There's a plant that my grandmother grew in her garden. It was a small tree with big soft leaves and long creamy pendulous flowers. We called it the trumpet flower tree. The scent was bewitching.
Like many gardeners I feel compelled to garden. I'm chasing an elusive dream, part childhood memory and part paradise lost. The garden that never leaves me is my grandmother's. I remember her trees and shrubs and flowers that she planted on a bare Bay-of-Plenty sandhill (bare apart from a pohutukawa tree and kikuyu grass). She worked on her garden for 30 years. Her sub-tropical garden was a far cry from the gardens of her childhood in Mid-Wales. The small cottager gardens in her village and the grand gardens of Gregynog Hall and Powis Castle where her brothers worked. My grandmother's garden was a very South Pacific take on the Welsh cottage garden - hibiscuses and bird-of-paradise rubbed shoulders with daisies and lavender.
My grandmother's garden is gone. Her land was subdivided, the plants were cut down and dug up. Gardens are ephemeral. My grandmother's garden is my lost paradise. Whenever I smell the sweet buttery scent of trumpet flowers I find myself standing on my grandmother's back lawn, under her trumpet flower tree. Scent is a portal that allows me to travel backwards in time.
My brother-in-law reckons that if someone could bottle up childhood scents, real smells - not the test-tube variety, then that person would become very rich. Why are smells so evocative? Psychologists say that it's all down to brain anatomy. Smells are processed by the olfactory bulb (that starts at the nose and runs to the bottom of the brain) and the olfactory bulb has direct connections with the brain areas involved in emotion and memory. Our tactile, visual and auditory brain areas don't pass through the emotion and memory areas.
Scent shouldn't be overlooked in a garden. Arguably it's just as important as colour or shape or size when selecting a plant.
Heliotropium arborescens, Heliotrope 'Royal Marine', in my flower garden, April 2018.
I've been admiring the Heliotropes in the Wellington Botanic Garden all autumn. They have a deep, almost cloying, smell, reminiscent of violet lollies. I bought two for my flower garden to fill a gap created by a lily, a rose and a Calycanthus losing their leaves. They originate from the mountains of Peru and flower from spring to the end of autumn. They were admired in Victorian times, that golden age of plant hunters and gardens. Gertrude Jekyll used Heliotropes in her flower gardens at Munstead Wood. It's also known as 'cherry pie' and it belongs to the Boraginaceae family along with Borage and forget-me-nots. Heliotrope has a relaxed posture, more horizontal than vertical. I hope they survive a Wellington winter, because they don't like frost.
One of Vita Sackville-West's favourite scented plants for late summer early autumn is the Incense Plant Humea elegans - preferred name Calomeria amaranthoides. It's an Australian plant that can grow to 2 metres in height. It has spikes of scented feathery flowers. At least I think it's the flowers that smell like incense. I don't think it will be an easy plant to find in New Zealand if my quick google search is anything to go by. Maybe the botanic garden has one. You can grow this plant from seed.
Humea elegans. Iit's preferred name is Calomeria amaranthoides. Photograph from Twitter. Who would've thought that 56 years after Vita Sackville-West's death she'd be sending out regular tweets on Twitter.
Brugmansia, Wellington Botanic Garden, April 2018.
Brugmansia, Wellington Botanic Garden, April 2018.
The plant I knew as the trumpet flower tree is called Brugmansia. It originates from tropical parts of South America. I've wanted one of these trees for a long time but haven't come across one for sale. I've never seen Brugmansias growing in Wellington, and made the assumption that the climate was too cold for them. 3 weeks ago I found a Brugmansia in flower outside Inverlochy House, in central Wellington. It was growing in a sheltered north-east position. I broke off a small stem from the back of the tree when no one was about. I took the cutting home and put it in a jar of water on my kitchen windowsill, where I had some Penstemon cuttings taking root. Yesterday I found another Brugmansia growing in the Wellington Botanic Garden in a sheltered northerly position. I reckon my cutting stands a fair chance of turning into a tree.
Brugmansia and Penstemon 'Cha cha cherry' cuttings in a jar of water.
My Brugmansia cutting after 3 weeks in water.
Potted-up Brugmansia and Penstemon cuttings, April 2018.
Propagating plants from cuttings, in my experience, is easy. But then I've only taken cuttings from easy to grow plants like salvia, lavender, penstemon and all sorts of succulents. Softwood cuttings are best taken in spring and hardwood cuttings in autumn. Some cuttings can be put into water where they'll quickly grow roots, others need to be put into a pot of compost. Some books tell you to cover the potted cutting with a plastic bag, I've never tried this.
This year I've taken 6 rose cuttings from 2 of my favourite roses, William Lobb - an old fashioned Moss, and Ebb Tide (Weksmopur) - a floribunda. I was inspired by the gardening column in the Dominion Post where growing roses from cuttings sounded incredibly easy. I took the cuttings from the tips of the stems, removed most of the leaves and stuck them into a pot of compost (as was directed). Apparently it can take up to a year for the cuttings to take root. I've put them on the front porch so I don't forget to water them.
Two of my Sunset Books.
'How to Grow Roses' is a marvellous Sunset Book published in 1960. I picked it up from the Taupo Salvation Army Family Store before Christmas for $6.00. The Sunset Series are worth collecting, for the photos of the modernist gardens alone, if for nothing else. Pictures of Thomas Church's gardens are regularly used in the Sunset Books.
'How to Grow Roses' had instructions on how to propagate a rose by cutting. It outlined a completely different process to the one I followed. 'How to Grow Roses' had 11 very detailed steps involving a special cutting technique of midsection stems, hormone powder, special potting mix and a special method of inserting the cuttings at a 45 degree angle into the soil. 'How to Grow Roses' recommends that the gardener only take cuttings of roses for fun and experience, rather than for results. 'Self-rooted roses are rarely as vigorous as those budded onto established rootstocks, and, in many ways are not too satisfactory.'
I'm glad I went for the 'entry level' rose cutting method. 11 steps are 11 steps too many if the best that my rose cuttings can be is 'unsatisfactory.'
Sweet peas, like trumpet flowers, are another plant from my childhood. I remember my sister and I growing them outside our bedroom. To me they smell like summer and swing ball and spider drinks. Two weeks ago I planted some sweet pea seeds along the fence line of my herb garden...and already they're sprouting (along with the weeds).
Sweetpeas growing in my herb garden, April 2018.
Most of the sweet peas for sale in New Zealand are hybrids, and while the flowers are great they produce inferior plants if they self seed. I've been reading about the sweet peas that Vita Sackville-West grew at Sissinghurst, which self seeded with abandon. She loved the true sweet pea Lathyrus odorous that grew wild in the hedgerows of Siciily. Vita's sweet peas, 'Cupani' and 'Matucana', were direct descendants of the Sicilian one. I want sweet peas like hers.
Koanga Gardens, who specialise in NZ heritage plants and seeds, have 2 sweet pea varieties for sale: Sweet Pea Mary's (which is out of stock) and Preservation Packet 1 Sweet Pea Heritage Mix (these are only available for Koanga Garden members). I love the idea of growing sweet peas that are the offspring of the ones brought here by the early settlers...I think I'm going to have to become a Koanga Garden member.
Growing annuals from seed can be time consuming, but it's worth the effort, especially when they're prolific self seeders - as I recently found out.
My meadow garden, April 2018.
A month ago I pulled up all the dead flowers in my meadow garden. I ordered some more flower seeds from Kings but never got around to planting them. I needn't have worried. All of last summer's meadow flowers threw out hundreds of seeds. Little plants are popping up all over the garden and even in the grass. There is bishops flower Ammi majus, ornamental carrot Daucus carota and honesty Lunaria annua. All I have to do is weed the garden and make sure my dog doesn't dig It up.
Honesty seeds Lunaria annua, April 2018.
Sometimes a gardener needs to know when they're beaten and that was me with the clematis seeds I failed to grow. Last week, I was at Bunnings buying some compost when I came across a New Zealand clematis in the garden section. Of course I bought it.
Clematis 'Purity', April 2018.
Clematis 'Purity' is a NZ Clematis bred by the late Mr Arthur Ericson of Akaaroa (according to the plant tag). It's a cultivar between Clematis paniculata and C. forsterii. It tolerates very cold conditions and likes its feet and lower limbs to be in the shade. It's an evergreen climber that produces large white scented flowers in spring. What more could anyone want in a climber...beauty, hardiness and scent. I've planted the clematis in a garden that gets almost no winter sun, but all-day sun in summer. If the clematis grows another 30cm it will reach the light. I planted it behind a silver fern Cyathea dealbata, which will give it the shade it needs in summer. While my clematis isn't a true unadulterated NZ native, it's close enough.
And before I sign off, here are some plants in the Wellington Botanic Garden that I photographed on the weekend.
