure about the tui which seems to have mastered the sound of vuvuzela. But I digress.

Love the trees or hate them, the tui have no qualms at all. The nectar is manna from heaven to them. And therein lies the problem. I was contacted recently by someone who is crusading against the sale and planting of campanulata cherries and I was only relatively sympathetic because I think we are in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The problem is the seeding habits of some campanulatas. Many set prodigious amounts of seed which is then spread far and wide by our bird population. There is an alarmingly high rate of germination. The seedlings grow rapidly and after the second season, plants are too big to hand pull out. If you cut them off, they grow again. So bad is the problem that they have been banned in Northland and this correspondent would like to see them banned everywhere.

“There are loads of better trees for Tui such as Kowhai, Rewarewa that can be available at the same time” he claimed. I don’t want to be picky with someone who genuinely cares for the environment, but on a property packed with food for the birds, I have never seen a plant as attractive to tui as the campanulata cherries. Besides, in late winter, neither kowhai nor rewarewa are in flower yet.

I mentioned babies and bathwater because the problem is seeding. There are sterile forms of campanulata and both gardeners and tui alike may rue the day if ALL campanulatas get banned, even the named forms that never set seed. This is a problem we gardeners have brought upon ourselves. The record of garden escapes into the wild is not a proud one and too many gardeners don’t take responsibility for their weeds.

Prunus Pink Clouds – one of the sterile forms raised here by Felix Jury

Mark’s father, Felix, was a fan of the campanulatas and he bred a few. “Pink Clouds” has an attractive weeping habit and an avenue of them has been a feature at Auckland Regional Botanical Gardens. I assume it is still there. “Mimosa” is more upright and flowers a little later. “Petite Pink” is probably no longer available commercially but is a dear little tree that never gets much over two metres in height but has all the appearance and shape of a proper tree. The thing that sets these three apart is that they are all sterile. They don’t set seed so are never going to become weeds. All three are in that candy floss pink colour range.

Prunus “Felix Jury” was named for him by Duncan and Davies (it is not the done thing, dear readers, to ever name a plant after yourself) but it was of his raising. It is a much deeper colour, carmine red, and a small growing tree. What it is not, alas, is sterile so if you see it being advertised as that, the nursery or garden centre is wrong.

It seems to be quite difficult to find reliable information on the seeding habits of other cultivars on the NZ market. If anybody knows more on this topic, please let me know. Every year at this time, Mark starts to talk about doing some more work with campanulatas to raise more sterile forms. We know which ones are sterile in the garden but the best one is a rather large tree for most people on small urban sections. It would not allow you to fit your house on the plot as well.

Petal carpets supreme

I can also tell you that one of our most common weeds here is seedling cherries and we are vigilant and persistent. If you live anywhere near native bush or a reserve, you should take great care to grow only sterile forms or to avoid them altogether if you are not sure. If you live in town with a seeding specimen, your neighbours probably grit their teeth at the seedlings that pop up in their place.

If you can manage the weed potential, the explosion of bloom in late winter is wonderful. Taiwanese cherries flower much earlier than their Japanese counterparts and are nowhere near as susceptible to root problems in wetter climates, so they live longer. Nor do they suffer from witches’ broom which can take over the Japanese types. It is when part of the tree grows much more densely and vigorously and fails entirely to flower. Left to its own devices, witches’ broom can take over the entire tree and the only way to deal with it is to cut out affected sections. It is very obliging of the campanulatas to be resistant.

The tui would be most grateful if we could just get this right for them before all campanulata are banned are noxious weeds.

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

The Winter Garden

Magnolia Lanarth has a short but glorious season

I have been away for a couple of weeks. To the tropics, no less, but I need to let the experience percolate in my brain a little longer before I can translate it to anything of relevance for gardeners in our temperate climate.

What amazed me was coming home to our winter garden. When I left in mid July, the earliest magnolias were just showing colour and the first blooms, along with some of the narcissi. By early August, we have trees full of bloom. The garden is awash with scores of tui as the campanulata cherries flower. I briefly thought of writing about plants for winter colour but there is just so much in flower that it would quickly descend to a boring list.

If narcissus could look startled, these cyclamineus growing in the park certainly do

This is our winter, dear readers. Technically spring does not start until September 1. Gardening is different here to many countries.

If you have looked at British and northern European gardens, there is a long spell in winter when nothing happens. People basically put their gardens to bed and retreat indoors. A heavy dependence on deciduous perennials means that gardens which are full of foliage and bloom in warmer months look dead in winter. The majority of their trees are deciduous so become bare skeletons. It is why the definition of form becomes hugely important because that is all there is to look in the depths of winter. Hardy plants like buxus, yew and conifers give accents which are often the only statement plants in those cold months.

The same is probably true of many inland areas in the world (outside the tropics) where temperatures plummet. My Canberra-resident daughter is always astonished when she comes home in winter to see how lush and colourful we are compared to her arid, hard conditions.

Those who shun deciduous plants miss out on the wonder of plants like Magnolia Vulcan

For starters, our native plants are all evergreen. So too are most of the ornamental plants we favour in our gardens. Over the years, I have met a swag of customers who point blank refuse to have anything deciduous in their garden, which I think is a bit of a short sighted view. Some of the showiest plants of all are those which go dormant in the colder months and then leap into spectacular display – magnolias, for example. To my mind, there is a place for both evergreen and deciduous plants in gardens.

I do, however, find it curious when I see people unquestioningly grabbing the fundamentals of garden design from other climates without considering the application to our conditions. Most of us like some element of design and definition in our gardens, though there are looser styles which don’t rely on these – meadow, woodland, prairie and food forests are examples. But that definition is not essential to give us something to look at in winter.

Similarly, I am inclined to silently snort when I hear people pontificating that foliage and form are the most important elements in plants because flowers are but transient (or worse, vulgar). I think we should celebrate living in a climate which is so temperate that we can have flowers and seasonal colour twelve months of the year, that we don’t need to put our gardens to bed for winter (or indeed for hot, dry summers) and that the clarity of light and the brightness of the sun seems just as great in July and August as it is in January. We just have shorter daylight hours, lower temperatures and a few more storms.

Being so temperate, few gardeners in this country have conditions where there is a sharp seasonal change. Most of us just drift imperceptibly from one season to the next with flowering extended over longer periods. The mid season camellias are at their peak here – more winter than spring flowering in this country. The snowdrops are passing over, but the dwarf narcissi are flowering all round the place and many of the lachenalias are blooming. Daphne scent hangs heavy in the air. The earliest rhododendrons are blooming already, michelias are opening.

And the magnolias. Do not forget the magnolias. Lanarth has a short but spectacular early season. M. campbellii is at its peak, red Vulcan is opening more flowers every day. The most spectacular time of our gardening year is upon us already, and it is still winter.

I rarely complain about the winter garden here.

While not usually fans of variegated flowers, The Czar var on the back lawn is an exception

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

Food forests – fashion trend or sound option?

Mark’s recent directions in the old vegetable garden may unwittingly be well down the food forest track

Food forests. Trendy. That was enough to make us raise our eyebrows and sniff, even more so when we saw a patently absurd attempt on an earlier series of BBC Gardeners’ World to plant a so-called food forest. But we realised that they were in vogue. It was time to have a closer look.

If you are into raised vegetable beds, ultra-tidy gardens, mown lawns and general orderliness, the food forest concept will not appeal. It is not going to be an easy fit for somebody who buys their veg seedlings by the plastic punnet and on the way out, picks up a heavy grade plastic bag of compost. Nor is it overly practical in a tiny back garden.

In its simplest form, the food forest is modelled on the tropical forest and traditional methods of achieving ongoing food production with fewer inputs and less hands-on work. In a forest, you have three layers. The top canopy is the tallest trees (maybe mango, coconut palm, avocado). Beneath that are the mid canopy plants like the banana palms, maybe citrus trees or figs. At ground level are the crops that will grow in semi shade and with root competition – the likes of cassava, yams and physalis. Clambering up the trees are the climbers – think passionfruit.

The whole thing about the tropics is that you get fantastic rates of growth because of the warmth and the moisture. It is a bit different in a colder climate and, to be honest, the more temperate food forests I have looked at on line are somewhat less purist with the layers. That is because, the colder the climate, the more important sun, warmth and light become. We just won’t get the food production without them.

Parsley, bluebells and self-seeding brassicas. Why not?

The contemporary, temperate food forest appears to be more about building a sustainable ecology. So the top layers of maybe the walnut tree, the pear, the olives and plums get pushed back to the boundary where they become a productive shelter belt, rather than a canopy.

In appearance it may look somewhat chaotic, untidy even, maybe unkempt. Crops are not usually put into tightly managed rows. Garden beds and edgings disappear. Plants are placed where they will grow best and often dotted around in a visually random manner. There is a heavy emphasis on permanent plants and on varieties which will seed down to regenerate themselves. Ornamentals and vegetables are often inter-planted, though the ornamentals will usually be there for a purpose other than aesthetics – maybe to provide food for the bees or the native birds or to contribute as a green crop.

Traditional practices of crop rotation don’t feature in this style of food production. As far as we can see, the range of plants that can be grown also contracts. You are not likely to get marginal crops through. While pumpkins may seed down and adapt, the rock melons probably won’t. Aubergines will want more hands-on management and for much of the country, tomatoes are not going to be a reliable crop in such situations.

But neither will you be working as hard (a good, traditional vegetable garden takes a lot of work and time) and the environment you have created is going to be a great deal sounder ecologically. Maybe those positives make up for any drop in range or volume of produce.

If you like rules and a tightly defined philosophy, look into permaculture. It will give you a great deal more detail. It is a recent movement, founded on principles of sustainable and ecologically sound food production and ways of living. It still sits outside the mainstream as a somewhat fringe movement, even though the driving principles are very hard to fault.

As we talked through the whole food forest concept here and peeled back the layers of romanticism, of philosophical purity, the higher moral ground and the occasional flaky spirituality, we came to the conclusion that Mark’s efforts on the old vegetable garden here probably qualify. He has relocated the pickier crops to his sunny terrace gardens as increasing shade has created problems. There is the top canopy of assorted citrus, a side dressing of espalier apples of venerable vintage (including a Golden Delicious, no less), banana palms, a feijoa. Self seeders include yams, Cape gooseberries and parsley and there is a rich middle layer of plants grown predominantly as butterfly and bee food. Not to forget the sugar cane. It is all a bit chaotic but largely sustainable and very pretty in summer.

Mostly the food forest concept is about finding a balance in producing food and sustaining nature – about not stripping so much goodness from the soil that you have to keep bringing in fertilisers and soil conditioners, about not growing crops that need spraying and intensive care to get a harvest while keeping labour to a minimum.

It is mighty hard to argue against those principles. This might be a garden trend to be considered with an open mind.

Not such a great view in winter, but what can we expect? Navel orange trees. swan plants (for the monarch butterflies) and physalis

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

Know thine species

The show dahlia

You can quite easily live out your gardening days without ever worrying about species and hybrids. Indeed you can, but as with most activities, many people will find that the more they know, the more they enjoy what they are doing.

At its simplest level, species are the natural form of a plant in the wild. And all plants originated somewhere in the wild.

Hybrids are mix of two different species in the first instance and after that they can quickly become a mix of many different species and resulting hybrids getting ever more complex genetic makeup. There is no value judgement in the rights and wrongs of that. Sometimes these hybrids occur in the wild without any human intervention (usually referred to as “natural hybrids”). Often it is done deliberately to try and improve plants.

A variation on controlled hybridising is line breeding – raising many seed from a plant and selecting only the very best with which to continue. Then seed from those best plants is raised time after time until it shows stability. Seed can be extremely variable and this form of line breeding is trying to edit out the less desirable aspects over several generations.

It happens all the time with edible crops. Think how much sweet corn and kiwifruit have changed over the years. The original, wild collected species of edible crops are often poor shadows of what we have now in terms of yield, reliable production, ease of handling and palatability.

It is not always true, of course. Sometimes commercial imperatives have seen us saddled with inferior tasting product – tomatoes are a prime example. And there are concerns about the loss of the wild species which are important to maintain the gene pool for food crops.

As far as ornamental plants are concerned, most of us will have gardens which are a mix of species and hybrids. There are no hard and fast rules although I have met a fair number of gardeners in my time who parade a collection of species only as a badge of status.

Species Camellia gauchowensis

Some species have a simple charm which is lost in their showier hybrids. Others are nondescript in the extreme. Some highly desirable species are simply damn difficult to grow whereas the hybrids bring new vigour which makes them much more rewarding garden plants. Sometimes there are species which make splendid garden plants but they can be overlooked because their names are not appealing. Camellia gauchowensis has been the standout star of that family here recently and why anybody would grow the likes of Mine No Yuki instead of C. gauchowensis, I don’t know.

We have been revisiting the camellia species as we pick over the best options in the face of the devastating camellia petal blight which has so affected many of the hybrids we grow. It is not that the species don’t get it. It is just that some of them have less susceptibility and have other good characteristics which are worth looking at. More on this in the future.

Show blooms, no matter which plant family, often tend to be over-bred hybrids which are but distantly related to original species. Dahlias which are too heavy to hold their heads up without staking, bizarre daffodil forms, overblown cyclamen or chrysanthemums, enormous begonia flowers – anything that is bigger, allegedly better or a novelty genetic freak.

Named hybrid aster at top, self sown seedling at bottom

But controlled hybridising can also give us garden plants which are hugely better performers. You can see in the photograph of asters that the abundance of blooms at the top are from a named hybrid whereas the few poor specimens at the bottom are from a self sown seedling which has probably reverted closer to how the original species looks.

Hybrid arisaemas for our own garden

I am of course married to a plant breeder who is driven by the desire to create better performing garden plants. Sometimes it is just to get plants which will grow better in our garden here. His work with arisaemas is of this ilk. Many of the desirable arisaemas are a battle to grow in our conditions with insufficient chill and they simply don’t come back a second year. By hybridising two different species, he can get hybrid vigour which means they are much more reliable and stronger growing.

Other plants may be hybridised to look for new or improved characteristics – extending the colour range, reducing the impact of disease, getting more compact growth, better floral display, a longer season, sterility (to avoid unwanted seeding) or bringing the best features of different hybrids together in one plant. There are many reasons to hybridise and one of the final tests before selecting a new cultivar for release is to measure it against both the originating species and the actual parent plants. If it is not a significant improvement, then it won’t get released on the market.

Hybrids have their place in the ornamental garden and in the edible garden. But in a world which is squeezing the natural environment in every way possible, we need to retain the original species for reasons of ecology and bio-diversity. The more people who understand the difference the better – even more so if they can move away from the modern “green” cliché that says the original species are, by definition, better. They are not, but they are important.

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

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