Tag Archives: Tikorangi: The Jury garden

Tikorangi notes: THAT yucca, wretched geissorhiza and the close of magnolia season.

Yucca whipplei finally flowered after maybe 20 years

The state of our Yucca whipplei is such an ongoing saga here it even has its own folder in my photo files. I wrote about its impending move back in early 2013 when we had cut the concrete paving in preparation for its move. But it was still in situ this time last year when, after a period of getting on for 20 years, it actually flowered. We were thrilled. As the flower spike edged past the first story of the house, it was a well-documented blooming.

But other needs were always more urgent so the moving of the yucca had not taken place. Nor had the windows to what is our TV room been cleaned for many years. But yesterday the day came, forced by the arrival of the glaziers to install retro-fitted double glazing in our wooden window sashes. It was not an easy task. Mark had thought he could probably chainsaw the top off but the fibrous nature of the spent foliage merely jammed the chainsaw. At this point it is in two pieces. The top will be replanted on the sunny bank in the north garden where it will likely recover. The base, with a new rosette well-formed already, will be dug out and also relocated. It will, I tell you it will. I like the garden view out of the windows which is now visible again and while cleaning windows is not my favourite activity, I do like to be able to do it when necessary.

As far as we know, this is Yucca whipplei, also known as Hesperoyucca whipplei, chaparral yucca, Our Lord’s candle, Spanish bayonet, Quixote yucca or foothill yucca. So Wikipedia tells me. Apparently the most common name is Our Lord’s candle. It being native to southern America from California through to Mexico, it clearly felt right at home in the bone dry conditions of the house border beneath the eves. In the meantime, Our Lord’s candle is no long alight at our place.

Pretty it may be in bloom, but I have spent countless hours trying to eradicate this plant, as Felix Jury did before me

I have been forced to extreme remedial action in the rockery in the Battle of the Geissorhiza. Such a pretty weed and so dreadfully invasive. Each bulb is surrounded by many little baby bulbs that peel off as soon as you look at them, ready to grow into the future. In the worst affected pockets of rockery, I am lifting everything and washing the roots to make sure no dreaded geissorhiza bulbs are lurking in there hiding. Then I dig out all the soil and replace it with clean soil. I was surprised that one pocket generates almost a full barrow of soil. The contaminated soil is being dumped in the deepest, darkest shade where I hope nothing will germinate and if it does, as a last resort it can be sprayed. This somewhat extreme and labour intensive treatment should, I hope, get me closer to victory and the extermination of this pretty but hideously invasive bulb.

Shun Geissorhiza aspera. It belongs to the same group as highly invasive oxalis or allium-type of Pesky Weeds Masquerading as Pretty Plants. You have been warned.

Magnolia Serene

Magnolia Serene is opening. This always heralds the end of the deciduous magnolia season for us as it is the last of the major magnolias here to bloom. Alas, a magnolia season that was progressing magnificently was dealt a near death blow two weeks ago when we had a huge wind which lasted more than 24 hours. We are used to wind here – it is the west coast of the Windy Isles after all (New Zealand being marooned in expanses of vast ocean all round means that we are a windy country) but this was more than an ordinary wind. Reminiscent, in fact, of the worst winds we can remember which came as Cyclone Bola 27 years ago. Fortunately the damage was minor though the debris was great. And the later flowering magnolias were something of a casualty. Because Serene was still in bud, it came through unscathed but the rest of the plants in bloom had their season cut short.

When saying it with flowers becomes a political statement

Red Peak, floral clock style

It may be a surprise to you, as it was to me, to learn that “say it with flowers” did not orginate as Interflora’s slogan but was in fact a 1934 British musical film. Faced by the many memes associated with the Red Peak flag in New Zealand, I felt I could reinterpret it with flowers. First up was the one in the style of floral clocks, perhaps.

Version 2 in wild cherry blossom and anemone

It is not that I am totally enamoured of the Red Peak flag option. It is that I do not appreciate being given a choice of four designs for our proposed new national ensign that are a silver fern, a silver fern, a silver fern and a close-up of a fern frond (for that is what the black and white koru represents). Given that our Prime Minister has made no secret of his strong preference for a silver fern, I can’t help but feel that crowd-sourcing the designs and then going through a $28 million “public consultation” and not one, but two referendums, all to achieve what looks like a pre-determined outcome is a bit of a have, really. Over 10 000 designs submitted and it came down to three silver ferns and a close-up of an unfurling frond? I feel short-changed, as apparently the majority of New Zealanders do at this stage of the campaign.

Red Peak, rendered in Hippeastrum aulicum and wild cherry blossom.

So I am backing Red Peak as an alternative option to be added to the referendum just to give an alternative choice to the fern logos. In my mind, after doing the floral clock styled Red Peak, I mentally envisaged the Japanese-influenced Ikebana style, stripped bare and exquisitely simple, capturing the essence of the design only. Alas my skills in floral art are non-existent and I quickly realised that translating the mental image to reality was well beyond my capabilities.

Red Peak in Narcissus Thalia and what I think is a tritonia, not a sparaxis

When all is said and done, we’d have had a lot more fun with the wild card, Lazer Kiwi though I feel this may be better rendered in the style of a vegetable animal, such as our children used to create for the annual Show Day at primary school.

Tikorangi notes: hellebores (again), fallen tree (another one), the daffodil show and Heart of Darkness

Hellebore Anna’s Pink

In the garden, I have been slogging my way along the hellebore border removing pretty well all the old plants and replacing them with Mark’s hybrids which he has been cultivating in the nursery. I mentioned how much the border has gone back in an earlier post. What is interesting is how many clumps I am digging up which have only one or two leaves but below ground is a chunky mat of dormant eyes. I say dormant, not blind, because it appears that if these were divided up and put into good conditions, most eyes would sprout into a fresh plant. It must be what happens to hellebores over time and this border has not had a major rework in 30 years.

A multitude of dormant growing tips on hellebores with only a leaf or two showing above

A multitude of dormant growing points on hellebores with only a leaf or two showing above

I watched a debate on a UK gardening site about whether hellebore seedlings are worth saving and, as an aside, references to never digging and dividing anything. Hmmm… all I can say from our experience is that self-sown Helleborus orientalis seedlings are not worth keeping. There are huge numbers of them, for these are promiscuous plants, and the vast majority will revert to murky colours. I am deadheading as I replant and will continue to deadhead hellebores because we don’t want the seedlings. The chances of a brilliant self-sown seedling are remote whereas controlled crosses are hugely more successful. Mark has been working to get strains which hold their flowers up high and are sometimes outward facing which obviously improves the display.

As an aside, it appears that the new releases from the UK – Anna’s Red and Anna’s Pink – are both sterile which is to their credit. Not only do the blooms last longer, but this eliminates the need to deadhead and weed out seedlings. They are worth buying.

When it comes to digging and dividing perennials, I would comment that you can only get so far if you refuse to dig and divide. Over time the thugs take over and eventually you get to a point where even they start to go back. Feeding alone is not enough. It is the below ground root competition that takes its toll. You can go a decade or two without digging and dividing anything, depending on the plants you are using, but the treasures are likely to have given up the ghost by then. There will come a time when you will look around and think “this used to look so much better”. We think about ten years is all we can expect of the hellebore border before it will need major work again but an easy-care nine years is good.
The latest natural garden feature arrived last week as the dead Pinus radiata we refer to as Glenys’s tree snapped off, fortunately leaving the lower few metres intact so we hope Glenys the Gecko will remain in residence. As is our practice, we will clean up the paths and damage but leave the body of the trunk in situ and garden around it.
I am pretty sure that the next tree in the row is developing a bigger lean and will likely fall sooner rather than later, but Mark is unconvinced. I like to remind him that I was right last time and those were smaller, younger trees. This leaning tower of Pinus radiata is probably 45 metres tall so we have to wait for nature to take its course.
We went to the North Island daffodil show last Saturday. There is a larger album of photos posted on our Garden Facebook page. There is no denying that our personal tastes lie with the less celebrated dwarf and miniature varieties which I have been systematically photographing this season. We are all about garden varieties, not show blooms. But like any genus of show blooms, the breeding directions are unveiled in a major display – lots of split coronas, colour combinations and pinks still coming through.

I decided we should be sourcing the dwarf hybrid named ‘Rapture’, the white N. cantabricus (which looks very similar to a bulbocodium) and I really would like some N. poeticus even if we have to go to poeticus hybrids. But, I was as much delighted by the whole event. The stalls! The competitions! I think these were the result of the involvement of the local branch of the horticultural society. Truly, I did not realise that the craft of crocheting edges to pictorial tea towels is not only alive and well, but also a competitive activity.
Nothing to do with gardening, but I still have a strong mental image of an acquaintance many years ago, earnestly crocheting aqua coloured edges to white face cloths. “I think it is nice for guests to have special face cloths,” she said with a high degree of self-satisfaction. I looked around her home – a large and cavernous turn-of-last-century villa which had been cut in pieces and relocated but not restored. The walls were scrim, the facilities and decor still more or less original. It was truly grim. And I thought to myself, you poor woman. You think guests won’t notice the surrounds if they have new face cloths? It was all so evocative of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, where the rituals of civilisation are all that keeps the chaotic universe at bay and without those, what is left is “the horror, the horror”. It had the makings of a short story, but instead I became a garden writer.

Next Tikorangi Notes may bring you an insight into the lost art of waxing camellias which, I have only recently found, is not a lost art at all but almost certainly sits alongside pictorial tea towels with hand crocheted edges.

And because we are at Peak Magnolia, here is Milky Way

Petal Pushers – the Jury Michelias

Mark Jury standing on a carpet of fallen scented petals, surveying one of his early shelter belts planted with michelia hybrids

Mark Jury standing on a carpet of fallen scented petals, surveying an early shelter belts planted with michelia hybrids

All michelias are magnolias but not all magnolias are michelias. We have always known them as very close relatives to magnolias but they sat in a group of their own. Now there has been some international reassignment after DNA testing and they have become magnolias, which has led to some confusing name changes. In common usage, they are still often referred to michelias and we are a bit betwixt and between on names.

Until very recent times, there weren’t many different michelias in New Zealand. Doltsopa (the best known cultivar being named ‘Silver Cloud’) and figo (common name of port wine magnolia) have been here for a while. It was an early cross between these two by the late Oswald Blumhardt that gave us ‘Mixed Up Miss’ and ‘Bubbles’.

Interest started to grow when yunnanensis was brought in some twenty years ago. It has spawned a gazillion named selections because it sets seed readily, but just to confuse you, it is now correctly referred to as Magnolia laevifolia. There are a few other species which are not widely available, including maudiae, and some obscure ones that are of interest to collectors only. But our borders closed to new introductions so there are a number of recent discoveries in Asia that we don’t have here. Yes, new plants are still being discovered in this world of ours but we can only look at them from afar with our bio-security rules.

Fairy Magnolia White

Mark started hybridising them here back in the 1990s. He figured there was room to improve on them as garden plants. Figo’s flowers are a bit insignificant and the foliage tends to go yellow in full sun. ‘Silver Cloud’ has a wonderful fragrance but the flowers are very floppy and lack good form. It also grows too large for many town gardens and it can defoliate – dropping all its leaves – after flowering. Laevifola (yunnanensis) can defoliate too, in spring conditions which are wet and cold. These are evergreen plants so defoliation is not a great look. ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Mixed Up Miss’ look great as juvenile plants but are pretty ordinary when they get bigger and older. Mark could see possibilities.

September and October are exciting months for us as the michelias bloom. We live and breathe michelias and magnolias at this time of the year. There are six hundred new michelia seedlings ready to flower this spring alone, part of a long term breeding programme. Out of the thousands he has raised, only three have been named and released so far.

Fairy Magnolia Blush

There is a long way to go yet but some directions are emerging. Despite the vast majority of michelias being basically white, he has reached reds, purples and deep pinks and is working on deepening the pale yellows to get stronger colour. Along the way there are an awful lot of murky colour combinations that get the chop. There is a big range of flower form, foliage and growth habits. Perfume can be an issue when two of the most fragrant species spawn offspring with no scent at all. Bringing together all the different elements to get a new plant is an absorbing and time consuming occupation.

Along the way we have also learned that michelias are very tolerant of cutting and clipping and sprout again from bare wood. The row of lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush at our entrance has been clipped and shaped over ten years now and we can keep it to the size we want by trimming just twice a year. They make excellent hedges and some of our roadside shelter belts are a feast of flower and fragrance at this time.

The sustainable wood lot

Regrowth

An unexpected bonus has been the sustainable woodlot. Because we heat our large house entirely with wood, we burn through a prodigious amount every winter. Mark had been thinking along the lines of establishing a sustainable woodlot for the future that we could harvest on a rotational basis. I even sourced a book on the very topic. But lo, he realised a few years ago that his reject michelia seedlings already filled that very niche, doing dual duty as winter feed for our very small herd of beefies that we keep to eat the paddock grass. I say very small herd – there are only four at the moment. Cut off close to the base, the plants soon shoot away again with long straight whips that could be used as poles or left to grow for firewood. Mark drags the branches into an adjacent paddock where the cattle enthusiastically eat the foliage. He then gathers the remaining trunks to cut up for next season’s firewood. It seems a good multi-purpose use of a plant breeding programme.

Fairy Magnolia Cream

Mark’s three michelia selections to date are sold under the Fairy Magnolia brand and are widely available in New Zealand garden centres and in some overseas countries. Blush is a soft pink, Cream is very fragrant and grows in a similar, compact manner to Blush. White is a larger grower and the first in the season to flower. Mark has always seen it as a garden-friendly alternative to “Silver Cloud” with good fragrance and beautiful flower form.

First published in the September issue of NZ Gardener and reprinted here with their permission.

Lollipop Fairy Magnolia Blush at our entranceway. The smaller michelia to the left is an unnamed figo hybrid with masses of creamy yellow flowers.

Pink and yellow. Together.

Bright yellow kowhai and cerise campanulata cherry at Auckland Botanic

Two of the three plants on my most-disliked list are pink and yellow combinations. The first was a nasty spirea we saw in the UK several years ago. It was clearly a recent release as it was everywhere – a murky pink flower with yellow foliage. The second was a variegated oleander spotted in Spain, sporting the same colour combination but the foliage was a yellow variegation which may add yet another layer to the colour crime. The third is Rhododendron ‘President Roosevelt’ which also sports similarly freakish, variegated yellow foliage but it is more red-toned than murky pink. We are not fans of variegated foliage here, as a general rule.

Pink and yellow in Beth Chatto’s garden

In that magical garden that Beth Chatto has created, I did notice on our last visit that she quite often combined pink and yellow in combinations that would worry me in my own garden. So when I saw a bright campanulata cherry in full bloom at Auckland Botanic Gardens last week with a strong yellow kowhai planted in front, my reaction was to do a double-take. It is just not a colour combination that pleases me. As an aside, I did notice that the feeding tui much preferred the campanulata to the kowhai – which is to say that there were none in the kowhai but a whole mob coming and going in the campanulata. I take this as proof that tui lack political correctness and fail to appreciate that they are letting the side down by preferring the import to the native plant.

Pastel hued tulips at Eden Gardens

Pink vireya but with pastel yellow tulips

Because I was already thinking about that pink and yellow combo, the plantings at Eden Gardens immediately grabbed my attention. And there, the pink and yellow pleased me and I am sure that is because they were pastel and the pinks were clean hues. It is the combination of either cerise pinks, purplish pinks or muted Paris pink with bright yellow that worries me most, I decided. It is not that it should be avoided at all costs (unless it is yellow variegated foliage with murky pink flowers!), but that it fails more often than it works. A pale yellow is much easier to combine. Bright golden yellow needs more care – unless it is a narcissus. Vibrant orange needs even more caution.

Magnolia Felix Jury with colour-toned tulips at Eden Gardens

It was Peak Tulip at Eden Gardens. I have planted some tulips this year, but nothing on the scale of Eden. It is the inner conservationist conservative in me. My instincts are too frugal to be willing to buy in fresh bulbs each year, treating them like annuals to be discarded after blooming. I don’t even plant annuals. I expect my tulips to earn their keep and return each year, gently multiplying. This is, apparently, too optimistic for tulips, although I planted them deep in the soil with hope. I enquired at Eden Gardens and was told they start again with fresh bulbs each season which is why they were so showy. Away from pink and yellow, the colour-toned planting beneath Magnolia Felix Jury as one enters the garden was restrained and impeccable though it lacked the zing that can be achieved with more adventurous colour combinations.
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Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

Tag Archives: Tikorangi: The Jury garden

Tikorangi notes: THAT yucca, wretched geissorhiza and the close of magnolia season.

When saying it with flowers becomes a political statement

Tikorangi notes: hellebores (again), fallen tree (another one), the daffodil show and Heart of Darkness

Petal Pushers – the Jury Michelias

Pink and yellow. Together.

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