Tag Archives: Tikorangi: The Jury garden

Gardeners’ thoughts

Monarch butterfly on Montanoa bipinnatifida.

I have often said that because I garden a lot, I have a lot of solitary thinking time. “What do you think about?” a fellow gardener asked us here this week. I hadn’t actually thought about that side of things.

We are told that gardening is soothing, good for the spirit and the soul, a welcome antidote to a world that has often felt as if it is spinning beyond our control in the past year. I have no doubt that being surrounded by plants and the cycle of the seasons, by birdsong and the beauty of endless small scenes whether it be a butterfly landing on a flower, the buzzing of bees, the unfurling of a flower bud or the discovery of a plant that I had forgotten about – all these are immediate delights in a chaotic world. Gardens anchor us to a small place in time and space.

But if you take the end product and the goals along the way out of the equation, what about all those hours spent alone in our own headspaces? Our panel of three (Mark, our gardening friend Susan and me) is hardly a conclusive study but we all came up with responses that were remarkably mundane. Mark said he largely focuses on the task at hand. He used to like listening to the radio but since Radio NZ has taken its programming off the local AM band, that is no longer an option. The FM band is too unstable when he is constantly moving. I notice Lloyd mostly listens to music. I used to do that when I was trying to block out the omnipresent noise of the petrochemical industry surrounding us back around 2011 to 2014 and listening to music certainly puts one into a very contained headspace without many external influences. But I prefer listening to the sounds of nature if I can.

My thoughts range far and wide with a constant inner monologue (and sometimes an audible monologue when I talk to myself) but I admit, it is not a particularly profound discussion with myself. At its best, I may come up with the words that had been eluding me in a piece of writing or some clarity of insight into something that had seemed murky and confused. At its worst, I replay grievances in my head – whoever said that gardening is ‘soothing’ and ‘healing’? But in the main, it can be a pretty mundane conversation with myself and I was somewhat surprised to find that, considering I spend large parts of my day in this solitary state. I think that is what Susan was angling at too, when she asked the question.

Magnolia Felix Jury

Of late, in fact since Wednesday December 9 to be precise, that inner monologue has been underpinned by constant low-grade anxiety nagging away at my inner peace. That was the day that our *friendly* petrochemical company, Todd Energy, unveiled its plans at a community meeting in Tikorangi to apply to extend the already large Mangahewa C gas well site from the existing eight wells to twenty wells, making it the largest site in the country, as far as I know. That site is close to us. It is literally on the farm across the road on our bottom boundary.

Oh look. Mangahewa C site on the farm across our bottom road
Previous drilling as seen from our garden

While some of the Todd Energy staff might be so naïve that they didn’t realise the devastating impact of that news on many local residents, at least some of them knew exactly what they were doing. “Let’s really give the Tikorangi residents a Christmas present this year. Ho ho ho! Hahahahaha!” my inner monologue has some unnamed Todd staff saying to themselves and even to each other.

Flaring, as seen from our place. Climate change, anyone? Pfft!

I spent a few weeks in the garden toying with the Todd Energy Twelve Days of Christmas but I couldn’t get the words to scan to my satisfaction.

“On the twelfth day Of Christmas Todd Energy gave to us

Twelve more gas wells

Eleven more frack jobs (more like eleventy hundred more frack jobs over the next decade) ….

Five Christmas hampers (utility ones from Pak’n’Save)….

And a drilling rig they call Big Ben.”

We fought hard for better process of the gas industry in our community over a number of years – all documented under the petrochem tab you can find at the top at this page. We failed on most fronts and that battle from 2011 to 2014 almost broke me. The activities of the petrochemical companies were devastating on a daily front – it was the main reason we closed the garden in 2013 – as well as  draining mentally and emotionally. When activity eased off with falling international prices and the general understanding of the impact of climate change grew, we were lulled into a false sense of relief, thinking that maybe we had seen off the worst of it. It seems not.

In my lowest moments, I imagine myself asking the young person who is the ‘Community Relations Manager’: “Do you have children? What are you going to tell them when they ask you what you did to try and counter the impacts of climate change? Are you going to be proud to say ‘Oh, I did spin and soft-soaped local residents for a fossil fuel company in the dying days of the fossil fuel industry’?”

So there we are. My inner monologue now is trying to focus on how to maintain some equanimity and peace in the face of the ravages of an unwelcome industry. I managed it in 2014 when I realised how close I was to breaking point. I can do it again. I hope. It may be time to get out the iPod and recharge it, to block out the world. Are those Bluetooth earpieces worth getting so I can dispense with the awkward cords? Do they fall out of ears readily in which case I am sure I will lose one in the garden?

What do you think about when gardening? Can you empty your mind sufficiently to turn it into a meditative exercise? Do you mentally plan great works of note? Or do most of us really just plan what we will eat, edit our mental ‘to-do list’, ponder what we have heard or seen and focus on the detail of what we are doing? All that time to think – I feel at least some of us must be mentally coming up with next great scientific theory or planning a work of literature. Or maybe not.

Footnotes:

For the easier to read version of ‘It’s very personal’ – a piece I wrote for the 2017 Frack Off Exhibition, click here.

Our Labour government only stopped NEW permits for oil and gas offshore and in areas other than Taranaki. It is still allowed – encouraged, even, by some here.

All the optimistic talk of ‘clean hydrogen’ being pushed successfully by the fossil fuel industry is unproven technology predicated on the use of gas as a *transition* energy.

Gas is only *clean* (or clean-ish) if the emissions are measured only at the end-point user. There is nothing clean or sustainable about getting that gas out of the ground, keeping it flowing and getting it to the end-point user.

What makes the Mangahewa gas field economically viable is frequent and ongoing fracking (hydraulic fracturing). The ground beneath here has been fracked repeatedly since 2007.

Summer gardens update

I am worried about 2021. We all crossed our fingers that it would be better than 2020 but there was no radical change on January 1. The wall to wall Covid news coming out of the UK, Ireland, Europe and USA is unrelenting and disturbing. The trans-Tasman travel bubble so many of us are waiting for looks to be on hold with outbreaks in Sydney and Melbourne. And the transition of power in USA looks more dangerously unstable than the usual peaceful and orderly process. My thoughts go out to those readers in more dangerous parts of the world.

All I have to offer is summer.

Looking through to the Court Garden on Christmas Eve.

All spring, it was the newest of the summer gardens, the Court Garden where the main plantings are grassy-themed, that brought me the most pleasure. As I walked out to do my morning rounds, it was there that I chose to linger the longest.

The borders yesterday morning, just before the onset of steady rain
The light levels were fairly low which gave a softer feel than the harsh glare of the mid-summer sun

As December progressed and now that we are into January, the borders have taken over pride of place on my morning perambulations. They bring me much delight and while I can see a couple of areas that I will tweak, overall, I am happy with them. The borders have the most complex plantings and that means there is more of a succession of blooms.

The first auratum lily has come into bloom

The auratum lily border is the only garden we have that is dedicated to a single plant genus. It only stars for one month of the year and that will happen soon. The entire length holds the promise of so much with the mass of buds fattening and starting to show colour.

Stokesia and hydrangeas in the wave garden

The Wave Garden has its good sections and the flowering of the blue bearded iris in early November was a delight. But I have been reworking some bays that I was not so happy with so it is a bit patchy overall at this stage.

The grass garden on January 2

The growth in the Court Garden is nothing short of phenomenal and I am looking nervously at the abundant Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ but thrilled at the flowering on Stipa gigantea this season. Being sterile, the flowering lasts a long time. It really is the immersive experience I planned for.

Flowery abandon in the Iolanthe Garden

The Iolanthe garden is very different with its casual wildness and mass of blooms both planted and self-seeded. I am doing a bit of maintenance – well, I say a bit, but really I am wheeling out barrow-loads of seeding forget-me not, parsley and spent foxglove flower spikes. Fortunately, the weed infestation is nowhere near as bad as I feared and it has the appeal of an artfully casual cottage garden, very different to the other summer gardens.

May you stay safe and find hope where you can.

This goes with that. Or sometimes not.

Echinacea with contrasting foliage of fine grass and the foliage of Iris sibirica

It is not new year resolutions that have had me thinking in the last few days. In a world that has spun beyond our control, resolutions seem a little… irrelevant. No. Since my post about the graveyard, I have been thinking about plant combinations.

I have a photo file of images loosely categorised under ‘plant combinations’. There are lessons to be learned from some of them.

Ephemeral delights 1: lilac and a deciduous azalea. A very ephemeral delight, this one.
Ephemeral delights 2: A magnolia and Prunus Te Mara

Spot the problem with these two. These are pretty scenes based entirely on flower and colour combinations that we like. But, and it is a very big but, the flowering only lasts for a week to ten days every year. Many trees and shrubs have a very short peak time in bloom if you time them. We have plenty of such pretty scenes around our garden but we have a very big garden. In a smaller garden with limited space, most people want their plants to work harder over a longer period of time.

Hydrangeas are exceptions to the short blooming season rule and there are others but if you are setting out to plan for good combinations that are dependent on flowers, it is wise to check how long it is reasonable to expect the plants to actually bloom.

You can get longer in bloom from perennials than trees and shrubs. In practice, perennial gardening is heavily dependent on combinations. This pretty scene of Phlomis russeliana, Dietes grandiflora and Verbena bonariensis will last for a long time. And when the flowering is finished, the foliage combination will carry it through. That is the larger, flattish leaves of the phlomis contrasting with the grassy growth of the dietes, helped by how long the spent, candelabra flower stems of the phlomis hold on with their sculptural form.

Stipa tenuissima and a burgundy ligularia pack a visual punch amongst the graves
So too do Ligularia reniformis and Curculigo recurvata on our swimming pool garden

Foliage matters. A lot. The graveyard photo of Stipa tenuissima and the burgundy ligularia is entirely dependent on foliage. So too is this scene of Curculigo recurvata and Ligularia reniformis. Foliage contrasts and combinations are what will carry the scene through the year. But, to be honest, foliage alone rarely lifts my spirits and makes me smile in the way flowers do.

Flowers and foliage work better. This combination of natives – Xeronema callistemon (the Poor Knight’s lily) and Pachystegia insignis (Marlborough rock daisy) looks interesting all year round but is particularly pleasing when the red xeronema or white daisy are in bloom, even though they flower in succession, not at the same time.

Freshly planted on the left, what it was meant to look like – but with the addition of the dietes grassy foliage – on the right. Alas, the dietes never managed to get above the colocasio so languished, flower-less, beneath the overpowering foliage.

There are plenty of resources that will recommend good plant combinations but I never use them. It is much more fun to put your own together, even if you don’t always get it right first time. I thought my combination of a dark-leafed ornamental taro (black colocasia) and Dietes grandiflora in a low-maintenance planting for summer impact by our swimming pool would be brilliant. It wasn’t. The colocasia was so vigorous, thuggish in fact, that even the dietes didn’t stand a chance. I ended up removing all the colocasia because it was spreading at an alarming rate.

But sometimes it does work. A year ago I replanted this previously unsuccessful bed by our entranceway and I am pretty pleased with it. The dominant groundcovers are the two brown carex – upright Carex buchananii and the spreading Carex comans with a blue stokesia that blooms almost all year round. Autumn interest comes with a plum red nerine of Mark’s raising and towering self-sown Amaranthus caudatus, in late winter snowdrops and dwarf narcissi pop through, rhodohypoxis bloom in spring and I let the Orlaya grandiflora gently seed through. But it is the buff-brown carex and blue stokesia that carries it through all twelve months.

In a colder, semi-shaded area with heavy soil – hostas in blue and yellow hues, Chatham Island forget-me-not (Myosotidium hortensia), Ranunculus cortusifolius and even a blue meconopsis

Putting plants together with both skill and flair comes with experience. Novices may line out plants in the garden centre, often based on flowers alone, and think ‘oh that looks nice. That’ll do.’ Experienced gardeners factor in a whole lot more variants. These variants will include the following:

  • Plants need compatible growth habits. A vigorous thug will soon out-power a plant that is slower to establish or destined always to be of a more delicate nature. Plants with a spreading habit create shade and those with spreading root systems may swallow up their neighbours.
  • Plants grow. It helps to consider how quickly and how large they will grow at the time of planning. Also, what their mature form will be.
  • Plants need to like similar conditions – whether that be full sun or semi shade, sharp drainage or soils that never dry out or any of the other variants that contribute to a favourable growing situation.
  • If you select plants for floral display, you have to accept that the beautiful combination so carefully crafted may be for a very brief time.
  • Foliage contrasts give interest most of the year round. The most obvious contrast is spear-shaped foliage beside rounded, lush leaves or bold foliage with something light and fine but it can be more subtle. Variegated foliage is always best teamed with contrasting foliage that is a single colour. One lesson I have learned from our new Court Garden is that contrasts can be more subtle and still effective. All the foundation plants in that garden are selected for their ‘grassy style’ foliage and it is the other, more subtle variations that make the combinations effective – colour, movement, layering, and shape rather than foliar contrast. 
  • A combination of both flowers and foliage will cover more bases in terms of complementary plantings and longer term visual interest.

Plant combinations can be quite simple but effective. It is the combinations that stops a large planting from looking like a Council traffic island or a utility supermarket carpark. Mark’s mantra bears repeating: “The world is full of too many interesting plants to want to mass plant a single variety.

The good news is that with time and experience, deciding on combinations becomes instinctive rather than an intellectual exercise in planning and is, for many of us, one of the best parts of gardening.

It took several attempts to get this stretch of lower growing plants in the summer borders to the point that pleased me visually but I looked at it two weeks ago and thought “Yes! I am happy with that.”

Meri Kirihimete me te Hape Nū Ia! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It seems a little over the top to wish the usual merry Christmas and happy new year but in a year when so many of us will be happy to settle for just being Covid-free, may your festive season be tranquil and safe.

Really, I staged this little scene of colour-toned early summer flowers to showcase the three kings that our Canberra daughter crocheted for me with much skill and love last year, when the world seemed a different place.

I was delighted by the tweet that came down my line from @KenJennings who appears to be from Seattle:

“Every country had a tough 2020 except New Zealand. (they had a tough twinty twinty)”

NZ commenters were equally amused and it is true that our most prominent, international figure, the young(ish) woman who has spearheaded the sustained efforts to keep her people safe this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says “twinty twinty”.

The only radio station I listen to, Radio New Zealand, favours “twenny twenny”. The best I hope for from that quarter, as we move into the new year, is “twenty twenny-one”.

Let us hope the world becomes a safer place in twenty twenny-one.

Since I set it up my little Christmas tableau, I thought the kings might like the bottle of Bombay festive gin added to the scene. It is at least colour-toned.

Down amongst the graves

Friends invited me to join them amongst the graves last week. The Te Henui Cemtery in New Plymouth must be the country’s prettiest, most vibrant graveyard. I credit this entirely to the energy and cheerful dedication of the small band of volunteers who tend to a multitude of discrete, grave-sized gardens.

My first sight was a monarch which resolutely refused to oblige by opening its wings, feeding on a shaggy echinacea

It is very seasonal and, on this visit, it was lilies, agapanthus and dahlias that did the heavy lifting in the floral display. The sunlight was so bright and the shadows so deep that I was struggling to get half way decent photos which is why landscape shots are missing. I need to go back on a day when light conditions are more muted. But it is a really interesting place to look at plant detail and planting combinations.

The most startling plant combination of the day, one to make you stop and go ‘wow’, was the dark leafed ligularia with Stipa tenuissima. The stipa is pretty controversial, as I learned a month or two ago, (banned from commercial production but not illegal to have in the garden) but the combination is one that would not look out of place in a super-smart Auckland townhouse.

Mark was not with me on this occasion but I have shared a life with him for so long now that I know what his response will be. And he does not like upward-facing lilies. He holds his opinion so firmly on this matter that it could be described as dismissive. It didn’t stop me photographing this handsome red lily that was looking splendid. I am guessing it is an Oriental hybrid, maybe even what I have just discovered is sometimes called an ‘Orienpet’ which is, the ever-handy internet tells me, a hybrid between and Oriental and a Trumpet lily. Why does Mark reject upward-facing lilies? Leaf and litter gatherers, he calls them. And when a bloom gathers debris, it marks badly and its flowering time is limited as a result. In the Garden of Jury, lily blooms are to be outward-facing, not upward-facing.

The cemetery has a good selection of lilies so locals and visitors may like to check them out from now until early February.

I call it a helichrysum but I think it is actually an anaphaliodes

It is over ten years ago that I wrote up Helichrysum ‘Silver Cushion’ and I have not added anything to my knowledge about what most people know as everlasting strawflowers in the intervening years. All I can say is that this plant is not what we have growing as ‘Silver Cushion’ though it must be related. Those everlasting blooms are larger and clearly hold better over a long period of time. They were dainty and charming, albeit somewhat reminiscent of tarnished tinsel daisy-stars at this time of year.

My best guess is that this and ‘Silver Cushion’ have derived from our native plant Anaphalioides bellidioides (formerly Helichrysum bellidiodes) but I doubt they are species selections and what else is sitting in the genes, I do not know. I would like a piece of this larger form, though.

Any input from readers who know more about anaphalioides is most welcome.

I am not a fan of Dame Edna gladiolus, not at all. I tolerate my vigorous yellow ones that are a legacy from Mark’s mother. But look at the startling colour in these two. Vulgar, yes. Lacking refinement, yes. But vibrant and with a clarity of colour that is not to be derided. Just not in my garden, I think. The foliage gets rusted and unsightly here. That is another good reason to go to the cemetery – to see plants and colours that I do not grow at home.

I do not understand why my dierama – angel’s fishing rod, do not perform as well here as amongst the graves. They flower, but nowhere near as freely. I don’t think it is varietal, it is more likely to be conditions. What am I doing wrong?

Our thanks go to the dedicated volunteers who tend to this particularly cheerful and colourful place which combines delighting the living as much as remembering the dead.  

A simple santolina, I think in the only landscape view I managed in the glare of summer sun