Tag Archives: Tikorangi: The Jury garden

A pleasing project

Gardening here tends to come down to routine maintenance, emergency response (usually storm damage and fallen trees) and new projects. Projects are the most interesting but we have done all the large projects we planned so we are down to smaller ones now. It gives a break from routine maintenance which, by definition, is never-ending.

Opening up a new, main path to link the Avenue Gardens to the Summer Gardens

The latest project was getting the central path in to the Summer Gardens from the Avenue Gardens. It was always on the drawing board but sometimes it takes a bit longer to think through how best to achieve a good result. After three years of somewhat desultory thought, it was remarkably straightforward in the end. I was stuck on the idea that it had to be straight ahead, centred from the main Court Garden. The breakthrough came when Mark pointed out that while one end needed to be dead straight, where it came through to the avenues didn’t need to be. We could curve it so that the visual end-point was a large tree – a sterile Prunus campanulata, as it happens. That was the compromise that made sense to me.

Lloyd and Zach set about removing plants that were in the way. Digging out about five solid camellias to create an opening in the hedge was the biggest job although removing some rather large roots from another tree also took some muscle. Lloyd, being a man of precision, set about levelling the path, laying a base course for drainage and moving leftover cream-coloured limestone and shell gravel to match the path surfaces in the Summer Gardens. Where we transitioned to the woodland area, he spread coarse woodchip and we will let leaf litter build over it.

The line between the whitish gravel and the woodchip is a little stark at the moment, but otherwise, it all looks as if it has always been there and that is our goal – avoiding the look of something glaringly new in a well-established garden. The concrete post is still under debate. It is a relic from times past and Lloyd, who has already dug one out previously and therefore knows just how deeply those posts are bedded in the soil, has delegated this one to Zach, if we want it gone. I will wait and see if it annoys me over time.

A view shaft in creation was a nice surprise

I am delighted by the fact that there is now a view shaft from the Court Garden through to the Avenue Gardens – a leafy tunnel that leads to light from both directions.

Freshly replanted and in two sections now, the back border features gossamer grass and cardoons

The end border of the Summer Gardens was never a feature border, just a softening backdrop. When we prepared to reopen the garden in 2020, I wasn’t sure what to do with it so I bunged in a whole lot of yellow Wachendorfia thyrsiflora and a selected blue agapanthus. It was pretty enough for three years but never a permanent planting. They are now gone to compost. In a job that I thought would take me about a week but Zach accomplished in a day, (oh to be young and strong!) the border was stripped out and replanted so the dominant plants are now our native wind grass or gossamer grass,  Anemanthele lessoniana, and giant silver cardoons. Well, some of the cardoons are quite small because we were dividing the three I bought in last year, but they grew at an astonishing rate so I am hoping they all survive to be large this summer.

Planting in May, 2019. The white tassels are the flowers on miscanthus.

Then it was onto the Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ in the Court Garden. When I planted this garden in 2019, I had drawn it all out on graph paper and thought I had the plant spacings right. I didn’t. We did one major thinning two years ago but still the miscanthus were getting too big and were planted without sufficient space between.

A senior staffer from one of the public gardens contacted me a few months ago to see if we had any spare miscanthus. He was struggling to find enough large plants to fill a big space. Why yes, we had plenty to share and it was a perfect solution. Because we had warning, Zach lifted and divided a few surplus plants from elsewhere, heeling them into the vegetable garden, ready for when we needed them.

Loading out the surplus miscanthus. Some of the clumps were so large, they needed at least two to lift.

This week a team of six descended upon the area and efficiently dug out all the large miscanthus and loaded them out. I think there were 33 large clumps and when I say large, I mean they could be chopped into at least four, some maybe eight to ten sizeable clumps to replant and still give instant impact this spring and summer. There should have been enough to furnish a large area.

The next day, Zach replanted the divisions he prepared earlier but at wider spacings and fewer in number. Job done for another few years and very painless it was, with many hands.

I think this was late afternoon light rather than morning light, but no less pretty for that.

What amazes me is that this plethora of Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ all descend from just one small plant that Mark bought originally. It was still just one plant, albeit a large clump, when I first lifted it and started dividing it in 2017. We have just kept dividing since. In those six intervening years, that one original plant has now yielded several hundred sizeable clumps. Astonishing, really.

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’.

Have chionochloca. Just lack takahē.

Aspidistra! Who knew? I didn’t.

Aspidstra in a woodland planting

I was this number of years old before I learned that the large patch of healthy but utilitarian ground cover we have growing in one area of shaded woodland is in fact an aspidistra, probably Aspidistra elatior. It was our gardener Zach who told me and all I can say is that a garden apprentice who can teach you things is a treasure.

I had only ever known aspidistras from literature – characterised as a dull, often dusty plant languishing in a corner, sitting on a lace tablecloth in Victorian parlours. They are, I find, commonly referred to as the cast-iron plant because they are seemingly indestructible as a house plant. The Victorians favoured them because they tolerated gas fumes and coal smoke as well as low light levels and drought. They only required occasional dusting, really. It is just a shame they are, perhaps, a litttle… dull.

I had looked at this large clump of ours without ever really pondering what it was. I was more disappointed in the fact that I had never seen it flower. I imagined a plant with foliage like that putting up a white spadix-type of bloom, not unlike a peace lily. No, Zach, told me. The flower comes from the base and you have to ferret around the base to find it. No wonder I never saw it flower. The clump has always been one of those anonymous plants that is just there to furnish a space.

The aspidistra flowers are not what I expected

The flowers could be described as curious or, equally, underwhelming. They come up from the rhizome on stems about 1.5cm high and are a fleshy looking cup with a starry burgundy inner about 2cm across. They are very small. And shy. Interesting but never showy.

Aspidistras are a large family of forest-dwelling plants found throughout areas of Asia. In terms of woodland ground cover, they are useful, making a lush clump around knee-high to hip-high. Presumably they are not particularly tasty because the damage from slugs, snails and caterpillars is minimal. The old foliage dies off gracefully and they continue to look lush all year round with absolutely no grooming. All I have ever done is to pull out a bit debris that has fallen from above. In 40 years, we have twice taken bits off to spread a little further in that area – and once was this week. Otherwise, they have kept more or less to their original space, quietly minding their own business.

I am looking at them with more respect now that I have stopped hoping for some large white spadix-type blooms. It seems that as a woodland ground cover, they are as easy-care and accepting of benign neglect as they were in Victorian parlours.  Just keep them out of the sun, is apparently the secret.

Growing from rhizomes, aspidistra are easy to divide but also obliging about staying where they are planted and not spreading far and wide

Remedial action

We had our arborist in again this week and there is nothing like getting some tree work done to refresh an area.

The leaning tower of gum and rātā which was rather larger than it appears in this photo

The catalyst was this leaning gum tree which carried the weight of a rātā vine. The host tree was in poor condition and the lean was certainly getting more pronounced. We worried that the weight of the rātā at the top of the tree would bring it all down, potentially bringing down other trees with it and, in the worst case scenario, cutting the power lines to the house. With increasingly frequent extreme weather events these days, we err on the side of anticipating risk and trying to avoid damage.

Circled in blue is the foliage of the rātā vine weighing down the twin trunks of the old gum tree. it looked to be a case of when, not if, it would fall.
Rātā vines climbing the old gum tree trunk

I just looked up rātā, which are a native plant. The Department of Conservation site tells me we have 11 species – 3 are trees, 1 shrub and 6 climbing vines. It is probable that ours was Metrosideros fulgens. It did bloom for us but was never as showy as its cousin, the pohutukawa and the flowers were always right at the top of the canopy so only visible from a distance.

We chose to keep some of the trunk to keep the rātā. It may still fall but it won’t cause much damage if it does.

We chose not to fell the gum completely but left about 3 metres of it to keep the rātā. While here, we asked the arborist to drop the last remaining silver birch tree nearby which was not in good health. Once it was down, we could see from the stump that it was completely rotted out in the middle of the trunk with a hollow centre. Silver birches are not good in our climate and their only redeeming feature, in my eyes, is that beautiful tracery of the bare branches against the winter sky. And we dropped a third small tree that had died. It was one Felix had brought back from New Guinea in the late 1950s but it was never as interesting as the lovely Schefflera septulosa, Ficus antiarus and Rhododendron macgregoriae that we still have from that intrepid plant hunting trip.

The silver birch set against the blue winter sky, just before it was felled

Dropping trees lets light in again and opens up areas that then need a touch of renovation. In mature gardens, getting light back in to shaded areas is a constant issue and often requires some quite major work on large trees. Not many plants are happy to grow in deep shade, and few of those are desirable ornamentals.

A mix of birch and gum for firewood and waste wood from the unnamed New Guinea tree

Our arborist is very good at cleaning up after himself so he left that day leaving clear space. Empty, but clear. Lloyd, bless him, removed the lengths of firewood to our enormous woodshed the next day and Zach moved in to replant. It was all done and dusted in a couple of days but, with more light, Zach and I are now turning our attention to somewhat messy areas beyond that immediate zone. Which brings me to Zach’s orchid structure.

An installation of orchids that looks right at home from the start and adds a point of interest in an otherwise unremarkable spot

The wood from the felled New Guinea tree was too light to use for firewood. It needed to be stowed elsewhere to break down naturally and I suggested to Zach that he use it to make a base for some orchids as a punctuation point at the uninteresting end of an adjacent garden bed. Zach is a keen orchid man. A couple of hours later, I came back to find his construction which exceeded all my expectations. That is all waste wood, already filled with cymbidiums and dendrobiums which are divisions from other plants around the garden. What was a dull space is now a feature which will look charming as the orchids come into flower over the next months and already looks as though it has always been there.

Dropping trees is not a cheap activity but it opens up new possibilities.  

A postscript, for those of you for whom chainsaws are a part of life. Our arborist used an electric chainsaw and he declares them to be an absolute gamechanger in every way – safer, quiet, much cheaper to run and a massive improvement in environmental terms. We are still using petrol chainsaws here but Mark was saying that next time we need to buy one, we will buy electric. I have heard others praise them but to have a professional give such a glowing reference convinced me they are the way to go.

Oxalis – by no means all bad

Sunny Oxalis luteola. These bulb oxalis only open their flowers in the sun.

It is easier to maintain specific plant collections when you have a nursery. In that situation, special plants are maintained under nursery conditions and given more individual attention and care than in general garden collections. We used to carry a large array of different bulbs when we were doing mailorder and they were repotted on an annual basis, or at least every two years. We only listed bulbs if we had enough stock reserved to keep going for the following years.

Lilac O. hirta with apricot O. massoniana behind

We put out our last mailorder catalogue in 2003 – twenty years ago – even though I still get email and phone requests from people wanting to order plants from us! In the years since, I have planted most of the good bulbs in the garden, scrapped some that may have been botanical curiosities to half a dozen afficionados throughout the country but were of little merit as garden plants and the rest have languished under a regime best described as benign neglect. Some have not survived this laissez faire approach but, with an extra pair of hands, we are starting to salvage what has.

Zach’s oxalis collection is continuing to grow

Our gardener, Zach, is doing his apprenticeship and one of his modules is on plant collections. I suggested the ornamental oxalis as a well-defined collection he could assemble in one place. There is no doubt that most of these thrive and look their best in containers. I have never forgotten Terry Hatch’s magnificent display of oxalis in pots at Joy Plants and that must be 30 years ago.

13 different flowers and 10 different examples of oxalis foliage.

For years, I maintained a collection of my favourite oxalis in pots to be brought out when they look their best in autumn and early winter. I hate plastic pots in the garden so they were all in terracotta, ceramic or vintage concrete pots and truly, I just got fed up carting these heavy pots out of the nursery and into the garden and then back again when they were over, not to mention the annual repotting. I gave up and planted them out and let them fend for themselves. The most invasive of them, I put in shallow pots and sank the pot in the garden, but I rarely repotted them.

One of the very best oxalis when it comes to good behaviour and generous flowering over a long period of time – O. purpurea alba

Zach has so far isolated 23 different forms of ornamental oxalis that grow from bulbs. Most are from the garden here and a few he has added from his own stash of plants at homes. (Note: he has just sourced another five from a local market, he tells me.) Amazingly, I think we only lost two varieties in the years between my getting them out of the nursery and him getting them back in again and they weren’t a great loss. I suggested that he also pot up the weedy ones we battle all the time. The creeping oxalis – O. corniculata – which we have in bronze and green is the worst and we have a pink one in a patch of grass that may be O. corymbosa.

O. bowiei

Then there are the more herbaceous oxalis. The best known of these is probably what we call a yam in Aotearoa New Zealand, although technically it is growing from a tuber. Commonly known as oca in Spanish, it is a food crop and one we grow ourselves, semi naturalised in the vegetable garden. Botanically it is Oxalis tuberosa.

Oxalis peduncularis

We have Oxalis peduncularis growing in one of those awkward, narrow borders against the house and it looks and grows more like a succulent, flowering for most of the year. Now that I am getting my eye in again, I have spotted another plant that is like a dwarf peduncularis but I have never even thought about what it is because it has just always been there, in its place. It must be another oxalis.

The family is huge overall with somewhere over 550  different species in the wild across most of the world except the polar areas. I have only just discovered that we have a native one – Oxalis exilis. It is a small creeping one and I think it is probably one that I assumed was corniculata, too.   

Oxalis massoniana – one of the prettiest in colour and because of its compact growth, it can form a tidy mound

The thing about plants is that the more you learn about them, the more interesting they get. There are many worse rabbit holes in life that one can go down than the intricacies of the oxalis genus. I can see that Zach’s oxalis collection will probably continue and expand long after he has fulfilled the requirements for his level 4 apprenticeship.

O. eckloniana – probably the largest flower one we have

I am wondering now whether I can get him onto isolating and sorting the intricacies of the lachenalia collection next. That went pretty much the same way as the oxalis collection when we retired from mailorder but is more complicated because of their readiness to cross with each other and produce natural hybrids. He doesn’t need to do it for his apprenticeship but I think he would find it very interesting and it would be satisfying to sort it out again. At least all the lachenalias are bulbs and there are only about 133 species so that makes it more tightly defined.

Judge not by the worst members of the family