Neighbours Day - next Saturday!

We are holding another Neighbours Day down in the garden next Saturday. Please come along!
I am excited because if we get enough Riverparkers (my street) we can challenge the Woodsiders (the neighbours through the park) to a tug of war.

And quite possibly we will have our  pop-up library fridge soon too, so we can have storytime...all the time!

Also if you like sausages you welcome we aren't fundraising this time it's all free.

Am not sure about those magic rocks though. Do they work? I've never had a magic rock. Anyway will find out on Saturday. Be there or be square.

What to do with clay soil

Answer - make pots.

This is what one man did up at Matakana and became the famous Morris and James Pottery. We toured the factory and marvelled at the giant pots that are featured in every high end gift department of the garden centre. I do have a piece of Morris and James myself without realising it - the glazed pukeko garden ornament my brother gave me one Christmas.

Not to give away any trade secrets - go have a look for yourself, but making something useful and beautiful out of mud and clay is inspiring. I then went on to investigate further reading a biography of Ant Morris 'The Mud and Colour Man'. It turns out he's retired although still living on site and others have taken over the business, but he's now on a spiritual quest and making a mud brick non denominational chapel.

Another interesting thing about Matakana is the village plantings. There's a stairway leading down toward the Farmer's Market that has a flowing water feature down to the river. It's planted with begonias and mondo, then there's camellias and ligularias, down to irises and goldfish at the bottom. It's a very classy streetscape and well maintained. Even though the cinema is a bit of a fleapit, the brilliant village bookstore makes up for it. Then they have a deli, various sculpture/art galleries, floral shop, gift shop, a tramway cafe, and further down the road, the Four Square and some surfie shops.
Even a garden centre by the name of 'Tumbleweeds' which I couldn't resist checking out, although again mum henpecked me as soon as she heard I was enquiring about plants.

We weren't there on Saturday to check out the famous Farmer's Market where Auckland foodies flock to find fresh organic produce, but we found Charlies' Gelato garden for yummy gelatos, bought cases of grape juice from Heron's Flight winery, and stopped off at Puhoi on the way back home for some beautiful handcrafted cheese. The tiny Puhoi library is always nice to visit too.

Then it was home sweet home and back to work. I decide my job description isn't just 'gardener' anymore. When people ask what I do, I am going to say 'Keeping New Zealand Beautiful'.

Up to Matakana

First stop at Matakana was a cliffside garden called Omaio which sadly we did not stay in but you can - it's a bed and breakfast log cabin and a perfect hideaway place amongst the bush. Liz tells us when she first arrived the property was nothing but paddock and a few trees. Well 12 years later it's a lush, secret nook with towering manuka, kowhai, puriri, totara and kauri trees. You walk along mulched paths amongst the ferns, clivias, ligularias, bergenias and hydrangeas, along Jane's Lane  and come out to Johny's Deck overlooking the Tawharahui Peninsula. Further on deeper into the forest you come across some giant footprints...but don't be alarmed it's only Big Bird aka NZ's giant moa. She won't eat you because she's made of driftwood and quite petrified already. She's guarding a nest of eggs that look like they haven't been hatched yet though...

Omaio means peace and tranquility and I certainly get the relaxed atmosphere of the place. There's a tennis court for leisure and an outdoor fireplace for cosy get togethers, planted with rosemary and bay trees and greenery. The view to the harbour is stunning. It's not a contrived garden, it's very naturalistic and you would think it's been here for years. Some of it's actually a bit wild with all the native pongas and cabbage trees and kawakawa but the bush has all been carefully planted. It certainly deserves the five stars as a Garden of National Significance as well as the talented gardener who created it.

A very different garden we saw is the Sculptureum, although here the garden takes second place to the sculptures, of which there are over 400 of them. For example, in most people's gardens they would be careful to kill their snails. But this one features giant pink snails. I am rather disturbed by it but the sculptor must have loved or worshipped snails? There was no trail of slime to indicate that the garden had snails but it could explain why, the only plants in this garden seemed to be mondo grass and nikau palms. They must have eaten everything else in their path.

I was impressed with the sheer variety of sculptures, but also rather puzzled about the Steve Job garden. Yes there was a garden dedicated to Steve Jobs. It consisted of panels of quotations from Steve Jobs amongst some wisteria. I don't remember any of the quotations as there were like a hundred of them and I could have just read his autobiography instead. Perhaps lying in a hammock in another garden. It could have had some apple trees. Perhaps. But I don't think it occurred to the creators to plant apple trees in a garden dedicated to Steve Jobs.

It had a rather nice restaurant though. The sculptures were mostly of animals, but I noted, no cats. There were rabbits, and birds, in enclosures and there were rabbits and birds sculptures too (the sculptures were not enclosed). There was also a giant dandelion made of yellow buckets.
I am not sure what to make of it as a garden. As a collection of giant toys, maybe. It did have giant lego blocks. Walking around the place does make you feel like the owner is showing off his collection and I got the same feeling I get when my neighbour tells me he has over 100 teddy bears and when he goes to the market he only limits himself to five books and dvds at a time, must cut back. Then the next time he writes he tells me he went again and got five more.

I don't tell him that, I am not counting the number of books he buys each week and the public library lets you have 35 books at one time and if you have more than that you are either a crazy readaholic or need to get out more. Good luck carrying 35 books in your library bag.

But I suppose this interests some people that I bought such and such a plant and planted it here, but I haven't gone so far as to label everything so others know what it is. I have an aversion to such labels proclaiming this plant is such and such and cost this much because then your garden just looks like a copy of a retail store.

Anyway...more on Matakana in the next post.

Apologies

I have decided to head to Kings today and bite the bullet and buy some plants for my garden.

I am going to buy

Purple sage
Lemon verbena
Primulas
Soil
Bulbs

My garden needs some love and to fill in bare patches under the maple tree.. Hopefully mum won't notice that I'm putting in more plants. Bulbs will be my friend as you can't see them when you secretly put them in at first, and even if Martha flicks them out they can be replanted.

I have fed my lemon tree and cleared some growth away and mulched it with seaweed I picked up from the beach. I've moved some swan plants that are seeding around. Otherwise I haven't done too much this week and need to get cracking.

One thing I need to get on to is this church garden. I'm thinking I may have to give up the community garden and any meetings this year to work on it. Everytime I turn around it's like come have another meeting about it and I am exhausted. Personally am not a fan of meetings, because nothing gets done in them. One person (usually the loudest) tends to talk all the time and I am sitting there falling asleep or my tummy is growling.  This happened at the library too where I had the misfortune to work on Wednesdays when it was always meeting time in the mornings, everyone had to attend and it sometimes took two hours to have a meeting where nobody did anything but talked and I could have been reading books. You would think librarians would be talking about books they had read too but no it was usually about petty stuff like who had the key to the toilet and what we had to tell the customers (never readers - people who go the library are apparently customers) or Health and Safety regulations.
 I want meetings to be 15 minutes - 30 minutes tops. I mean can't we just all have lunch or dinner together and talk over any stuff then. Or you could have silent meetings like the Quakers did and just let God speak for once.

They say you meant to keep minutes of the meetings so why do they always take hours? I propose we take seconds instead of minutes. I once worked in the council archives and there were boxes and boxes of council meeting minutes on retractable shelves. It was the most boring job ever and hardly anybody ever looked at the minutes of these meetings that were kept for years and years, taking up entire rooms of council buildings. We also had to keep all the  records of all the transactions at the library in case one auditor came along and could check to see whether our till did not balance. I never saw this auditor person but if he or she wants all the receipts and till rolls from ten years ago well they are welcome to store them in their own house.

At work they have some gardening archives and while it was kind of interesting to see what they did or planned in the past they had ten different gardeners come and go and everytime they came they changed something anyway. But what matters is now. Can't they just write a blog?

The good thing about being a solo gardener is you can just not have any meetings at all and just get on with stuff. Also it means when you do something in secret when spring comes everyone will be presently surprised. I don't think anyone will care that you planned to have 62 daffodils in that clump and how much it all cost and had a meeting about it. I suppose some people are bean counters but that has never been my style.  God knows every hair on my head that's good I don't need to count them myself because the results speak for themselves.

More gardens to visit

My bucket list overfloweth.

There are so many gardens I need to visit before I die.  Am I just checking them out for   potential burial sites? Hmm which one is the best to lay my weary bones? The other night I checked out Sissinghurst, well, on DVD. Sissinghurst is a castle garden extraordinaire. But it's all the way in merry olde Englande, Kent to be precise. I think that is a bit far to go, personally.

There are some a bit more closer to home. In' The Gardener's Garden' book which lists over a hundred different gardens from all over the world, six from New Zealand made the list -

Ayrlies, Whitford, Auckland.
Pukeiti Gardens, New Plymouth, Taranaki
Barewood Garden, Awatere Valley, Marlborough
Ohinetani, Lyttleton, Canterbury
Blair Garden near Queenstown
Larnach Castle, Dunedin

I have been to both Ayrlies and Larnach Castle Garden. I thought about maybe buying my own castle and creating a garden, like Sissinghurst but unfortunately, Larnach is the only castle in NZ and has already been bought. Apparently all the heirs ran away when the King of the Castle, Sir Larnach committed adultery and suicide. Bad luck...

I am hoping I will have the opportunity to visit some gardens in Taranaki this year. The New Zealand Gardens Trust is holding its conference there in April. So fingers crossed I may get to go. If so will get to see Pukeiti, Hollards Garden, Tupare, Te Kaingi Maire plus many others of five star National Siginificance as the whole place is like a garden.

Other gardens on the to visit list this year include -
Twin Lakes, Coatesville
Auckland Botanic Gardens, Manuwera
Fernglen, North Shore
Omai, near Matakana

My subscription to NZ Gardener is due. The magazine features a lot of amazing NZ gardens so might have to renew it for another two years. I still read all the back issues searching for gems and inspiration.

My coriander seeds have sprouted in the new corner bed and I have put in some pink chrysanthemums I won at the floral circle raffle, tweedia seeds, and marigolds amongst the plumbago and sweet corn. My pumpkin has decided to climb up the garage and is heading toward the washing line.

Mum says she wants the pumpkin to grow in my bed. Am thinking if mum makes any more smart comments like that she is very welcome to move into the nearest retirement village and wash her hands of any garden. I think she will be in her element because then she can complain all she wants. When the residents do that what we do is just put on our earmuffs (or ear defenders, as others call them) and mow the lawn. Sorry I can't hear you, am busy mowing the lawn since you can't/won't do it anymore.  What was that?!

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The op shop beckoned with more gardening books, I found one called 'The City Gardener' by this bloke by the name of Matt James. The city garden in question seems to be one of those grimy industrial ones in England with plots the size of a handkerchief, flat as pancakes and surrounded by bricks.

What can I do with my 300 square metre plot that gets no sun, (because England is always cloudy and miserable), acid rain, and lashings of beer and vomit each weekend? Well Matt James works his miracle plant powers and suggests to get thee to a plant nursery and buy a new garden, whilst coercing your mates to dig up the plot and start planting right away. Anything is better than staring at four corners of a weed infested and bottle strewn backyard.

One chapter of his book is called 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. These are not weed species but popular  plants that you can buy in the garden centre. It seems Matt has firm opinions on certain plants. Well so have I.  So here's my list.

The Good
Olive tree
 The Olive tree will last hundreds, if not a thousand years, fruits, with evergreen leaves. No need to prune and the more it ages the better it looks. Provides shade and shelter, but without being too thick or obstructive. The wood can also be used and has a beautiful grain. You can harvest oil from the fruits, if you plant hundreds of them. Also they can make a good hedge.

Kowhai
NZ's national icon brings in tuis and gorgeous yellow pendulous flowers in the spring. An ideal street tree with lacy graceful leaves.

Lamb's ears
Fluffy leaves that are soft to touch, makes an excellent easy groundcover. The flower spikes last for floral displays.

The Bad
Choisya Ternata aka Mexican Orange Blossom
It can look ok in the right place but the leaves smells like cat pee. In the wrong place shrivels up and dies. Called a filler plant because it fills the gap.

Dietes aka African Iris
Agapanthus supposedly classier sister plant which is also tough and self seeds readily, but clumps of it are now taking over Auckland. I am waiting for someone to have the bright idea of making dietes baskets out of their leaves like flax as we have way too much of it and everywhere is starting to look like Pak N Save carpark.

Conifers
Big blocky plants that would have looked alright in an Italian countryside garden, but ridiculous in suburban Auckland. Also seems to kill/deprive all other plants around it. I've seen these plants wrapped with wires because they get too fat, or chopped in half, and I remember we had two planted outside our doorway once that ended up blocking the entrance to our stately brick shotgun home.

Eugenia aka Lilly Pilly
Gets an awful bug called psyllid that makes the leaves all bumpy, which means you will constantly have to trim and spray it. Unless you rip out every infested plant, you are stuck with it.

The Ugly

Yucca.
Yucky pointy plants, need I say more.

Roses
When they are not in flower, they are just prickly ugly plants. And if they have no scent, what's the point? Also gets black spot, scale, and aphids. Plus the canes are always dying back after flowering and you will be forever spraying and pruning, till you or the plant dies, whichever is first.

Agaves
This turns into a monster that looks like a mean octopus with spikes on the ends of it's tentacles. Please don't plant this anywhere.

On that note, I'm turning in for the night and not thinking about gardening. I wish people would only plant good plants, not evil ones. It just makes more work for me pulling them all out. Nobody else is going to do it. I want to concentrate on nurturing good plants.  Remember you may plant and I may water, but God gives the growth.