Food for Thought

SOME gardeners admit to talking to their plants like people. There was some research years ago that suggested plants respond by growing more.

I have my doubts about that but there are real merits in thinking of plants as people when it comes to feeding them. Plants need a balanced supply of nutrients like we do and neither over or under feeding pays.

The trend with our food favours least processed options and the same seems to go for the Weekend Gardener team when feeding our plants – see page 19  for what some of our accomplished gardeners use. Their form of feeding is a type of recycling so doubly trendy.

Recycling and an au natural approach were also recurrent themes at the Singapore Garden Festival this year (page 14).  On the flower front, Pamela McGeorge, an alpine plant grower enthusiast herself, visits a garden full of small treasures (page 21) and our Orchid Extravaganza programme pullout makes growing some of those exotic beauties easy.  The September 8-12 Extravaganza at Palmerston North is a once-in-every-five years showcase of top modern orchids.

Happy Gardening

Susie

Heart Warming Gardens

THE other day I came across photos of a stunning 
Australian garden, a modern take on the cottage garden. Created by a top landscape architect, it is exceptionally pleasing if not perfect.

Yet when it comes to the indefinable, heart-warming quality we call charm, Bernadette Munn’s humble 
Wellington cottage garden we feature in this issue (page 10) outscores it easily. I’ll leave readers to work out why.

A Matakana garden we also visit (page 22) scores for the charms of native birds that flock there – due to the work its owners, Warren and Lois Agnew, have done and are happily sharing with us other gardeners.

We have some great food-growing features too: Gillian Vine shares the secrets of 
successful early spring planting (page 16); Mark Rayner makes raised beds (page 18); and Jane Bellerby tells us how to grow perfect peas (page 28).

Garden when you can – spring is in the air, as busy birds are telling us early morning. Isn’t that wonderful!

Susie Longdell, Editor.

Living Stones in Auckland

IN this our mid-winter issue, Andrew Maloy tells the story of an Auckland man’s long-time love affair with Lithops, unusual living stones or pebble plants he discovered in South Africa.

After also visiting the republic and walking the fynbos, Sue Linn has plenty of pointers for lots of protea perfection.

Talking about national icons, we’ve tips on kiwifruit and a recipe for a marinade.

Down south, Gillian Vine goes to Dunedin’s delightful Chinese Garden, an inspiring place, now the city’s biggest tourist attraction, that shines in our coldest months.

Veronica Armstrong gives advice on lichen; and Plant Gallery has interesting vegetable seeds to grow.

It’s a great time for DIY projects; we’ve three you can tackle in the garage: a patio display, a climbing frame;  newspaper eco seedling pots; and a great project  for the kids, Mark Rayner’s delightful sleepy Mexican ornament made from pots.

With all the rain around, it’s a good time to be pottering around in a glasshouse; enter our feature draw and be in to win a Redpath® model.

Good gardening and reading.

Chelsea golds galore

WHEN it comes to gardening events, Chelsea Flower Show is tops and this year saw new records, including the most gold medals awarded.

This was unexpected as night frosts were still rolling in 12 days before the show and exhibitors worried whether flowers would unfold in time.

This year can also claim Chelsea’s most expensive show garden – the $44 million Ace of Diamonds Garden. But it takes more than sparkling jewels to dazzle Chelsea judges who gave it a bronze award despite its glitter.

Then the judges awarded just a silver to the Peoples Choice winner for small gardens.

In this issue (page 10) we bring you highlights of the show – choose your own favourites and be inspired by ideas for your backyard.

Now winter has really arrived we’ve tips on feeding hungry birds (page 14), on choosing and caring for citrus, the mainstay of the winter orchard (page 22), and show how to take hardwood cuttings, the great no-cost way to produce new edible and ornamental plants (page 26).

Also in this issue, our centrefold supplement has winter offerings from Diack’s Nurseries, a southern gardening institution based in Invercargill. View www.diacks.co.nz

Susie Longdell,

Editor.

Preserving Our Abundance

SURELY the perfect home garden fruit tree or vine would crop over an extended period. Instead we typically get short-lived abundance then find ourselves torn between a certain pride at such production and guilt that we don’t preserve more of it in some way for another day.

At least this year, because my district has suffered drought since September, we’ve had no problems dealing with any excess (reduced and sadly under-sized due to the lack of water) – it’s helped feed our farm animals!

Andrew Steens has a more creative use for excess crops – making wine (see page 28). He calls this an addictive pastime and it’s one that combines well with his edible gardening skills.

Marilyn Wightman preserves produce in other ways. She even puts some ornamental fruit – crab apples and japonicas – to good kitchen use in delectable jelly jams (page 13). These will provide tantalising traces of summer’s scents and tastes in the coming winter.

Having good paths make gardens more enjoyable in cold wet weather. Our DIY expert Mark Rayner provides ideas for easy and inexpensive options (page 14).

Flowering plants are important, too, for brightening dull winter days. Abbie Jury surveys the first to flower of the camellias, while Jacqueline Sparrow discusses a distinctive native climber rescued from extinction by a single specimen (page 25).

And though the summer growing season is over, there’s still plenty to do – we bring you lots of tips and tasks for edible and ornamental gardening.

Susie Longdell,

Editor.

Justifying a Few New Roses

WHAT’S new? Nothing under the sun, according to an oft-repeated 
saying. Certainly in the plant world, ‘new’ is difficult to define.

Every now and again we read of a ‘new’ species somewhere in the world – Australia’s Wollemi pine, for example. But these plants are not new; just ones no one knew existed.

In the gardening world, the question of new is just as difficult. Take roses. Is a rose new in New Zealand when it’s planted in trial grounds open to public view, when it’s available only in limited numbers or when gardeners throughout New Zealand can buy it?

In our preview of roses this issue, we take the wider view on offer this winter (page 14). It’s impossible not to fall in love with some of them. If buying a rose in the past has sometimes been the start of a love-hate affair, you will note, like me, there’s extra temptation this year – like ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, which a nursery representative tells me is wonderfully healthy and a must on his shopping list. There’s one with few thorns and some power-packed with perfume too.

We gardeners can justify a little spend by what we save in growing food. And though I can’t claim a productive patch like our feature gardeners (page 10), I’m inspired by their example and our edible gardening team (page 28).

With their help plus the tips on making plenty of compost (page 18), a must for any gardening endeavor, my veggie garden’s productivity should soar. That would justify a few new roses, surely! That’s my argument anyway.

Susie Longdell,

Editor.

Natives at Melbourne

WERE you fooled by our front cover? It’s not a scene from a delightfully rustic New Zealand garden, complete with bronze flax and a tree fern. It’s part of the show garden judges picked as the very best at the 2010 Melbourne International Flower Show (see page 10).

The tree fern could be dinkum Aussie, an example of the close kinship between many of our plants. Take pittosporums, teatree and cordylines for example. There are different species belonging to the same genera on both sides of the Tasman that back in time must have shared a common ancestor.

But that flax is definitely ours – Australians find many New Zealand natives useful garden plants, just as we do their grevillea, gums, Australian fangipani, pandorea, hardenbergia, macadamia and many more.

Other garden plants come to us from Europe, some with a centuries-old heritage like the highly fragrant sweet pea Jacqueline Sparrow favours (page 17). I have added this to my must-have list and plan to try the purple sprouting broccoli that Nick Hayhoe reports he is growing in our edible gardening team’s round-up (page 28).

The dwarf apple ‘Autento’ Jane Bellerby describes (page 18) may also end up on my list. Its small stature (but full-sized fruit) means it should fit somewhere.

But first, before winter tree-planting, there’s a Mother’s Day and some overdue thank you gifts to organise so when there’s time, I will try one of Mark Rayner’s DIY gift ideas (page 20).

And I must put in a green manure crop as Andrew Maloy recommends (page 24). It always pays off in better crops next summer.

Autumn is a busy time for gardeners.

Susie Longdell,

Editor

Editor: Autumn Harvest

JOHN Keats’ description of autumn as the season of “mellow fruitfulness” is very apt. Harvesting fruit and vegetables reaches a peak and great food growers like Cath Dunsford and Karin Meissenburg (page 12) are setting surplus crops aside to last through winter.

Andrew Maloy has veggie storage tips (page 28) and Marilyn Wightman some tomato recipes (page 30) to help us with this.

Great poet though he was, Keats didn’t get it all right in his famous ode To Autumn. Autumn is also a time of new growth and beginnings.

To be fair, he was writing in Britain where winter is colder and darker: London is much closer to the North Pole than Invercargill is to the South Pole. But even there most plants, apart from summer-active annuals, have a growth spurt, many bulbs kick start back to life and in nature some seeds germinate.

No wonder then autumn is the best time to plant many garden treasures here. It’s a busy time in the food garden too if we want crops in six months – our veggie gardening team has tips on what to plant now around the country (page 38).

For a break, visit the biggest floral art event of the year. From April 9 – 11, FloravisioNZ 2010 in Wanganui provides a once-every-five-years spectacle of exhibitions by New Zealand clubs, areas and individuals, plus the three-yearly National Designer of the Year competition. We have the official programme inside this issue. Hope to see you there.

Happy gardening.

Susie Longdell,

Editor.