Suddenly it’s 2019. What happened to 2018? A year used to stretch on and on and take forever to get from one end to the other. These days, it’s over too quickly. A year passes in a flash and a blink. And summer, which used to go on for months and months, of sun and flowers and the smell of sun baked grass and hot water in garden hoses, now feels like it’s over before it even got going.

Days and months mean nothing to a plant. They understand seasons. Dates are about as useful to a plant as plastic sandwiches and glass slippers. It’s a new year for us but for all the plants out there, the New Zealand ones at least, it’s summer. And because we’re an island nation stretched over 3 main islands and a whole lot of smaller ones, summer is very different in all the different places. When I left Wellington a week ago the pōhutukawa trees were just starting to flower. Up here in Auckland, with it’s sub-tropical climate, the pōhutukawa flowers have all but finished.

Here are 3 summer gardens where the stars are the flowers, which is a fitting way to start 2019. The first garden is a double bordered flower garden reminiscent of the sort of gardens that Gertrude Jeykll made. The second is like something out of Arabian Nights, a veritable flying carpet of jewel like colours, except it’s Indian in origin. And lastly, a fantasy garden based on Katherine Mansfield’s most famous story ‘The Garden Party’.

All 3 gardens are at the Hamilton Gardens in Hamilton. Hamilton isn’t on most peoples bucket list. It’s a perfectly agreeable city beside a mighty river, but it struggles to compete with places like Queenstown and Rotorua and Milford Sounds, places with jaw dropping scenery that will empty your pockets quicker than you can say Gladiolus. If you’re a garden lover then you must, absolutely must, make a pilgrimage to Hamilton Gardens. The name, I know, sounds a tad ordinary, when compared with names like Sissinghurst, Nympha, Great Dixter or Giverny. But Hamilton Gardens are extraordinary for 2 reasons. They’re world class gardens and they’re free. What a gift. Thanks Hamilton.

The signage at Hamilton Gardens is very good, informative and excellently written.

The entrance to the English Flower Gardens.

The flower border is to the right of the pergola.

The authority on flower borders has to be Gertrude Jekyll. She was an English gardener, garden designer, artist, photographer, plantswoman and writer (1843 -1932). She wrote a book called Colour Schemes For The Flower Garden, published in 1908. She transformed the flower border into a work of art. J. M. W. Turner painted in oils, Gertrude Jekyll painted with plants. She wrote many books about gardens, gardening and plants. They haven’t dated one bit and are still a delight to read in 2019. All her books have a lot to offer any would be artist-gardener.

I’m going to intersperse the photos below with quotes from a chapter titled ‘The Main Hardy Flower Border’ from Colour Schemes For The Flower Garden. Gertrude Jekyll created a large garden at Munstead Wood in Surrey, England. Her book, ‘Colour Schemes…’, which is as much abut foliage plants as flowers, is about a year in her garden.

These quotes are a real insight into growing and managing an English flower border as well as a great chance to hear the voice of Gertrude Jekyll.

‘The big flower border is about two hundred feet long and fourteen feet wide. It is sheltered from the north by a solid sandstone wall about eleven feet high clothed for the most part with evergreen shrubs - Bay and Laurustinus, Choisya, Cistus and Loquat. These show as a handsome background to the flowering plants. They are in a three-foot wide border at the foot of the wall; then there is a narrow alley, not seen from the front, but convenient for access to the wall shrubs and for working the back of the border.’

‘As it is impossible to keep any one flower border fully dressed for the whole summer, and as it suits me that it should be at its best in the late summer, there is no attempt to have it full of flowers as early as June.’

‘An important matter is that of staking and supporting. The rule, as I venture to lay it down, is that sticks and stakes must never show. They must be arranged that they give the needful support, while allowing the plant its natural freedom; but they must remain invisible.’

‘During the first week of June any bare spaces of the border are filled up with half-hardy annuals, and some of what we are accustomed to call bedding-plants - such as Geranium, Salvia, Calceolaria, Begonia, Gazania and Verbena. The half-hardy annuals are African Marigold, deep orange and pale sulphur, pure white single Petunia, tall Areratum, tall striped Maize, white Cosmos, sulphur Sunflower, Phlox Drummondi, Nasturtiums, and Trachelium coeruleum. Dahlias were planted out in May, and earlier still the Hollyhocks, quite young plants that are to bloom in August and September; the autumn-planted ones flowering earlier. The ground was well cleared of weeds before these were planted, and soon after, the whole border had a good mulch of a mixture of half-rotted leaves and old hot-bed stuff. This serves the double purpose of seeing the soil cool and affording gradual nutriment when water is given.’

‘As it is still impossible to prevent the occurrence of a blank here and there, or as the scene, viewed as a picture, may want some special accentuation or colouring, there is the way of keeping a reserve of plants in pots and dropping them in where they may be wanted. The thing that matters is that, in its season, the border shall be kept full and beautiful; by what means does not matter in the least. For this sort of work some of the most useful plants are Hydrangeas, Lilium longiflorum, candidum, and auratum, and Campanula pyramidal, both white and blue, and, for foliage, Funkia grandiflora, F. sieboldii and hardy ferns.’

‘Good gardening means patience and dogged determination. There must be failures and losses, but by always pushing on there will also be the reward of success. Those who do not know are apt to think that hardy flower gardening of the best kind is easy. It is not easy at all. It has taken me half a lifetime merely to find out what is best worth doing, and a good slice out of another half to puzzle out the ways of doing it.’

‘Even when a flower border is devoted to a special season, as mine is given to the time from mid-July to October, it cannot be kept fully furnished without resorting to various contrivances. One of these is the planting of certain things that will follow in season of bloom and that can be trained to take each other’s places. Thus, each plant of Gypsophila paniculata when full grown covers a space a good four feet wide. On either side of it, within reasonable distance of the root, I plant Oriental Poppies…The Poppies will have died down by the time the Gypsophila is full grown and has covered them.’

‘Then there is the way of pulling down tall plants whose natural growth habit is upright. At the back of the yellow part of the border are some plants of a form of Helianthus orgyalis, trained down…other plants can be treated in the same way; Rudbeckia Golden Glow, and Dahlias and Michaelmas Daisies. The tall Snapdragons can also be pulled down and made to cover a surprising space of bare ground with flowering side-shoots.’

‘It must be borne in mind that a good hardy flower border cannot be made all at once. Many of the most indispensable perennials take two, three or even more years to come to their strength and beauty. The best way is to plant the border by a definite plan, allowing due space for the development of each plant. Then, for the first year or two, a greater number of half-hardy annuals and biennials than will eventually be needed should be used to fill the spaces that have not yet be taken up by the permanent plants.

The best of these are Penstemons and Snapdragons, the Snapdragons grown both as annuals and biennials for so an extended season of bloom is secured. Then there should be African and French Marigolds, the smaller annual Sunflowers, Zinnias, Plume Celosias, China Asters, Stocks, Foxgloves, Mulleins, Ageratum, Phlox Drummondi and Indian Pinks; also hardy annuals - Lupines of several kinds, Chrysanthemum coronarium, the fine pink Mallows, Love-in-a-Mist, Nasturtiums or any others that are liked.’

A brief history of Indian Char Bagh Gardens.

The second garden I’m writing about is the The Indian Garden. It’s positioned right beside a river, the Waikato River, as would a traditional ‘Kursi-cum-char bagh’ Garden.

This was a very popular garden compared to some of the other gardens I visited (like The Modern Garden) judging by the number of people who visited it and how long they stayed. I loved this space. It took me to a different world. A world with gentle moving water, bright light and jewel like colours, intoxicating scent and plentiful wildlife.

Stepping through the arched doorway was stepping into a world of opposites. It was an outdoor room that was open and closed. It was highly organised and chaotic. It was tranquil and busy. With its 4 gardens, central fountain and 4 rills it was the polar opposite of the flower border. with its naturalistic planting style. Both, however, are highly contrived gardens.

The enclosed room was filled with the spicy scent of the the marigolds and the cloying sweetness of cherry pie Heliotrope. There were bees and butterflies all over the flowers. There was more wildlife here than in the flower borders. It was a pollinators paradise.

I learnt something about colour. Put a whole lot of loud clashing colours together and they stop clashing. Especially if those colours are evenly scattered and the plants are of a similar height and bushiness and those colours are surrounded by white.

This balcony overlooks the Waikato River. A scene of lush greens and browns, and full of birdlife.

I wasn’t supposed to visit this Katherine Mansfield fantasy garden. The hour I’d negotiated, with my family, to look at gardens had well and truely expired. I met my husband and son at the Hamilton Gardens Cafe for morning tea and neither of them were happy. My husband had lost his sunglasses and my son was sick to death of gardens. Every minute in the place was killing him.

Somehow or other, I still don’t know how, I managed to convince my husband and son that we ought to visit the new Katherine Mansfield Garden. ‘It’s just through the gate over there,’ I said. Though, to be honest, I didn’t have a clue.

It wasn’t nearly as close as I’d promised. We had to pass thorough four other gardens to reach it. But it was worth it.

My recent blog ‘An Edwardian Garden’ is about Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace in Wellington. The house in the photo above is similar to the house in that blog with three exceptions. This house is bigger, it has the main door positioned at the front of the house, rather than the side, and it has a long verandah.

This garden is a Katherine Mansfield fantasy garden. It’s the garden she wrote about in her story ‘The Garden Party’, published in 1921, which is based on a family she knew in Wellington. This is an authentically New Zealand Edwardian Garden and would’ve been similar to the gardens she knew as a child and young woman. Gardens of this era, and social class, often had a backdrop of native trees and bushes, a circular driveway, flower borders, a pond with a fountain, garden structures like pergolas and seats, lawns and even a lawn tennis court.

I’ve included several short excerpts from ‘The Garden Party’ where plants are mentioned, just to set the scene. If you feel like reading the story, which is excellent and short, then here’s a link…

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/mansfield/garden/garden.html

‘AND after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.’ (The Garden Party)

"Look here, miss, that's the place. Against those trees. Over there. That'll do fine."

Against the karakas. Then the karaka-trees would be hidden. And they were so lovely, with their broad, gleaming leaves, and their clusters of yellow fruit. They were like trees you imagined growing on a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of silent splendour. Must they be hidden by a marquee?

They must. Already the men had shouldered their staves and were making for the place. Only the tall fellow was left. He bent down, pinched a sprig of lavender, put his thumb and forefinger to his nose and snuffed up the smell. When Laura saw that gesture she forgot all about the karakas in her wonder at him caring for things like that–caring for the smell of lavender. How many men that she knew would have done such a thing? Oh, how extraordinarily nice workmen were, she thought. Why couldn't she have workmen for her friends rather than the silly boys she danced with and who came to Sunday night supper? She would get on much better with men like these.’ (The Garden Party)

The lawn tennis court has been set up for the garden party, exactly as it was in Katherine Mansfield’s story.

‘You’ll notice the karaka trees used as hedging plants around the tennis court in the photo above.

So there you have it - 3 gardens full of mid-summer flowers. That wonderful golden moment in time where everything is poised and perfect and so full of youthful exuberance.

And before I sign off, I want to say a very big thank you to all you lovely people who read my blog. You’re wonderful. It’s because of you that I keep on writing, which, at times, feels a bit like communicating via bottle. That communication device favoured by people who’re shipwrecked on deserted islands. I write my blog, seemingly to myself, then I send it into the dark sea of algorithms and digits and things I don’t understand. At first I see my blog bobbing about, looking friendly and cheerful, but then it disappears into the dark void and all I’m left with is hope. Hope that my message reaches someone strolling on another shore.