The Magnoliafication – we made it up. A bit like The Rapture, perhaps, but with its roots firmly in the soil, showier and more socialist in concept so not, in fact, like The Rapture at all. It was the process by which we distributed our surplus nursery stock free of charge in our local town of Waitara.

Every plant nursery ends up with surplus stock, seconds and rejects. We had less than many nurseries, being smaller and focused on producing high-end products. But we still had them – lines we had over-produced and plants that did not make the quality grade and it seemed such a waste to burn or compost them. We had the occasional sale but when you are targeting the upper end of the market, sales are something of a betrayal of loyal customers who have already bought a plant at full price. We preferred to give the plants away.

In the early days, Mark gave a lot of surplus magnolias and rhododendrons to local farmers in the hopes of beautifying the countryside and we still see some of those around the area. We also see properties which have since changed hands and new owners have come in and chainsawed out established trees with no awareness of what they are removing, but such is life. A few experiences made us feel we were being taken somewhat for granted so we stopped giving them to farmers. Instead, we had an arrangement with a charity shop on the main street of Waitara that they would collect plants when we had them and put them out on their front pavement for people to collect free. It worked well. Everything was taken and some of it at least would be planted.

A lot of what went down for collection were magnolias – some with inadequate root systems which would have needed nursing to recover, or misshapen plants which should have grown well, if a slightly odd shape. And a lot of those reject magnolias were ‘Felix Jury’ which took us a while to learn how to grow straight and tall. We also had a contract grower producing an export crop of the magnolias for us and his standards were not as high as ours so too many were unable to be exported. They went down to our magnolia distribution system outside the charity shop.

At the time, Mark quipped about the magnoliafication of Waitara.

Waitara has a lot of magnolias all coming into bloom. By no means did they all come from us, either as purchases or as freebies. When the powerhouse nursery, Duncan and Davies, was in full production on the other side of Waitara, it was a significant employer of locals as seasonal labour and it was also renowned for its huge end-of-season sales. There were also a number of other nurseries around, also producing magnolias and employing locals and some of the trees will have come from those sources.

The irony is that magnolias are generally seen as a high-end, prestige plant and Waitara can be described in many ways but elite is not one of them. Its post-colonial history has made it the poor relative in the district, at the low end of every socio-economic indicator. But it can sure grow magnolias well and I think it likely has more magnolias per capita than similar small towns.

I only drove around about 8 or 10 short streets this week, photographing magnolias from the roadside. I belong to a Facebook page which is mainly comprised of mad, keen magnoliaphiles in the more northerly parts of Europe. Most of the photographs they post are close-ups of blooms on small plants, often growing in challenging climatic conditions. I thought they would be interested to see them used more widely as a mainstream ornamental plant, planted by non-gardeners and gardeners alike. They were indeed surprised to see them in this context.

Given how many reject Magnolia ‘Felix’ we sent down, I was delighted when I found five planted in two gardens a couple of doors apart which were the right age and size to be from those. One had two trees planted side by side and the other house had three planted close together on their side boundary. I don’t know that they were our free ones, but given the high price tag on the premium product from both us and local garden centres we supplied, it seems unlikely that non-gardeners would go out and buy two or three at the same time.

I now plan to drive more extensively around the back streets of Waitara, playing ‘spot the magnolia’.

Finally, a wry observation about human nature. Friday was free plant day at the op shop, when we had plants to send down. One Thursday afternoon, two women drove in here in a modern car. They hadn’t come to buy plants, they had come hoping to get first dibs on picking over the free plants ready to go down to Waitara the next day. At the time we had a lovely, local man called Danny working here. He intercepted them and I hope they felt some shame at his incredulous response as he told them that was not how it worked. The nerve of some people.

Waitara has a splendid tree of the pink Magnolia campbellii which is one of my seasonal markers for the start of the magnolia season. It has finished flowering already but here is a photo I prepared earlier, which some of you may recognise. The tree did not come from us; it is likely it was a Duncan and Davies plant.