nz – kōwhai

Rain dance

May 13, 2022May 14, 2022 futonbleu2 Comments

This is the first year I can remember getting excited about the end of summer, and being happy to see rain in the forecast. Autumn means tree planting! We’ve had a dry few weeks but have finally been gifted a decent downpour, and – hopefully not too early – I’ve been out with the spade.

We have a nice tree lineup at the front now: ngaio, tītoki, the existing pigeonwood, and a mountain horopito. I’m just back from a West Coast trip where the horopito was a warm chromatic contrast to the evergreen bush. I usually try and plant Wellingtonian natives, but I’ve quietly forgotten the rule for this new favourite.

The bank we’ve named “Monkey’s Fernery” now has a prickly shield fern, a kiokio and a little prostrate hebe. I’ve also tucked in a northern rātā sapling amongst the bigger trees, which may not be my smartest idea if it shoots to the clouds. There are a fair few in the Orongorongo Valley that would loom large over our little house.

Just in front of our fenceline, two kaikōmako/bellbird trees and a pair of small kōwhai are now braving a relentlessly weedy spot on top of the rocky road reserve bank. Good luck to them. Let’s hope at least half of the new plantings survive their first winter.

Pretty, bad

January 5, 2022January 5, 2022 futonbleu1 Comment

Some garden invaders advertise themselves with spines and thorns, clearly a foe. Others throw you off the scent with flowers.

Our first attractive interloper was Japanese honeysuckle. The white and yellow flowers popped up over our back fence, and it had successfully scaled the tree next to it. From our window, I saw the same little flowers peek out of other treetops. This clambering scamp is vigorous enough to cause canopy collapse, smothering everything in its path as it climbs towards the light. I removed an incredible tangle of it, with the rest turning autumnal colours after my snipping and stump painting.

We also had a lovely/terrible stand of Montbretia, which quietly existed as a broad grass all year but suddenly announced itself with a flurry of orange flowers in early January. It’s probably the best-looking weed we’ve got (sorry, agapanthus) and there were some protests when I started plucking it out from around one of the feijoas. There are a few dozen on the bank down to the street and they seem to spread like wildfire, so I doubt we’ll ever be short of the blazing blooms.

In bloom

November 25, 2021 futonbleuLeave a comment

I returned from a few weeks away to a garden on fast-forward. Convolvulus snaking everywhere, tradescantia multiplying and little cherry seedlings popping up. Agapanthus, my nemesis, is in flower and I want to snip the top of every one I see. Bright yellow broom is threatening to explode seed pods at any moment. There are about ten thousand daisies in the lawn but they can stay.

Is it a coincidence that most of the thriving plants were not planted by me? All the Rs are out: renga renga, rhododendrons, roses. Some small successes of ours along the path though: the manuka and little pratia alba have both managed a flurry of white flowers.

Catch the pigeon

October 21, 2021October 21, 2021 futonbleu1 Comment

After months of frantic digging and colourful language, nearly all of the agapanthus are gone. Their monstrous roots have filled two garden bins a week since midwinter, wheeled gingerly down the path and then humped up the kerb.

Their final domain at the front of the garden was mostly on top of a giant weed mat, which made extracting the last few slightly easier. It also meant the soil underneath the mat hadn’t seen the sunlight or a falling leaf for many years, and it’s the most leaden and slippery of all the clay soil we have.

Bravely taking on these difficult conditions is a single pigeonwood (Hedycarya arborea), a lure to attract more cooing kererū to our garden. The oval orange berries are a pigeon delicacy. We’ve also planted a quartet of Muehlenbeckia astonii/shrubby tororaro, a tangly shrub with heart-shaped leaves, hoping optimistically that they will romance each other and combine into a hedge.

Sprung

October 12, 2021October 12, 2021 futonbleu1 Comment

Popping up not long after the daffodils, a native sign of NZ spring is the puawānanga (clematis paniculata). Along our street, the vine climbs mānuka branches to vye for sunlight, the trees crowned with white flowers.

Puawānanga was said to be the child of the stars Puanga (Rigel in Orion) and Rehua (Antares in Scorpio). In some traditions, the appearance of Puanga signalled winter and Rehua summer – puawānanga trees flowered in the months between them.
Te Ara

The cherry tree above the jungly bank blossomed spectacularly until the wind blasted through this week, scattering confetti across the deck. We also made a nocturnal journey to Kaitoke to see illuminated blooms.

Sprocket now knows being instructed “sit” usually means he’s near a good plant and will be starring in yet another botanical portrait. This month he’s been posing next to golden kōwhai flowers at the Botanic Gardens and crimson rātā at Ōtari.

Piggyback

September 12, 2021September 12, 2021 futonbleuLeave a comment

My main gardening talent is destroying things, and I thought I’d found a weedy fern to aim my saw at. The plant app told me I had a holly fern, but I flipped the leaf and found stripes rather than dots on the back. A spleenwort! Shining spleenwort/huruhuruwhenua (Asplenium oblongifolium), a glossy native fern.

On my last trip up the rope ladder, I’d seen it on the jungly bank too. It’s growing in the boughs of a māhoe tree as an epiphyte – a plant that grows on another plant, but takes no nutrients from the tree itself. Elevated off the ground, there’s a little clump of fronds unfurling.

Ascent

September 7, 2021September 7, 2021 futonbleu2 Comments

On my first explore, I scrambled to the top of our jungly bank like a mountain goat. The trip down, however, was completed almost entirely on my backside.

There’s now a blue rope ladder to help with the journey in both directions. It feels top secret – you part the massive māmaku fern fronds and crawl up a chute beneath the trees.

I cleared a vast carpet of tradescantia from the top, plus some holly, barberry and ivy. Another invader is fairy crassula, a South African import with round succulent leaves.

Just around the corner we have the perfect weed! fairy crassula (Crassula multicava) frm #SouthAfrica. It is resistant to droughts, low temperature, shade & propagates by cuttings! Oldest specimen @Te_Papa dates frm 1978 found in #Seatoun #UrbanWeeds #NZlockdown2021 #conservation pic.twitter.com/eigf0pckwk
— Botany Curator (@CarlosLehnebach) August 31, 2021

High on the bank I also found a couple of small houhere/lacebark trees. The serrated leaves looked like trouble to me, but it’s not a nettle. The leaves are quite wide, so I think it’s a northern NZ Hoheria populnea rather than the Wellington native Hoheria sexstylosa.

In the past Māori twisted and plaited the outer bark of houhere to create ropes. Perhaps my next rope ladder can be a home-grown creation?

Paper

August 24, 2021 futonbleu1 Comment

There’s a small tree with big marbled leaves on our jungly bank, which I’ve learnt is the NZ native rangiora (Brachyglottis repanda).

The big papery leaves have a furry white underside, which is apparently pretty reasonable for writing a letter on, or a luxurious option for wiping your backside (they are nicknamed “bushman’s toilet paper”). They’re not so helpful at the start of the digestive journey, being fairly toxic if you happen to eat one. Honey made with rangiora nectar is also poisonous, so I’ll keep redirecting bees towards my pair of mānuka.

We have about half a dozen rangiora scattered on the bank, some up to 2m tall. The lower ones are now trimmed to keep them out of dog’s reach, so he can focus his efforts on digging up ferns and jumping on top of my new kōwhai.

Let it snow

August 22, 2021August 22, 2021 futonbleu1 Comment

The first weekend of NZ lockdown left plenty of time to annihilate the last of the path-lining agapanthus. I swapped tools from the spade to the grubber, swinging satisfyingly into the remaining clumps. The final set of roots was a the most tenacious—a multi-headed Hydra that needed dividing into two just to lift out of the ground.

After raking the root remnants, we planted two ‘Snow Flurry‘ mānuka/tea tree (leptospermum scoparium). They’re often chosen for making honey, but with a pair of trees sadly we may only sustain one bee. We chose it for its ability to thrive in dubious soil, and the clay here looked pretty intent on ruining anything I planted. Go, little mānuka, go.

We bark mulched, laid some rocks at the edge, and cleared the old drain alongside the path. It looks… good? I’m proud and a bit surprised at our efforts. Sprocket hasn’t even tried to excavate it all yet.