Tag Archives: Mark and Abbie Jury

Garden Diary – the first entry May 28, 2010

Mark covets the neighbour's wife's toy - her Bosch trimmer

Mark covets the neighbour's wife's toy - her Bosch trimmer

Ha! I knew I loved writing, but I didn’t realise quite how much until I stopped the weekly routine. So herewith the first of a new series. Instead of casting around each week to dispense advice on what readers should be doing in their garden, I thought instead I would record what we have actually done.

Mark has been playing with a new toy which belongs to Lloyd’s wife (Lloyd being our neighbour, friend and one remaining staff member). I don’t think his wife knows they are over here but despite initial scepticism, these battery powered clippers by Bosch have proven to be so useful that I can see Mark needs a set for his birthday. He has spent hours cutting back the long grass from the bulbs he has naturalised in the park (dwarf cyclamen, dwarf narcissi, snowdrops – galanthus – lachenalias and more). The clippers are much faster to use than snips and have saved a major flare-up of his RSI. He is besotted with them and loves to demonstrate how easily they cut back spent perennials and seed heads as well. To me, they resemble hairdresser’s clippers. Not that I have anything against hairdressers.

Drying the maize crop for the pigeons

Drying the maize crop for the pigeons

In the edible garden, which is entirely Mark’s domain here, he has been continuing his nightly rat and mouse bait round to combat the growing population. He gathered the maize which he grows to feed his pigeons (I call him the Jack Duckworth of Tikorangi) and has it spread out to dry. He continues to eat fresh sweet corn every day for lunch. The walnut harvest is being dried, the last of the tree-ripened apples were gathered this week but there is a major failure in the vegetable garden. He did not follow the advice we dispensed weekly a couple of months ago and there is a dearth of green vegetables. I have had to buy some – the first vegetables we have bought for close to a year.

Lloyd has spent much of the week weed-eating areas which we can not mow. If he times this autumn round well, grass growth slows so much that it does not need to be done again until we open the garden at magnolia time. An amazingly mild autumn may upset this routine. Grass growth continues unabated.

Our most reliable Friend of the Garden, Colin, has been up for the week. He likes to escape his retirement village (widely known in this country as a Home for the Bewildered) and spend an intensive four days in the garden at least once every six weeks. As a retired horticulturist, he is one of the few people we trust with areas full of treasures so he has done a major clean up of Mark’s cold border in the park – just in time as the trilliums are pushing through.

I am continuing my major revamp of the Avenue Gardens – this week a badly overgrown area of choking and choked perennials which has involved some pretty heavy digging. I have taken out the lot, divided them and discarded large quantities which are surplus to requirements before replanting in freshly dug ground. I have also been dividing and potting Soloman Seal (polygonatum multiflorum) to sell during our annual garden festival at the end of October and digging and dividing some large clumps of a particularly good variegated form of Crinum moorei. We know only too well that one of the drawcards here is our ability to offer plants for sale that can’t be found elsewhere.

For any local readers who noticed the article that replaced me in the Taranaki Daily News on Friday:
1) The unnamed vireya photographed was Golden Charm (one of ours, bred by Felix Jury).
2) The advice given to cut your luculia back to half a metre high after flowering only applies to Luculia gratissima (Early Dawn is the common sugar pink one in flower now). If you do that to Luculia pinceana types (Fragrant Cloud is the spectacular, heavily scented almond pink one most commonly available), you will kill them. We prefer to let Early Dawn grow. It forms a graceful under-storey large shrub.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 27 May, 2011

Vireya rhododendron Buttermaid, flowering with great enthusiasm

Vireya rhododendron Buttermaid, flowering with great enthusiasm

Tikorangi Notes: Friday, 27 May, 2011

As autumn closes into winter here, the days are shorter and we are getting plenty of rain but it is hardly cold yet – daytime temperatures are still in the late teens. The beauty of vireya rhododendrons is their ability to flower randomly throughout the year, even at times when there is not a great deal else in bloom. Buttermaid is one of Felix Jury’s early hybrids (aurigeranum x macgregoriae). In a world of big, fragrant, luscious blooms and heavy felted foliage, Buttermaid is destined forever to be the bridesmaid at best. However those showy big-bloomed types rarely, if ever, put on a mass display like the unpretentious Buttermaid. After decades of growing and experimenting with vireyas, we are increasingly of the view that healthy characteristics and flower power matter more than fragrance and individual flower size.

Says it all, really, though the joke of the setting will only be understood by New Zealanders

Says it all, really, though the joke of the setting will only be understood by New Zealanders

Latest Posts:

1) The end of an era.
2) Hollywood, Wellywood, Tikowood – a visual joke that will bypass those not in New Zealand this week.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 20 May, 2011

The lovely tree dahlias - not a plant for places which get early frosts

The lovely tree dahlias - not a plant for places which get early frosts

A favourite late autumn and winter scene here - the Queen Palm and silver birch set against the blue sky

A favourite late autumn and winter scene here - the Queen Palm and silver birch set against the blue sky

Latest posts:

1) The second edition of the Tui NZ Fruit Garden – is it an improvement on the first version which was withdrawn from sale with indecent haste this time last year? (Subtitled: why cooks should keep to writing recipe books and not over reach themselves with garden books.)

2) Podocarpus henkelii – a handsome, slow growing, evergreen tree from South Africa in Plant Collector this week.

3) Garden tasks for the week as autumn
slowly morphs into winter.

Plant Collector: Podocarpus henkelii

Podocarpus henkelii looks handsome all 12 months of the year

Podocarpus henkelii looks handsome all 12 months of the year

One of my favourite trees here is this African podocarpus. It must be fifty years old by now and stands some 8 metres high. About 25 years ago, we built part of our nursery around it but we made sure it remained unaffected. Now, as we turn that nursery area into garden, we are really pleased that we kept it as a feature tree for our planned Palm Walk. You can’t hurry up maturity on slow growing trees. Not that it has any connection to palms but it fits right in to that slightly exotic theme.

Henkelii comes from the Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal area of South Africa. In the wild, it now has protected status but it is common as a garden plant in its homeland because it is an elegant, slow growing evergreen tree. It is commonly referred to as the Yellowwood because its timber is apparently yellow and excellent for making furniture. This may account for it needing to be protected. The narrow leaves measure over 20cm long and hang in a sickle shape. We know ours is a female because it produces plenty of seed which looks like green olives but as henkelii is dioecious, it needs both male and female plants to get fertile seed. In other words, the seed from our tree is sterile because it is a solitary specimen.

The podocarps are a big family and widespread, though mostly from milder areas south of the equator. Our native totara is a member.

In the Garden this Week: May 20, 2011

Arguably the most critical copper spray of the year on citrus now

Arguably the most critical copper spray of the year on citrus now

• Get a copper spray on to citrus trees as soon as dry weather returns. This is a particularly important spray to stop fruit rotting on the trees before it even ripens and to stop leaf drop. Mandarins are particularly susceptible.

• Sow broad beans and you can continue planting the reliable brassicas (except Brussels sprouts – it is far too late for them. Your Brussels should already be half a metre high by now if you are to get a crop in late winter).

• We are dubious of the practice of fertilising and routinely spraying your lawns because it is just all round bad environmental practice but if you insist on continuing to use hormone sprays, getting them on now rather than waiting for spring may contain some of the damage to neighbouring plants. Plants coming into fresh leaf in spring are extremely susceptible to the faintest hint of spray drift. Hormone sprays are used to take out undesirable lawn weeds. Hand weeding is kinder to the environment if you don’t want a bio-diverse lawn.

• Get the last of your autumn harvest in before you lose the lot. Any potatoes still in the ground will be getting eaten. We have finished the tomatoes here but the capsicums and peppers will hold longer in the shed whereas they rot in the garden. Gather nuts and dry them rather than leaving them to feed the local rodents.

• Polyanthus can be lifted and thinned. Replant the strong crowns to get a better display shortly.

• Keep an eye on leaf litter landing in fish ponds and water features. If you let it rot down in the water, it increases the nutrient levels leading to later problems with algae growth and it can even kill the fish by reducing oxygen levels. A kitchen sieve or butterfly net is a useful scoop for this task.

• Lily bulbs are now in stock at garden centres. These are best bought fresh so if you want to grow these wonderful summer bulbs, get in early. Pot them if you are not ready to put them straight into the garden because they don’t store well.