Tag Archives: Taranaki gardens

Tikorangi Notes: Saturday 23 October, 2010

Latest Posts: 23 October, 2010

1) Rococo gardening in Portugal – the garden at the Pink Palace in Queluz.

2) A lilac that is happy in our mild climate with acid soils: Syriniga palibiniana from Korea.

3) Our hints for garden tasks for this week.

4) It is only one week out from the single biggest event on our garden visiting calendar in Taranaki – Counting Down to Festival.

The fluffy pink pompoms of Prunus Pearly Shadows
The fluffy pink pompoms of Prunus Pearly Shadows
Rhododendron Bernice flowering this week

Rhododendron Bernice flowering this week

Tikorangi Notes: 23 October, 2010
With under a week to go until the start of the Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival next Friday, the pressure is on to complete the garden preparation. Expectations are high when it comes to standards of presentation and grooming here. With various factors mitigating against meeting our deadlines this year (an appalling early spring of wind and rain, the odd bout of illness and injury, not to mention my disappearance overseas for three weeks), we have been grateful for extra assistance from some able friends this week. The plants are unconcerned by the flurry of activity – rhododendrons and azaleas opening every day, Prunus Pearly Shadows is a picture, the Scadoxus puniceus are eyecatching and everybody asks about the arisaemas (Mark’s hybrids). It promises to be as colourful and fragrant a display as ever.

Countdown to Festival, October 22, 2010

* It is just one week out from Festival this year and John and Phyllis Malcolm at Lockinge Garden near Kapuni have three young black swans in residence on their lake. The wet winter has certainly suited the hostas and Big Daddy, planted around the lake, is looking particularly splendid. Phyllis says that the irises and Rhododendron Lemon Lodge are looking spot on for flowering right on cue and she is really pleased with how the honesty and aquilegias are naturalising and filling in the spaces under their mature trees.

* Nearer Opunake, Sheryl and Geoff Campbell on Patiki Road are nearly through the last round of preparation (most of us work our way right round our gardens more than once in ever increasing detail as we prepare). The roses put on tremendous new growth in the few sunny days we have had, the clematis are coming into flower and the white wisteria is promising to be spectacular next week.

* Moving around towards Warea, Maria van der Poel is looking forward to her second year of opening. She has been like a big kid playing with a new toy in her recently erected hot house and, with assistance from a friend, has plenty of plants potted up for sale to garden visitors. The wood pigeons have returned to her garden for spring time and the roses have responded to some special TLC and are rocketing away despite recent coastal winds buffeting them around. Maria has her fingers crossed for good weather and a great festival for all her fellow garden openers.

* Inland from Stratford, Lorri and Bruce Ellis have one of the largest private gardens in the Festival and Lorri plans her preparation from six months out. Even so, she wryly notes, she has a tendency to underestimate the vagaries of the spring weather. The recent winds have hurled branches all round the place and the horrendous September rains (324ml of the stuff at their place) saw her and Bruce wading through sticky mud and papa up to the tops of their gumboots as they worked to complete the new trail through their dell. On the bright side, she is enjoying the blues in her garden – a sea of bluebells complemented by a bank of purple ajuga which is alive with busy bumblebees, the mauve pawlonia and the purple sparaxias completing the picture.

* Down the road, more or less, and around a few corners at Gordon Dale Gardens near Toko,
Jan Worthington agrees that timing is all important in the lead-up to Festival. Did she prune the standard photinias at the right time so that they will be glowing red balls at the start of November? Will there be any roses in flower, given the cold spring? How quickly will the vegetables grow so that they look strong, healthy and nearly ready for harvest? Will the bare patches in the garden be filled out with the annuals and perennials over the next week? A few days of sun and warmer weather will make Jan breathe more easily.

* Near Hawera, at Puketarata, Jennifer Horner is irritated by the rabbits nibbling at the new growth on her pinks and tiarellas. Other than that, she is hoping that winds will not return after the mess left last week. They are busy enough with the final round of weeding and tidying and can do without the extra work.

* The unusually wet spring is a recurring theme and Vance Hooper at Magnolia Grove says that at least they have seen the worst case scenario for springs and groundwater on their property after five years of living there. It is so bad in one area that he and Kathryn have decided that best solution will be develop some permanent ponds there in the near future (after Festival, no doubt). However, even the few days of fine weather recently has made a big difference, getting the roses and perennials moving into growth. The pink floribunda wisteria is promising its best display yet.

* It is many years since Josephine and Quinton Reeves at Wintringham in New Plymouth have opened for Festival and they are making a welcome return this year. Josephine says that their blue clematis are rocketing into flower but her Cornus controversa variegata is threatening to become The Wedding Cake Tree of Pisa as it has developed a significant lean in a quest to get away from the domineering influence of the adjacent 80 year old golden elm. It is not the pesky mynah birds that are visiting their ponga trees (as mentioned recently at Te Kainga Marire) but visiting doves who come to sojourn daily and carry out their courting rituals. More decorative, at least, than the mynahs.

* Festival newcomers, Alan and Cath Morris at Pukemara (also in New Plymouth) have been feeling tested by the wind and rain but are well on top of the final preparation work. They are hoping for more sunshine and warmth to hurry along the flower buds on the vireya rhododendrons, but the roses are opening their first buds and the hostas are rocketing away and filling the spaces. They are really looking forward to opening day next Friday.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday October 15, 2010

Latest posts:
1) Hippeastrum aulicum is flowering in abundance in our woodland gardens.
2) Garden tasks for the upcoming week as we hurtle along in spring.
3) Choosing a wheelbarrow – the latest in Abbie’s Outdoor Classroom series.
4) Two weeks until our annual Taranaki Rhododendron and Garden Festival – the pressure is on as we count down.
5) Tried and True – ligularia reniformis (widely referred to as the tractor-seat ligularia).
6) A hot, dry autumn in Spain and Portugal – the first of Abbie’s columns on her recent jaunt to those countries.

 

Rhododendron polyandrum - big and very fragrant

Rhododendron polyandrum - big and very fragrant

 


Tikorangi notes: October 15, 2010
I went away for three weeks and came home to find that I had entirely missed the erythronium flowering for the year, the magnolias are all but over, the michelias are past their peak, but the pleione orchids and rhododendrons are looking great. This is R.polyandrum, one of our favourite species. The fragrance is divine and it is one of the breeder parents of a whole range of cultivars bred by both Felix Jury and Mark, bringing healthy characteristics, flower size and its delicious scent. This is one of those plants where the scent can hang heavy in the air metres away from a large specimen. Others might think it can be a bit open, leggy even, but we don’t mind that because it has splendid peeling bark and we like the open habit rather than a heavy, dense shrub which sits solid on the ground.

Countdown to Festival: October 15, 2010

• With only two weeks left before Festival starts, I am sure we could all have done without the savage winds early this week. In our case it felled yet another massive Lombardy poplar along with the power lines which service a fair number of properties along the road. We are desperately hoping that is the end of any of our trees committing hari-kari before the chainsaw wielding men get to the vulnerable ones straight after Festival. But as we waited for the Powerco crew to arrive, our trees festooned in broken power lines, Mark and I were deeply shocked to see a pair of visitors come out from the garden. They had found the honesty box and the directions and taken themselves around, presumably stepping over and under power lines. We have informed our two dogs that they failed entirely as an early warning system when it could have really mattered.

• Chris Goodin, who gardens around Pungarehu way on Mirihau Road, is very excited about the exhibition of flower paintings by Auckland artist Karl Maughan which she is having in her home this festival. Because the artist will be overseas during the event, they are planning a small exhibition opening at daughter Nicci’s florist premises in town this coming Wednesday, 20 October when the artist can be present. If you are interested in attending, call Chris on 7828 160 or Nicci Goodin on 757 2233. The paintings have all been inspired by Taranaki with a particular link to Pukeiti.

• At La Rosaleda in New Plymouth, Coleen Peri’s best laid plans have been disrupted. She had been feeling confident and well on track until the really awful early spring. She lost two weeping silver pears in one gale and has had to resort to some reasonably expensive, specialised metal staking for her tall standard roses as she feared they could snap in the wind. However, despite the cold, wet and windy conditions, her roses are well advanced and she says most will be flowering for festival. While Coleen describes herself as an impatient gardener, her delight that her Phlomis tuberosa is about to bloom after about three years would suggest that she has more patience than some. She is hoping the Crambe cordifolia will follow suit and finally flower.

• In Waitara, Margaret Goble reports that her roses are already starting to show colour so there should be a splendid display from this experienced rosarian during festival. She is really pleased with how her window boxes are looking – a froth of lobelia and pansies – but her hanging baskets are letting the side down and languishing behind. They need some warmer weather to hurry them along in time. The bearded irises (Margaret has a substantial planting of these and was kind enough to give me some of a pure blue one I admired greatly) are spiking up right on cue this year. Margaret is keeping mum on the design changes she has made in her garden this year (though she did let me into one secret) – you will just have to visit and see for yourself.

• At the time of writing, it seems like a distant memory but Maree Rowe had the sunblock out last week after she unwittingly burned herself the previous day. Weeding has been keeping her very busy. As a certified organic property, she does not use weedkillers but does it all by hand. Readers of the Weekend Gardener should have spotted the feature on Havenview Vegetable Garden in the issue which came out last week.

• How apt to see that the winner of the Early Bird Prize Package (that is the garden visitor’s equivalent of a goody bag) is none other than Stratford’s Shirley Greenhill. Shirley is a renowned gardener herself who opened her large garden as part of the Festival for many years before she retired and downsized. Those of us who know Shirley will be looking forward to seeing her out and about the gardens wearing her complimentary hot pink and white festival tee shirts.

Countdown to Festival: September 17, 2010

  • Southwards in Hawera at Puketarata, Jennifer Horner has been looking on the positive side and enjoying those spring days which have been lovely (as opposed to sodden). While the early daffodils and Magnolia Vulcan are looking a little weather beaten, (though Jen says Vulcan has been spectacular this year), Rhododendron Bibiani is in full flower and has escaped damage and the pretty Prunus Awanuis are just opening. The lawns have responded most gratifyingly to an application of potash and Jennifer is feeling that she is on top of the pruning, fertilizing and mulching but the vegetable garden is calling.
  • Also down in Hawera, one of Festival’s most experienced openers, Mary Dixon is dashing out in between the showers trying to get jobs done – weeding, moving plants, deadheading and getting rid of the winter moss buildup. She is still worried about the possibility of late frosts, so is cautious about rushing to fill the gaps left by earlier frost damage. However the delight of the early spring display of magnolias, flowering cherries, daffodils, violas and pansies, different hellebores and primulas more than compensates. Mary gardens for twelve months of the year but likes to have her garden peaking to perfection for Festival at the end of October.
  • Moving northwards, June Lees of Cairnhill Garden, Stratford has been waging war on liverwort, the bane of all our lives in our climate. She is hoping it will be invisible by the time Festival opens. June is also having fun with her new playhouse, as she calls her tunnel house. It may seem an extravagant home for her hanging baskets, but it has made life much easier for both June and said baskets. In the past she has had to house them in her glasshouse where she kept bumping into them so leading her to move them out too early to the patio. So at this stage, her new tunnel house gives room for a glorious line of hanging baskets and no doubt, over time, June will find a whole host of other uses for her tunnel house and she will wonder how she ever managed without it.
  • Joyce Young has been in Festival for a very long time indeed but more recently has moved to a small garden in town – a mere 480 square metres, she says. This is an interesting opportunity for Joyce to manage a sustainable gardening model from scratch. She has installed a rain water tank with gravity fed soak hoses to water her vegetable garden – the gentle soaking is far kinder and does not lead to as many mildew problems as overhead watering. Her worm farm has been in operation for a full two years and while her three bin compost system is a commercial structure, it is an efficient and simple option for a retired person for whom the manual labour of a more traditional compost system is a challenge. Joyce is well known for her pottery (particularly pukekos) but of late she has been really enjoying getting to grips with painting with pastels and has just moved on to flower subjects – magnolias, this week.
  • Also in New Plymouth, David Clarkson and Valda Poletti at Te Kainga Marire are despairing at the damage being wrought on the black mamaku (ponga) tree ferns, they say by the dreaded Indian mynah birds. Apparently they eat the unfurling leaf buds and the neighbours’ pongas have already succumbed to sustained attack. David and Valda are fighting off the mynahs to try and save their 30 year old pongas, moving Valda to express the wish that people would stop encouraging these pest birds by feeding them household scraps.
  • Here at Tikorangi, the mynah birds are a minor issue and the pongas are perhaps too plentiful but we could have done without the ginormous Lombardy poplar that crashed to the ground without warning in our park. At about 80 years old and 80 feet tall, it was perhaps fortunate that it fell inwards to our property and not outwards to the road. It is such a shame that poplar wood of no value either for firewood or timber but in its descent to ground level, it clipped the Magnolia campbellii which is now about half of its former size and magnolia is a good timber. Our rhododendron Loderi King George also bit the dust but considering the size of the tree, the damage was not too bad overall. Now that it is all cleaned up, we are looking at an unexpected new area to plant up.