Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

Ninfa-ish or Ninfa-esque. Sort of.

I don’t think I have ever felt so flattered in my life as when Australian garden expert, Michael McCoy came here two weeks ago saying that a Wellington landscaper friend told him he must come, that our garden is ‘like Ninfa but without the ruins’. Well, I was even more flattered when he endorsed that observation after we walked around for 2 ½ hours in rain. It took that long to get around because we found so many shared gardening values and, indeed, experiences.

Not exactly Ninfa, our Wild North Garden, but I guess it has a similar ambience but without the ruins

Upon reflection, it isn’t so much that we are like Ninfa (and we certainly lack ruins), but that these two younger professionals in the garden design scene saw the romanticism that we have embraced in our garden. We have reached it in a different way to Ninfa but soft-edged romanticism was the goal and this was an endorsement that we are reaching that goal.

Ninfa with lush growth that is not commonly seen in the hot, dry climate of southern Italy

For those of you who don’t know Ninfa, it is a garden in southern Italy that is often hailed as ‘the world’s most romantic garden’ and it is built around the remains of an entire town that was occupied from Roman times through until it was sacked in 1370. So 750 year old ruins. Our only ruin is a collapsed low brick wall which fell back around 1960s or 70s. I don’t think that counts. Ninfa is renowned for its roses and we don’t have a mass of climbing roses. Neither Mark nor I could recall long grass at Ninfa; I went through my photos from our visit and they don’t have long grass and meadows as we do. So how are we like Ninfa without the ruins?

The Court Garden last week here at Tikorangi

Soft-edged gardening is what it is all about. I see I wrote a piece about romantic gardens for Woman magazine at the beginning of last year and I must be getting old because until I reread it, I had no memory of writing it at all. ‘I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled’, to quote T.S. Eliot in his Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. At least I still dare to eat a peach.

Before I found those earlier thoughts, I had been musing all week about what makes a romantic garden. In no particular order, I would list the following:

Water is an integral part of the garden at Ninfa

Same principle Mark arrived at long before we even heard of Ninfa – creating small drops to enable the flowing water to be heard as well as seen. We have so little fall from where water enters our property on one side to where it exits on the opposite boundary that this tooks some thought and effort to achieve.

Water – a reasonably large body of water that is moving so it brings the element of sound. Ninfa was exceptional in that it was in a dry, arid part of Italy but it had its own river which gave the feeling of an oasis in a barren landscape beyond. Years ago, when Mark was playing with our onsite water, he worked on ponds and rapids to achieve small drops in level to get the sound of flowing water.
Lush growth – onsite water plays a large part in being able to manage a lush garden. I don’t think I have seen a dry garden that could be described as romantic. Water and lush growth also encourage birds, flowers bring bees and other insects and these natural creatures bring more life to a garden. We do lush growth very easily in our little corner of the world where three weeks without rain has us muttering darkly about drought.
No straight lines, right angles or hard edges. Formal gardens may be many things, but romantic they are not. And no wretched edging plants defining the line between garden and path. To our mutual amusement, Michael McCoy and I share an intense dislike for suburban edging plants.
Avoid evidence of maintaining the garden with glyphosate, too. There is not much that is less romantic than edges that have clearly been sprayed, or indeed expanses of liverwort which are too often a sign of long-term maintenance with glyphosate (Round Up).

Dappled light and glimpses beyond in our Wild North Garden

Light and shade and dappled light which usually means some taller trees. Too often, the delight in variations of light and shade are not factored into planning gardens but they add another dimension beyond flowers, foliage and form. With light and shade come views through. Designs with tightly enclosed garden rooms may be cosy and contained, but they are not often romantic. Glimpses beyond hint at further areas to be experienced.

Romanticism at Gresgarth, Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s lovely garden in the north west of England.

An absence of dominating man-made features or much that is modern. As soon as you add man-made features into a garden, be it a gazebo (oft referred to as ‘gazzybows’ here), a Japanese-style bridge painted red or any other piece of brightly painted garden structure, a modern sculpture or a stark white statue, the eye is always drawn to that piece rather than to the wider environment. Old ruins or suitably aged and mellow pieces can be added but in great moderation and with care. Less is more in a romantic garden and any additions should blend and meld, not shout out to be noticed. Forget focal points which are to direct the eye – they belong in more structured garden styles. The romantic garden is more of an absorbing experience than a directed one.

Flowers are generally in simpler, looser forms. Not necessarily small but if large, they look better if they are on the blousy side. Flowers with the tight form of, say, auriculas or formal camellias are more at home in more controlled situations. The same rule of thumb applies to plants with rigid, stiff forms. Looser forms also give more sense of movement – they will sway and respond to the slightest breeze.

Mown paths give definition – in the area we refer to as the park here at Tikorangi

We have a few roses but not a lot. Because we don’t spray them, they are integrated into plantings that will hide their poor foliage and generally disappointing form when they are not blooming in profusion. The dog, as you may gather, is my constant companion.

Without ruins and rambling roses, we have basically done it with long grass and meandering mown paths following the natural contours of the land (no straight lines!). The paths are what give definition and stop the long grass from looking like the area has just been shut up and left. In our climate, the grass growth is so strong all year round that we have to mow everything down twice a year – in midsummer and midwinter so the end of January and the end of June. But long grass, flowers growing semi-wild and meadows are not a defining characteristic of a romantic garden. They are just one style that sits within the romantic genre.

It is not all about long grass here at Tikorangi; sometimes it is about views through, gently leading from one area to another rather than straitjacketing areas into tightly defined garden rooms.

Romantic gardens come back to being in the garden, not looking at the garden, gardening with Nature more than by controlling Nature and creating gardens that sit within the landscape rather than on the land.

It is not everybody’s cup of tea. It is bringing different eyes to a garden situation and with that, different expectations. It makes us happy, brings us delight and, mostly, that is all that matters. But I am still honoured and flattered that others have referenced Ninfa as a comparator.

Ninfa with its moat and decorative white swans (and a distinctly vulgar orange hybrid tea rose on the right that disturbed me)

Lacking both moat and white swans, we have to make do the neighbour’s white runner ducks who visit the Wild North Garden from time to time.

Finally, just as a point of comparison – NOT romantic in our Wave Garden and lily border – too sharp-edged, too pristine, too tightly managed to be considered romantic. I like it, I like the contrast and it may be described in various ways, but romantic is not one of them.

The Yellow Magnolias

Magnolia ‘Honey Tulip’ with ‘Iolanthe’ behind

When the first yellow magnolia hybrids became available in New Zealand in the early to mid 1990s, they were a bit of a revelation. Most deciduous magnolias are from parts of central Asia and come in shades of pink, white, purple and hues through to red. Yellow seemed a significant addition and many people hadn’t realised that USA has its own deciduous magnolia and it flowers yellow. That is M. acuminata, sometimes referred to in its homelands as the cucumber tree.

It takes time to see how a magnolia will perform in a different climate. We knew that M. acuminata was very cold hardy, could grow very large (think 30 metres) and had small flowers. When you are looking at small nursery plants sporting their first yellow flowers, they can look exciting – something very different and new, to us at least. Given time, the picture becomes clearer and I quote Wikipedia: “Unlike most magnolias, the flowers are not showy. They are typically small, yellow-green, and borne high in the tree…”.

Magnolia ‘Yellow Fever’ on one of our road boundaries. I have never understood why anyone would choose that name

I remember talking to an American enthusiast about magnolias and it was a revelation as to different perceptions of plant hardiness. When we talked about hardiness in magnolias in our temperate climate, we measured things like vulnerability of the open flowers to frost or late storms. The timing of flowering mattered most to us. To the Americans, it was a matter of whether the bark split when the ground and trees froze in winter. That is next-level plant hardiness and they need plants that flower later in the season. Their yellow magnolia species is hardy in their winter cold.

One of the early yellow hybrids – probably ‘Yellow Fever’ – in the magnolia dell at Pukekura Park

And a close-up to show the problem of smaller flowers getting engulfed by new foliage. Most of the first batch of yellow selections flower even later so the flowers get hidden more.

The problem with most of the yellow hybrids in our temperate conditions is that the flowers come out late, at the same time as the leaves, and get lost in the foliage. The trees also grow extremely quickly and become large. The early hybrids came from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens In New York. We started with ‘Elizabeth’ (flowered early enough to beat the foliage but cream, not yellow and small flowers), ‘Yellow Bird’ (best yellow but flowered with its foliage and the small flowers became lost to view), ‘Yellow Fever’ (paler yellow but its main flowering came before the new foliage swamped them from sight and it still puts on a good display, despite its small flowers) and ‘Sundance’ (just another small, pale yellow in a similar mould). To those we added ‘Koban Dori’ (reputedly like a dwarf M. acuminata but the bright yellow flowers disappear behind the lush new foliage), ‘Eva Maria’ (novelty flower in a mix of pink, yellow and green that looks striking viewed close up but simply murky as a landscape tree – the same can be said of ‘Woodsman’) and ‘Hot Flash’ (which we rate as one of the better options because it is a good strong colour and it largely flowers on bare wood for us).

Poor old ‘Hot Flash’ never even got out of the nursery. It has long since rooted through from its pot but at least we get to admire it in a prominent spot beside the driveway to the neighbours.

In the years since those early hybrids, there has been an explosion of new selections internationally. The size of blooms has increased a bit but most keep that upward pointed shape and, in our conditions, most flower with their new foliage . Many magnolia specialists agree that too many yellow hybrids have been named. We stopped collecting more because Mark started hybridising his own and none of the overseas hybrids seemed to shout out to us as ‘must-haves’.

‘Honey Tulip’ on the left, ‘Hot Flash’ on the right

and ‘Honey Tulip’ on the left with ‘Sundance’ on the right

Mark’s ‘Honey Tulip’ is the only yellow he has named and he selected it for its cup shape – rounded petals, different to the more pointed shapes of other yellow hybrids – its reasonable flower size by yellow standards, smaller growth habit than the originating species and the fact that it flowers in abundance before the leaves appear. We have not regretted selecting it as it continues to go from strength to strength as the tree matures.

But ‘Honey Tulip’ was a step on the way. Mark would have preferred a clearer yellow and his quest has always been to see if he could reach a big flower – something the size of an ‘Iolanthe’ bloom – in clear yellow with the cup and saucer form. As we edge past the peak blooming season for the Asiatic magnolias in red, white and pink, his yellow seedlings are all starting to bloom. The dream of a big, proper yellow ‘Iolanthe’ type bloom will likely take another generation or two of plant breeding and, sadly, he may be running out of time. But there is enough amongst the seedlings to see that it is possible. He has reached the size, the colour and the flower form – just not all on the same plant yet!

We are flowering a lot of next generation ‘Honey Tulip’ controlled crosses and most are ending up looking very like their dominant parent. Good colour but not good enough to name.

And again – a good plant but not good enough to name when we already have one

‘Big Flop’, as Mark calls this one. Getting there on size and overall flower form but the upper petals flop and it is not a good enough colour

Good flower size and form but not there yet on colour – more cream than yellow

Getting closer but Mark hates the notched petals…

Good colour and flower size but the tree is growing way too large to even consider

Breeding magnolias is a numbers game, Mark will tell you. Amongst the several score of yellow seedlings, there are two that excite us. Neither are big yellow ‘Iolanthes’ but there is enough that is special about them to make us pick them as worth tracking for potential selection. I don’t share photos of ones that we think may be special, sorry. You only get to see them when we rule them out or when they are actually ready for release. In a world already overcrowded with yellow magnolia selections, we need to be very confident before we add one or two more.

Then and now. A magnolia (michelia) story.

Fairy Magnolia White on the left, ‘Bubbles’ top right and the first flowers to open for the season on Fairy Magnolia Cream bottom right

In the early stages of the magnolia season, our display is dominated by red deciduous magnolias and white michelias. The other colours come later in the season and that is particularly true of the michelias, where we now have significant variations.

Michelias are now classified as a subsection of magnolias and technically are named Magnolia xxxx but we still find it helpful to refer to them as michelias for clarity. They are, of course, evergreen but not with the big leathery leaves of the American Magnolia grandiflora types.

It was finding M. ‘Bubbles’ in bloom with flowers at a height I could pick that started me lining them up. Back in their day, ‘Bubbles’ and its sister seedling ‘Mixed Up Miss’ were breakthroughs in the world of michelias. There is a third named one in that set but I have only ever seen ‘Hint of Pink’ in Auckland Regional Botanic Gardens. They were the work of the very late Os Blumhardt – a notable plant breeder who lived in Whangarei and is probably best known internationally for his successful deciduous Magnolia ‘Starwars’.

He didn’t raise many michelia seedlings, as far as we know just the one batch. I see we first started selling ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Mixed Up Miss’ around 1992 and we would have been onto them pretty early because Os was a personal friend and very generous with his plant material. He probably did the cross in the late 1970s, maybe early 1980s and he provided the inspiration to Mark to see what he could do with this plant family.

‘Mixed Up Miss’ at Auckland Botanic Gardens. The flowers are small and so high up on our tree that I can’t photograph it

In their day, they were terrific. ‘Bubbles’ was harder to propagate from cutting and had larger flowers and foliage. ‘Mixed Up Miss’ was the perfect nursery plant – easy to propagate, set flower buds on a young plant and looked extremely attractive and neat standing about a metre high in its pot. It has smaller flowers with slightly more colour but there isn’t a lot in it.

Os was doing this work before M. laevifolia (formerly known as M. yunnanensis but more widely marketed under a plethora of names including ‘Honey and Cream’) was even in the country. He used two of the common species that were here – M. doltsopa and M. figo. In the world of magnolias, this particular cross is referred to as x foggii (after American breeder John Fogg who is credited with the first hybrids from this cross in 1972).

All that white in the centre is our Magnolia (michelia) doltsopa. Yes, it is somewhat large

M. doltsopa is a variable species. I only have photographs of our specimen which is spectacular and takes up an area of space roughly equivalent to a small, urban apartment block. They are not all as huge as that but they do have large flowers.

M. figo will be better known to many readers. It is smaller growing and sold widely, particularly favoured in warmer areas. Its flowers are verging on insignificant to the point where I have never bothered photographing them so I had to grab an image from Wiki Commons. It is a handy, evergreen plant that you can keep compact by pruning often, although its foliage turns rather yellow in full sun. It is mostly grown for its strong fragrance which has always reminded me of Bubblegum chewing gum so loathed by my mother. It only gets fragrant in the late afternoons and evenings, though.

‘Bubbles’ in the centre after 35 years or so. It is in full flower but not exactly a showstopper

For comparison, Fairy Magnolia White in flower with Camellia yuhsienensis in front. The larger, more open flowers are much more distinctive

These new hybrids of Os’s were a breakthrough in terms of more user-friendly garden plants. Alas, some plants get significantly more spectacular with age but others don’t. And on a property with literally hundreds of white michelias from Mark’s breeding programme, you would not look twice at our specimens of ‘Mixed Up Miss’ and ‘Bubbles’. Picking flowers of ‘Mixed Up Miss’ defeated me because I would have to carry a ladder to the farthest reaches of our park where it is now very tall and leggy. You could keep them more compact and bushy by frequent pruning if you are in a smaller garden but the following generations of hybrids are a significant improvement.

Magnolia laevifolia (formerly Michelia yunnanensis) ‘Velvet and Cream’

Mark has used both ‘Bubbles’ and, more often, ‘Mixed Up Miss’ extensively in his breeding but he also had the huge advantage of being able to add in M. laevifolia. While he has tried a few of the other species michelias we have in this country, it is line breeding with those early x foggii hybrids (so doltsopa and figo) with laevifolia that has given the huge range in flower colour and growth habit that he has reached in his later generations of michelia hybrids. The first three releases are all under the brand of Fairy Magnolia (White, Cream and Blush) and are now widely available here and overseas.

Mark’s Fairy Magnolia Cream on the top left with Fairy Magnolia White below and a random selection of seedlings which are also coming into flower. There is a whole lot more to selecting a plant for release than just a pretty flower but even that is difficult when looking at 80 or 100 plants of the same cross, all of which are white.

None of the later selections are on the market yet although there are three coloured ones being built up for release and there will likely be another three to follow at some stage when we have made the final selections. It is not a quick process so don’t hold your breath.

Yes, we have colours coming through. Not all michelias are white or cream.

Fairy Magnolia Cream and Fairy Magnolia White. Blush has yet to open its pale pink flowers.

When your gardening life lacks a handy takahē or two

Time for the winter clean-up in the Court Garden

I have spent the last week on my knees. Not praying, you understand, but grooming the large grasses in the Court Garden. “What you need,” said Mark, helpfully, “is a takahē.” He had read or heard somewhere that in the wild, takahē get right into the crown of grasses and clean the debris and dead patches out. That would be a fine thing. Besides, takahē would look very handsome browsing amongst the chionochloa although we might have muzzle Ralph.

Takahē (photo credit: John Barkla via Wiki Commons)

The takahē is a large, flightless bird belonging in the group unromantically named swamp hens or rail. The North Island takahē was likely extinct by the time European settlers arrived although the South Island takahē is something of a miracle story. It, too, was thought to be extinct by the end of the nineteenth century until its rediscovery in a remote Fiordland valley in 1948. Latest figures show there are 440 live takahe, every one known individually, as a result of human intervention to save this handsome bird from extinction. There are now enough for breeding pairs to be cautiously relocated to safe sanctuaries which are free from predators. Their status has been changed from Nationally Critical to Nationally Vulnerable so they are a shining success story of saving a species in a country where we have managed to lose too many due to human settlement.

Ralph, wondering about his lack of ability to fly

I fear Ralph would deal to any that crossed his path. Given that his biggest regret in life is his failure to master the art of flying despite all his best efforts, I do not think he would be able to resist taking down a ground bird. Indeed, dogs are one of the biggest threats to takahē, along with contracted shooters who can’t tell the difference between a pukeko and a takahē.

Pukeko which we have in abundance in this country

Takahē – spot the difference? (Photo credit Judy Lapsley Miller via Wiki Commons)

In the absence of such handy helpers, it is I who is on my knees with my trusty tools. My theory is that the native grasses we have which have a reputation of not being long lived as garden plants have an issue with a build up of debris that rots down and keeps the centre of the plant so wet that it can rot out. This is of course because our native grasses are all evergreen so they don’t shed their spent foliage. The amount of debris I pulled out from the large toe toe (Austroderia fulvida) was prodigious and there was certainly evidence of growing tips rotting out beneath the debris so I am hoping that the plants will heave a sigh of relief and stay healthy.

I probably cleaned out a third the volume remaining in dead and spent foliage – our native toe toe or *Austroderia fulvida*

I wrote about cleaning up the grasses last year so in brief summary, it is:

Deciduous plants like the miscanthus get cut to the ground when the feathery plumes all start to fall over and lose their charm.
Semi-deciduous plants which just look scruffy and awful – particularly the calamagrostis – also get cut to the ground.
Evergreen grasses – which are all our natives plus the non-native Stipa gigantea – are dead-headed and individually groomed to remove spent foliage. The exception is the smaller carexes, particular C. buchananii and C. comans. These just get left alone with excess seedlings thinned out. They are such enthusiastic seeders that if any of them kark it, there are plenty there to take over and fill the space.
The advice to leave these plants until spring in order that birds may find winter feed belongs in the northern hemisphere where most of their birds are grain feeders and winters are so cold that birds can die of starvation. Our winters are mild enough that there is plenty of feed and almost all of our native birds are nectar or fruit feeders.

Two different named phormiums (flaxes) backed by *Miscanthus* ‘Morning Light’. We have just lost the names of the flaxes but they are very good.

*Astelia chathamica* looks a bit like a silver flax but is a different plant family. With Ralph emerging by the *Elegia capensis*

While I was down on my hands and knees, I also groomed the native flaxes and astelias growing in that garden, cutting off spent and damaged leaves at the base and they look a whole lot better for that. And I thinned the Elegia capensis, knocking off some of the new shoots that are appearing beyond their allotted space. No wonder it all felt quite a major clean-up this year.

Mark often refers to gardening as the act of tidying Nature. But after our discussions on the takahē, he noted that my recent efforts were ‘not so much tidying Nature in this case, as filling in an ecological gap left when humans squeezed out the birds that would have done this in the past’.

Open season

First published in the November issue of Woman magazine. Ironically, two weeks after writing this (which, with magazine deadlines, was in September), I realised that we were done with opening the garden to the public. That was why we then announced that the garden festival just passed would be our last.

We do great spring gardens in Aotearoa New Zealand. Notwithstanding the usual moaning about the weather, this is a country with a mild, temperate climate, lacking extremes of temperature. We drift so gradually between seasons that our spring season extends to a long period. Magnolias, flowering cherries, daffodils, irises, early roses and much, much more – our springs are a froth of bloom. It is no coincidence that spring is the main season for garden festivals and garden visiting.

Maybe you have been thinking you would like to open your garden, to share the results of your dedicated efforts.

There are various reasons for opening your garden but making money is not likely to be a viable option, at least not in Aotearoa. We simply don’t have high enough visitor numbers. Most open gardens in this country will get numbers in the low hundreds to the low thousands. To be financially viable, you would need to be in the high tens of thousands and that is a whole different ball game.

Location affects visitor numbers a great deal and gardens on the tourist circuit will get higher numbers but that is also dependent on good access, excellent signage and convenient parking.

Gardens with added attractions appeal to wider cross section of the potential visitor market. Not many of us can manage a castle in a spectacular setting (here’s looking at you, Larnach’s Castle). A café or plant nursery helps but it is rare to find a place where the café or other attraction and the garden are of equally high standard.

Hosting events can be be quite high stress, especially if it is dependent on the rain holding off for long enough. There is nothing like tracking the hourly weather forecast to lift anxiety levels.

There are plenty of gardens that host events in an effort to build visitor numbers and generate income but this is not a track we have chosen to go down. My gardening and life partner, Mark, has never wanted a bar of events. As far as he is concerned, he only welcomes visitors if they want to see the garden, not because it is a venue. I flirted with a few weddings while Mark hid out of sight in his vegetable garden, quietly pretending there was nothing going on. Encountering not one but two Bridezillas put me off for life. I remember thinking of one, “Lady, you are not paying me anywhere near enough to treat me like the hired help in my own garden while you pose for wedding photographs in front of my house.”

Some level of catering, perhaps? Been there, done that. It added extra work and stress but was generally manageable until the rise to prominence of not just vegetarian options but also vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, keto and goodness knows what else. The general public have become awfully picky eaters in recent times.

It only takes one group eating lunch in the garden to turn your formerly well-behaved dog into a shameless beggar. Few are better at working a crowd than our Dudley.

Some people open for charity and that is a laudable position, given how much work it takes to get a garden to opening standard. Some open to support an event or festival. Some may be driven by ego alone but, let’s be honest, we all want visitors to come and enjoy our place, to admire our efforts, maybe to be impressed by what we are doing, certainly to share the pleasure we find in our own garden. It can be a very affirming experience and that is the main reason we still open.

We first opened 35 years ago, which seems like an eternity. Initially we kept it to the 10 days of what was then called the Taranaki Rhododendron Festival (now the Centuria Taranaki Garden Festival and currently going stronger than ever). They were different times – simpler, more amateurish and visitor expectations were a lot lower than they are today. Mind you, most garden visitors expected free entry, too.

Bowing to pressure, we gradually extended our open times to eight months of the year.

Festival is the only time of the year when I regret not owning a clothes drier. Washing on the line is a no-no.

It changes the way you look at your garden. You start looking more critically, as though through the eyes of the garden visitor. It also changes the way you manage a garden, trying to keep standards up all the time but without the staff that maintain publicly owned gardens. It even affects when you can peg your washing on the line (never in busy times or when tours are booked – at least not if you have a prominent washing line, as we do). When you are a private garden, it is not just the garden you are opening; there is a certain amount of presentation of a desirable lifestyle that goes with it. I have noticed a growing tendency in recent years to ‘dress’ or stage gardens in the manner of staging real estate.

It is common now to see a certain level of staging or dressing a garden – best when it is witty as here at Bev McConnell’s garden ‘Ayrlies’.

After 25 years we had had enough and visitor numbers had fallen away, except for the 10 day festival period. We closed the garden entirely for 7 years, using that time to carry out major work and to fall in love with our own place again. We didn’t garden less, we just gardened differently.

Nowadays we only open for the garden festival. That is our half way compromise. It still governs how we garden for maybe half the year but the other half is ours, all ours. As an aside, it takes almost as much work to prepare a garden for a single tour group or a one-day event as it does to open for a more extended period. Do not be lulled into the thought that it will be much easier if the time length is short.

I am not sorry to have left scanning or signing-in behind.

When we re-opened in November 2020, we were not sure how we would feel and we certainly did not anticipate the impact of being in a Covid-free country with closed borders and a population suffering from cabin fever. Visitor numbers were three times higher than we expected.

Last year’s festival threatened to be a huge disappointment as Auckland and large parts of the Waikato went into lockdown and tour groups cancelled left, right and centre but numbers held at a reasonable level, given the extraordinary situation. Opening in Covid times has certainly added layers of challenge.

The day of the poocalypse was certainly a memorable occasion

When we reopened, friends came to help. I joked that for once Mark and I would be able to swan around, being gracious hosts. Ha! Chance would be a fine thing. All I can say is that I seem to spend a lot of my time worrying about carparking and clean toilets and much less time being the gracious host. You haven’t lived until the septic tank servicing the loos fails on a day when you have over 450 visitors on the property. I am hoping not to repeat that experience. A poocalypse, we called it at the time.

Carparking is a challenge. However, we have found that we can park 54 – or was it 57 – vehicles on our property before having to park visitors on the road but it takes careful management by two people and not too much rain beforehand.

Don’t even ask about carparking. I know more about the vagaries of drivers and parking than I need to. We still laugh, however, at the benighted but not de-knighted former Cabinet minister who visited. “It is just like Sissinghurst,” he declared as he entered. Having been to Sissinghurst ourselves, we knew that he was referring to the challenge of finding a carpark at a busy time.

I have often said that 99 out of every 100 garden visitors are perfectly pleasant, courteous and appreciative people. The 100^th is not. In discussion here, we agreed that it is more like one in 500 who is not. When garden openers gather after an event, conversation often turns to the 500^th visitor. We all remember them. In fact, we sometimes compare notes to see if it is the very same person. Years later, we still remember them – which is probably an indicator of how few unpleasant garden visitors there are. But if you are out and about visiting gardens, don’t be the 500^th visitor. Maybe stay home instead of wilfully ruining somebody else’s day.

It should also go without saying that visitor books are solely there for garden visitors to write something positive, or at least pleasant. Manners matter, m’dear. If you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all – at least not in the visitor book and probably not in on-line reviews, unless you have already made your complaint or criticism in person to the garden owner. I am all for keeping standards, decorum and courtesy in the somewhat rarefied world of garden visiting.

The definitive word comes from my Mark who, when we were considering reopening, said, “You don’t garden on this scale without wanting to share it with others”. At least we agree that ten days a year is quite enough for us now.

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