Tag Archives: Tikorangi: The Jury garden

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 28 January, 2010

LATEST POSTS: Friday 28 January

1) Agapanthus – love them or hate them, they are stars of our summer roadsides. Abbie’s column.

2) An exceptionally fierce summer storm last Sunday took out many flowers in the garden but the disa orchids came through unscathed. Plant Collector.

3) Garden tasks for the week from dealing with potato blight to why you may want to think twice before planning to become self sufficient in pine nuts.

Agapanthus blue and white, and montbretia on our roadside

Agapanthus blue and white, and montbretia on our roadside

TIKORANGI NOTES:
Agapanthus or Nile lilies are considerably more highly prized overseas than in New Zealand. Here we tend to see them as indestructible, utility roadside plants or fillers but come summertime, these large clumps of strappy foliage are adorned with a mass of blue or white blooms. They become a real feature of our countryside. But such is the antipathy to these plants, that they are frequently looked down on as garden plants. I think the only one we have in a garden situation (as opposed to our road verges bounding the property) is little variegated Tinkerbell.

Variegated agapanthus - doubly damned in NZ

Variegated agapanthus - doubly damned in NZ

I will have to find a spot for the yellow variegated form shown here, but am not sure yet where it will fit. We have never done anything with this seedling of ours. There is no point in building it up for sale in this country – it is damned on account of being an agapanthus, doubly damned because it is variegated in a country where we do not favour variegated foliage much at all, though it is a good plant with stable colour. The crocosmia (commonly referred to as montbretia) is similarly a borderline weed but it lights up the roadside outside with the agapanthus.

Plant Collector: disa orchids

Working to naturalise disa orchids by our stream

Working to naturalise disa orchids by our stream

It was a bit of a mission earlier this week to find anything looking good after Sunday night’s fierce storm but the disa orchids held up well. Trying to get these delights naturalised on the margins of the stream which runs through our park is a recent venture. It is far too soon to decide that it is a success because this is their first season so all we can say is so far, so good. If we still have some and they are gently increasing in five years time, we will hail it as a success.

Of all the plant families in the world, orchids are by far the most complex. The sub group of disas alone has about 170 separate species and that does not take into account multitudinous hybrids. Mark is not trying to get to grips with the detail. He just accepts gratefully what local orchid expert and friend, George Fuller, gives him to try out. As far as we know, it was the dainty little Disa tripetaloides which gave us white flowers earlier in the season and these larger red ones in flower now are from the more common D. uniflora. It is the natural habitat of the disa orchids which caught our attention. They occur in damp conditions on the margins of streams and waterfalls, predominantly in South Africa. That is why we hoped they could be naturalised on the margins of the stream where they are a great deal more exotic than the thuggish yellow Primula helodoxa. You need a situation where you can control floodwaters however, as we do with a weir and a flood channel, or our frequent torrential downpours will scour out marginal plantings.

If Wikipedia is correct, the tuberous root of the disa orchid is used to manufacture maltodextrins, used in artificial sweeteners. How curious is that? Mark is a bit concerned at the absence of the Mountain Pride Butterfly here, that being the natural pollinator for D. uniflora in South Africa. We are not at all sure that our monarch butterflies, which we have in abundance, are up to taking on additional duties in this respect.

Plant Collector – auratum lilies

Auratum lily Flossie - one of Felix Jury's hybrids

Auratum lily Flossie - one of Felix Jury's hybrids

I don’t cut flowers to bring indoors very often. When every window of the house looks out to a garden, it doesn’t seem necessary. But as soon as the auratum lilies start to open, I reach for the kitchen scissors and head out. They are just the perfect cut flower – one stem can have up to ten flowers (sometimes even more) and put in a tall, slender vase they not only look superb, they can spread their delicious scent through an entire room.

Auratums are known as the golden-rayed lily of Japan – how lovely does that sound? The flowers are the largest of the lily family, often more than 20cm across, and they are a mainstay of our January garden. Felix Jury adored them (probably for all the same reasons that we do) and dabbled with breeding them, naming several selections. This one is the very large flowered Flossie. The upshot is that we have a lot of auratums in the garden and generally they are quite happy with benign neglect, growing in both full sun and semi shade. They prefer soils with good drainage and plenty of humus but not too rich.

The bulbs are large – fist-sized even – and we tried to get around all the plants last winter to dig and divide them. They haven’t had any attention for many, many years but when the clumps get too congested, the tops tend to fall over if they are not staked. The freshly divided patches are mostly standing up like little soldiers without any assistance. Some of the taller ones can get over 2m high and they need some support though often I will intertwine them through neighbouring plants.

You can sometimes find lily bulbs for sale in garden centres in winter. Make sure you avoid any dry, shrivelled specimens – they do not like to be dried out completely even when dormant. You may be lucky and find some auratums but they are not widely offered on the NZ market despite their spectacular summer display.

Tikorangi Notes: Friday 21 January, 2011

Auratum lilies - a mainstay of our summer garden

Auratum lilies - a mainstay of our summer garden

LATEST POSTS: Friday 21 January, 2010

1) Mid summer is the time for auratum lilies – Plant Collector this week.

2) Garden tasks for the week.

3) In Outdoor Classroom this week, we take the first of a two part look at making compost – simple options.

TIKORANGI NOTES: Friday 21 January, 2010

The auratum lilies are a highlight of summer here. We have yet to master the classic summer herbaceous borders but we can do the auratums well. Divinely scented, big, bold and impossible to ignore, they grow well in both full sun and semi shade. Fortunately, the lily beetle which we saw in English gardens, has not made its way past border control here. That is certainly one pest we can do without.

The glory of the auratum lilies

The glory of the auratum lilies

In the Garden: January 21, 2011

Dry bulbs can still be planted

Dry bulbs can still be planted

• Saturaid or Crystal Rain can look like a good idea at this time of the year. These products generally resemble rock salt crystals when dry but absorb large quantities of water, expanding and changing to chopped jelly in appearance. Use them for hanging baskets, potted annuals or short term potted vegetables. Don’t make the mistake of using them in the garden. While they look appealing at this dry time of the year, with our high rainfall, for ten months of the year they will hold water and ensure that our free draining soils become water logged. Once you have them in the soil, they will stay for years. Longer term container plants don’t want to be kept waterlogged in winter either. So restrict their use.

• However, I am told that these water retention crystals can be very good on lawns which dry out badly over summer and turn brown. I have yet to try this myself but I will in a couple of small problem areas. Carol at my local garden centre says that scattered lightly on the lawn, they have proven very effective and there is good logic to that but be sparing in the quantity used.

• Summer prune cherry trees.

• We have pretty much stopped planting any ornamentals here now until we get significant amounts of rain. If you insist on continuing to plant, you must water well before, during and after the planting process and continuing to water over the next weeks. With water restrictions being imposed in much of our area, it is better to delay all but vegetable planting.

• You can plant dry bulbs and leave them for nature to take its course though garden centres will not generally get any of the new season’s bulbs in stock until the start of February.

• If you grow your own vegetables from seed, you should be getting onto sowing winter vegetables – brassicas, parsnip, carrots, winter spinach and lettuce, leeks and celery. If you are going to buy plants, you have plenty of time. However, starting from seed will save money and give you extra to share.

• This does not apply to Brussel sprouts which must be planted immediately, using young plants, if you are to get a crop through. They have a longer growing season and need to be big, strong plants by winter. This is assuming you eat these gourmet baby cabbages, as we do.

• The food pages of our local paper had a piece tea this week. You may be interested to know that you can grow the tea camellia easily here, as long as you do not get very heavy frosts. What is more, it is sometimes available to buy. Look for Camellia sinensis. Mark brewed the best tea from ours when he bruised the leaves and left them to ferment slightly for 24 hours – apparently closer to Oolong tea. Our home grown product has not replaced our favoured Earl Grey but it is not a bad substitute for those in search of self sufficiency or those who love the freshest of green tea.