Eucomis comosa 'Reuben', Pink Pineapple Lilly.
I started this blog post on the first day of spring, on a day that felt very un-spring-like. A gale force southerly was blowing and the air was cold and damp. The dark hills that surround Wellington, coupled with an oppressive grey sky, made the city feel imprisoned. According to the meteorologists Wellington has had the wettest winter in 10 years. There's been over 1000 hillside slips. A timely reminder of the importance of trees, which absorb something like 95% of their water through their roots. Most of the slips happened on bare or scrub covered hills, usually where there were big cuts to make way for roads.
Now it's halfway through September and the weather hasn't improved. The rain keeps falling and a north-westerly gale is knocking everything about. None of this has stopped the plants from growing; they've never looked so alive. Big patches of Wellington's forested hillsides have turned an ethereal shade of white. These are the blossoms of the flowering cherry trees, whose fluttering petals catch the light and seem to shimmer. These trees are considered a pest and the council kills them. Only no one told the birds who eat the berries of the flowering cherries and sow the seeds in their droppings.
Wild flowering cherry trees, Wellington, September, 2017.
Even though it feels like winter, I'm still wearing my boots, scarf and jacket, the plants know its not. I don't know how they know when nothing has changed.
Only it has. The sun has shifted position in the sky and the days are getting longer, maybe the soil is warming up. There are new green leaves unfurling on my oak, apple, acer and pear trees, there are white blossoms on the plum tree, yellow daffodils popping up in odd places and lilies of all descriptions are pushing their heads above the soil. They know its spring, their survival depends on knowing the infinitesimal changes in season.
The first leaves on the oak tree, September 1, 2017.
Thorndon Green (formally the Karori Garden Centre) has closed for good. It began life in the suburb of Karori, then moved to new premises in the city when the land it rented was sold. It was located under a motorway over-bridge right beside the rail yards. With cars whizzing by out front and trains thundering past at the back, it was an oasis of green in a workaday part of town. It is, or at least it was, one of the few independent garden centres in Wellington run by plant lovers. Regardless of the season it had an astonishing variety of plants, crammed artfully into a tiny space. According to the owner, the rent went up and the sales went down. It seems people aren't interested in gardening any more. Not proper four seasons gardening at any rate. It's a belief I've been harbouring for a while.
Before Thorndon Green shut it had a marvellous sale. I bought boot loads of plants, two planters, one hanging basket, one seed tray, a pile of gardening books (two by Beth Chatto that I've wanted for ages) and a rusty oil can that looks very 'shabby chic'. One of the plants I bought was a crabapple tree, Malus 'Jack Humm'.
Last year, after reading an inspiring article on crabapples, I added them to my mental list of plants that I must have. To be honest, I'm more interested in their ornamental qualities: pretty leaves, fruit and blossoms, then their ability to feed a family (mine don't like fruit anyway). I'd done no research when I bought Malus 'Jack Humm'. I had no idea which variety would suit my garden, or even if my garden suited a crabapple tree. The only criteria I had, as I wandered up and down a line of different crabapples in pots, was which one was small enough to fit in my car.
Handbook of Trees and Shrubs For the Southern Hemisphere, by Richmond E. Harrison, 1959.
There's a gardening book sitting on my bookshelf, that, until now, I've overlooked because it's old and therefore out-of-date. It's called, 'Handbook of Trees and Shrubs For the Southern Hemisphere' by Richmond E. Harrison, published 1959. I'd assumed its only usefulness was in the area of gardening nostalgia. It turned out to be surprisingly informative in the area of crabapples, especially my variety.
'Jack Humm' was the manager of Nairn's Nurseries Ltd. in Christchurch back in 1959, where (according to Mr Harrison) the 'most valuable and interesting varieties (of crabapple) have been produced.' Malus 'Jack Humm' is a cross between M. 'Gorgeous' (NZ variety) and M. 'John Downie' (an English variety). Crabapple trees must've been very popular in 1950s gardens because my 'Handbook of Trees and Shrubs' devotes 3 pages to crabapples and their hybrids, whereas Robinias only gets 3 paragraphs. It's a charming book with mostly black and white photographs and a handful of hand coloured ones (including M. 'Jack Humm'). Here's what Richmond E. Harrison has to say about my crabapple. It's 'a strong growing tree producing clusters of large oblong fruits of a bright crimson-red flushed yellow and orange on the underside. These fruits are one-and-a-half inches long, persist throughout the winter long after the leaves have fallen. For some reason they are untouched by birds, unless desperately hungry, some trees have been noted with the full complement of unblemished fruit in late August.' I shall keep an eye peeled for 'desperately hungry birds.'
Malus 'Jack Humm', photograph from Handbook of Trees and Shrubs.
For two weeks I left 'Jack Humm' in the front garden and occasionally moved him. Each possible location was viewed from different windows in the house and places in the garden. In the end there were only 3 spots he could sensibly be planted, that is, if he was to have enough sun and I was to keep my small scrap of lawn. I waited for good weather but it didn't come. In the end I had no choice but to plant 'Jack Humm' in one of Wellington's typical spring days: horizontal rain and gale force winds. Poor 'Jack Humm', who's a bare stick with a few stubby branches, looks more like a fishing rod bending against the weight of a heavy fish.
Malus 'Jack Humm', in my front garden.
Three Sundays ago, a group of friends and I went for a walk in Te Kopahou Reserve. It's a big wild green space in the south of Wellington, right at the bottom of the North Island. It used to be a farm, but now it's a public reserve with a number of unsealed 4wd tracks and walking tracks. The reserve is a series of steep hills and deep valleys. It has one of Wellington's mature coastal forest remnants, which are very rare. It grows in the depths of a dark valley called Spooky Gully.
Our walk was really a kind of reconnaissance. Wellington City Council plan to develop the reserve and we, as a group of walkers and lovers of nature, were concerned about this. The council didn't have a good track record for looking after special green and wild spaces.
Te Kopahou Reserve, Wellington, August, 2017.
My friends and I walked along a narrow sealed road across a hill top, past a giant wind turbine, an emu farm and a castle for dogs. We ended up at the airport's radar dome, known as the Radome. It's the highest spot in the reserve with 360 degree views of Wellington. It was a fine day, but the brisk north-westerly made it chilly. We took refuge behind one of the concrete walls that surround the Radome and ate our lunch. We had uninterrupted views of the Cook Strait, the top of the South Island and the snow on the Southern Alps. We talked about all manner of subjects from wild pigs to the meaning behind the letters in the word 'scrogin', all the while keeping an eye on the Picton Ferry as it made its way towards the Wellington Harbour. We were so high up that the ferry looked like a white smudge on the sea.
The Radome, Te Kopahou Reserve, August, 2017.
There was a botanist in our group and during the walk he pointed out interesting plants: tiny translucent ferns no taller than a sparrow, a grey plant with spiky leaves called Spaniard grass, which tasted like carrots, and a small bush with bright green leaves that tasted like lettuce. Spaniard grass used to grow prolifically, but the wild pigs think it's delicious so it only grows in places that they can't reach.
Spaniard grass, Te Kopahou Reserve, August, 2017.
The altitude, location and climate make it inhospitable for trees and large bushes to grow on the hilltops of the reserve. Tussock grass is thriving and in amongst it, like a patchwork rug, are different coloured mosses and lichens and fern allies in shades of grey, red, green, orange and mustard yellow.
Fern ally, Te Kopahou Reserve, Wellington, August, 2017.
We walked back to the car park on a narrow track below the brow of the hill, which kept us out of the wind. Here we discovered a different world of plants. There were flaxes, astelias and towering hebes with trunks as fat as power polls. But the best plant of all was Clematis paniculata, Puawhananga, which wound its way up through a rangiora, Brachyglottis repanda, (common name - bushman's toilet paper), in a tangle of green vines, glossy leaves and white star-shaped flowers. I have a packet of Clematis paniculata seeds that I bought last year and forgot about. Apparently the flowers are scented. The plant in my photograph was too far away for me to poke my nose into.
Last weekend I started the slow process of preparing the Clematis paniculata seeds for germination. There were only 7 seeds in the packet. I soaked them in a container of water over night, then spread them out on a wet paper towel the next morning. I folded the paper towel and put it into a plastic bag, which I sealed and put in the fridge. The seeds have to stay in the fridge for 2 weeks. After that I'll be able to plant the seeds into some compost and cross my fingers and hope that at least one of them grows.
Clematis paniculata, Te Kopahou Reserve, Wellington.
Every time I shop for garden books I'm dismayed to find that cooking books outnumber garden books by 5 to 1. I can't understand why everyone isn't as excited about plants as me. I'd much rather weed around my roses then bake gluten-free organic lemon cake. Recently, I rang a friend in the Bay of Plenty and moaned to her that gardeners like us are a dying breed. She disagreed, saying that she knew loads of people who gardened. I asked her to count the number of people she knew who gardened for the love of it, not because they felt they ought to. She could only name one person.
Here are 2 garden books I've been reading. Both bought new from my local bookshop, which has a small but wonderful selection of garden books. The owner is a keen gardener.
The Thoughtful Gardener, by Jinny Blom, 2017.
Jinny Blom makes beautiful, beautiful, beautiful gardens. She's a self taught garden designer who must've had excellent contacts and incredible drive when she started out. She's very famous now. Most of the gardens in the book are large with equally big budgets. An ordinary gardener, such as myself, is humbled and inspired and slightly depressed by Jinny Blom's gardens. Nonetheless, her book is a great read thanks to her conversational tone and clear writing. She explains her design process logically and generously. It's a book I will return to many times. If I were to generalise about Jinny Blom's planting style I would say it was romantic yet restrained. Her gardens are plant driven and she has an artists eye for colour, texture and shape. Her gardens work sympathetically with the surrounding landscape, often repeating shapes and colours or framing vistas. Jinny's hard landscaping is simple, usually sourced from local materials. She uses topiary, pleaching and espaliered fruit trees to bring a green structure to her gardens. Jinny, by her own admission, has a pared-down plant palette. She often uses roses, especially the Bourbons and various herbaceous border type flowers such as lavender, campanula and geranium. She uses grasses sparingly, but often includes flowering plants that have a similar feathery habit. Most importantly, Jinny Blom is unmoved by fads and fashions creating gardens that look like they belong in the landscape.
Cottage Garden Flowers, by Margery Fish, 1961
Margery Fish is a gardening hero of mine. She pioneered the modern cottage garden where everything was crammed in tightly. She started out as a complete amateur and documented her progress to becoming an expert thorough her many books. I find her writing so...comforting. Just the thing to be reading in the bath or in bed on a Sunday morning before embarking on a day in the garden. Margery Fish is an inspiration. A woman who came to gardening late and because of her keen eye, intelligence, determination, desire to do the work herself and learn from experience, was able to break new ground in gardening and garden design. She proved that it was possible for anyone with wit and gumption to succeed.
Spring, despite the miserable weather, has arrived. The wind has blown many of the flowers off the trees and bushes. The tenacious ones hang on.
Kowhai flowers, the last of the plum blossoms, red flowers on the Pittosporum crassifolium, Karo tree, and the top of the red azaleas in the front garden.
Daucus carota, Ornamental Carrot in the meadow garden, September 1, 2017.
My new meadow garden is flourishing. When I look through the fence it reminds me of the roadside meadows of my childhood. It's much too small, which was deliberate. My dog hangs out in the back garden and she's big and clumsy and likes to dig. So far she's left the meadow alone.
The meadow in the back garden.
Bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta.
This bluebell popped up after I recently cleared weeds from under a group of tree ferns. I didn't plant it and have never seen it before. For over twelve years it's been waiting for the right moment to flower. What patience.