Yesterday, I met my cousin and we went for a walk. It rained on and off the whole time. We’re both teachers. She teaches at a kindergarten and I teach at a primary school. She likes to grow food and indoor plants and I like to grow ornamentals and herbs. Our grandmother was an incredible gardener and we talked about her a lot.
We remembered how she always stole cuttings of plants, wherever she went, and hid them in her handbag. She loved flowers and indoor plants. Despite her humble beginnings, one of fourteen children from a family of gardeners and servants, she never grew fruit or vegetables. To be honest she wasn’t much of a cook. Cooking to her was a chore. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t interested in growing food. Food didn’t interest her like plants did, only not food plants.
I met my cousin outside the hothouse at Wellington Botanic Garden at 9.30 in the morning. It’s right beside the Lady Norwood Rose Garden. It’d been raining all morning, but it had stopped when I took these photos.
If you look in the top left of the photo above you can make out the zig-zag path that links the rose garden with the Herb Garden. We visited the herbs after we went in the hothouse. We went in the hothouse after we went to the cafe and had hot chocolates and plum slice and caught up on family news. But that was after I discovered I’d lost my credit card, which was also my cashflow card and my only access to my money. It was Saturday and I hadn’t seen my card since Friday evening, when I’d leant it to my son to buy MacDonalds after football training. It was more than enough time for someone to have cleaned out my bank account. This was what was racing through my head. Luckily, my cousin bought me morning tea.
I’m always reminded of a scene from Raymond Chandler’s novel ‘The Big Sleep’, which takes place in a hothouse.
‘The path took us along to the side of the greenhouse and the butler opened a door for me and stood aside. It opened onto a sort of vestibule that was about as warm as a slow oven. He came in after me, shut the door, opened an inner door and we went through that. Then it was really hot. The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants. The light had an unreal greenish colour, like light filtered through an aquarium tank. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket.’ (Raymond Chandler, 1939)
Here are some orchids from the hothouse.
The lens on my camera kept fogging up and I had to keep wiping it. Most of my photos of the plants were blurry. The lens fogged up because the glass was cold (the whole camera was cold) and the air in the hothouse was hot, of course, and it was very damp. We heard the rain start up on the glass roof. By this time I’d rung my son and found out that my credit card was safe, at least safe from thieves. He’d left it between the front two seats in the car. The car was a tip. It could be anywhere. At least I was able to stop thinking about financial ruin.
My cousin loved all the tropical trees in the treehouse and photographed them on her phone. As for me, the highlight, as always, was the tropical pond. There’s something about the still green water, the thin orange fish and the sort of plants that make me think of words like languorous, lazily and lackadaisical. I’d give anything for a hothouse with a tropical pond (well maybe not anything, not my credit card, not my family and definitely not my Margery Fish books, maybe I could give my 2 unpublished novels and my photographic enlarger and camera collection. I’d throw in a few packets of seeds and a cutting of one my grandmother’s succulents).
I bought a Cyperus papyrus plant a few months ago. I’ve always wanted one. They remind me of pictures of the Nile River and the alligator section of the Auckland Zoo, which I loved as a kid. I think the plant above and below is the same plant. I’m growing mine in a pot rather than a pond. I read that so long as these plants don’t dry out they’re happy. My friend Ali suggested putting a deep dish of water under the pot of my papyrus and I’m going to do this. At the moment it’s been raining for 2 days, not uncommon for Wellington, so my papyrus is happy…well it must be, it’s making new leaves.
The rain stopped when we arrived at the Herb Garden. The smell was intoxicating; the air was filled with the scent of lavender, bay and pelargonium leaves.
This is an under appreciated lavender (especially by me). I think it’s Lavendula dentata var. candicans. It’s bigger than other kinds of lavender and flowers all year round. It grew in my last two gardens but not my current one. It makes a great hedge and can be pruned into balls or blobs or boxes or whatever you want, because of its great foliage (which has a strong lavender scent). It grows easily from cuttings. My herb, fruit and rose garden needs this plant.
The Herb Garden had been weeded and cut back in preparation for new plants and summer. It allowed me to see some of the clever structures used to contain or support plants, like this black plastic bucket. Old terracotta pipes were used too, but they’d be hard to get hold of for the average gardener. Black plastic buckets, like this one, are cheap and plentiful. They’re big enough for a decent sized plant of mint or soapwort or any of those other invasive plants.
Below are a couple of bamboo plant supports that have been easily made from lengths of bamboo and string. They look good too.
Here’s a plant I’d like to grow, Teasel, Dispascus fullonum. It’s a biennial loved by bees.
Here’s the pond at the end of the Herb Garden, which is filled with water from a lion fountain. Here’s another papyrus (I think).
My kowhai tree at home has only just started to flower, unlike this one, which is florific. It sits in a small grassy area behind the Herb Garden, where a few bee hives have been recently placed.
This stumpery is new. It’s new since autumn. The stumpery sits below the Children’s Playground. It used to be populated with leggy Vireyas, which always looked sickly. It looks like it’s always been here and I’m very envious. Look at all those wonderful mossy stumps with that ancient forest look about them. My mind is whirring, trying to work out how to get a stumpery look in my fernery (no easy feat for a suburban gardener without access to weathered stumps).
My cousin and I ended our walk here by the tulip beds. The gardeners have stuck to a limited colour range this year. In previous years they’ve gone for lots of different colours. Most of the tulips are yellow or white, with a few reds here and there. The bright green foliage plant is parsley, ordinary curly leafed parsley. I’m trying to work out if I like or hate the use of parsley as a design plant. It looks great so long as I forget it’s a herb, but the minute I remember, then, simultaneously, I think of eating it (its coarseness and bitterness) and it being abused as a garnish (on all food in the 70s and 80s and in window displays at butcher shops). Once that happens the lovely sinuous sweeps of bright green stop being lovely.
Maybe it was seeing all that parsley growing, but my cousin and I decided we would meet up soon and go on a plant foraging expedition. She has an excellent book about plant foraging, written for New Zealanders (which I must have a copy of). We might choose a sunny day for that, foraging in the rain holds little appeal.
I insisted on driving my cousin home, which was just as well because it started to rain, and not the gentle drizzle we’d experienced so far; it was a deluge. My cousin gave me some pelargonium cuttings, from her front garden, before we finally said goodbye.
One of my favourite books and one I often come back to is ‘The Thrifty Gardener’ by Alys Fowler, 2008. This week I’ve been reading about ‘seed sowing’. To date my approach has been very slap-dash, but I’ve decided I can do better. I’ve ordered a whole lot of interesting seeds online. They should arrive in the post next weeks. After I publish this blog I’m off to sow some seeds in the potting shed. I have to free up some space in my seed box.
‘Seeds need four things to germinate and grow. They need water, light, the right temperature and oxygen…warmth is perhaps more important than anything…get a soil thermometer. I became a much better gardener once I knew the temperature of my soil…A propagator does hugely increase the speed and the range of what you grow. If you get hooked on seed sowing they’re a worthwhile investment…’ (Alys Fowler)
I love growing plants from seed. My front porch faces north-east and has become my greenhouse. I’ve run out of space thanks to all my seed trays and seedlings. My porch is warmer than the outside of my house but not by much. I’m going turn one end of the front room into a seed raising area (I’m not sure that my family will like this, so I won’t tell them until it’s too late to do anything). I so need a greenhouse!
Here are are a few of my plants that are flowering or growing fresh leaves.
Above is my greengage tree, which I’ve only had for a year. I had to move it at the end of last summer to make way for the shed. Last year I got leaves and blossoms, but no fruit.
I bought 3 yellow abutilons in autumn for the front garden. I have 3 abutilons growing (red, pink and orange) in my red and purple flower garden. I love these bushes. So do the bees and waxeyes. Two of my three yellow ablutions have started to flower. I think the yellow ones are the prettiest.
I bought a clump of Primula ‘Hose-in-Hose’ in winter (above). My other primulas (fancier ones), which I bought in autumn, died down (as they’re supposed to), but haven’t reappeared. I’m worried they’ve gone for good. Still, I’m very excited about these ones with their sweet purple buds.
My snowball tree has woken up (above).
The purple flower buds above are Thalictrum aquilegifolium. It’s the first time it’s flowered. I have 3 of these plants. The other two were moved, by me, in late autumn, to, what I thought, were better positions (shadier and moister). This one got left behind. It’s in a much drier and sunnier spot, yet it’s the only one to reappear. I read somewhere that they don’t always flower in their first year (and my 3 plants were young) so maybe that’s why they didn’t do much.
I’ve heard from a couple of gardeners on Instagram who grow Thalictrums. One gardener grows them in a meadow garden where the plants self-seed and the other gardener grows them in a much hotter and drier garden, where the plants thrive. Possibly I’ve misjudged these plants and they’re hardier then I’ve been led to believe. I’ve decided to have a go at growing them from seed and have ordered three different sorts of Thalictrum - surely one of them will love my garden.
Here are two of the many purple flowers in the garden. A no-name geranium above and honeywort, Cerinthe major, below.
I saw a stunning purple camellia on Instagram. I think it was ‘Purple Passion’. I had a quick internet search and couldn’t find it in NZ. I fell in love with it. It originated 30 years ago in Georgia, USA, from a chance seedling. I’m going to track it down.
And here’s my shed, almost finished. I finished painting the door and steps last week. Once Paul installs the guttering and water tank then it will be complete.
I found some orange and yellow wallflowers at Twiglands last week. I bought two orange ones, Erysimum cherianthus ‘Citrona Orange’ and planted them in front of the shed. Next week I’m going back for the yellow ones.
