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Lilies from the garden

4/2/2022

 
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Blackthorn Rose Review: Chartreuse de Parme

11/2/2021

 
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When all things are truly considered, there are actually very few roses that merit a featured position in any mixed garden.  That's quite a sad admission after so many centuries of fervent breeding and distribution.  Our Zone 9 location offers no earthly challenges to any damn rose; no gophers, exotic attack beetles, frost heaving, desert summers or blue-titty blizzards- nothing.  And yet, when browsing my photo files for new review candidates I'm always struck both by the number of plants we've consigned to steamy decay on our half-sentient pile and the many that have simply popped their simpering clogs for no particular reason.   
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Unless you're prepared to endlessly spray and surfeit them, roses often suck.  Which is why I always pay attention when one stands out, aesthetically and constitutionally.  Chartreuse de Parme is just such a paragon, a classic, high-end hybrid tea that is both aristocratic and tough; a veritable dragon in the garden.  The magenta-averse may be getting the vapours at this point because CdP is the kween of the naughtily vibrant blue-pinks and you may associate this colour with bad taste; I would agree that it can be horrific in the wrong situ, but just breathe now and remember that some things are more than the sum of their parts.

Chartreuse de Parme was born in 1996 in the famous Delbard nursery.  Those people know what the fuck they are doing.  In a previous review I insisted one should choose a rose with at least a couple of well-known stars in their genetic background, but then CdP comes along with a bonkers ancestry to poop all over that cosy theory.  You won't be shocked to discover one of its parents is the very lovely Nuit d'Orient, or, as we say down here while scratching our balls, Big Purple, a highly-perfumed stunner that only made it a few years in our yard.  The blooms and rich fragrance are reminiscent of that pretty little fella, if more classically pink.  
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Ancestry-wise, the deep red Charles Mallerin and pink Yves Piaget have their own striking qualities but the grandparent Peace is probably the main source of CdP's best bits, given that few of its other antecedents are spectacularly distinguished.  This rose somehow squeezed every last drop of greatness from that Mendelian lottery.  Golf clap!

Chartreuse de Parme is an arresting rose with a decidedly haughty carriage and a generous growth habit, standing boldly upright on stout canes with enough dark, glossy foliage to balance that pose and provide a backdrop to blooms that are held clear on lengthy and gratifyingly butch stems.  Here it grows to a good 1.5 x 1m wide, well beyond the '90cm' indicated on the label, though doesn't aspire to much more so you won't need a chainsaw to keep it in check.  
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On this anonymous rootstock it is a good doer, tolerating considerable interference from underplanting and general shovel intrusion.  This is especially praiseworthy because high-quality flower producers are usually hungry, thirsty and fussy about setbacks.  I don't think our CdP has ever lost a main cane or aborted a flower cycle in spite of these insults, nor have I seen it defoliate with rust or blackspot, our two main aggressors.  So two thumbs up for health. ​
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But let's face it, no one plants Chartreuse de Parme for its rude health or admirable posture.  Rose fanciers are flower sluts and this one comes through with a cyclic sufficiency of tough, slightly leathery, classic tea rose blooms in an intense, hypnotic blue magenta with a slightly silvered reverse (please note the camera exaggerates this phenomenon, especially in the above and below pics).  That pleasing sculptural form and glowing colour withstand rain unscathed, remaining almost supernaturally clean.  This is super-important in a maritime climate.  CdP is a standout cut flower both in the vase and as the star of a bouquet, lasting well and playing nice with a lot of other flowers.
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 You may hesitate to expect more and yet there is a definite and respectable perfume, a medium-strength old-school tearose with a bit of dusty fruit and that cool unplaceable note that is possibly unique to this class.  Sawn blonde wood?  Crushed leaves?  Aged pot pourri?  The scent lasts pretty well and can sweeten up in the vase but lacks a wee bit of silage, if I'm going to pick any nits.

Does CdP suck in any respect?  Not really.  It can sometimes be a bit bloom-shy in the first spring cycle for me despite full sun.  There might be an extended lull between flushes, understandable given the biological cost of such quality flowers.  And like many five-star prospects, Chartreuse de Parme is congenitally unsuited to sitting quietly in the landscape.  It will stand out like dogs’ bollocks unless provided with similarly flamboyant companions, so don’t plant it thinking it will somehow magically calm the fuck down if you throw enough gypsophila at it.  Give her red and lime euphorbias and delphiniums and those giant African lobelias to hang with.  CdP's surreal circus beauty is no clown show and deserves pride of place.

Want More?  Clickety click for more Rose Reviews


The Titan Arum, Amorphophallus titanum, in bloom at the Dunedin Bot Gardens

9/2/2021

 
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Thanks to Jo for the phone pics.  We had to wait in a sweaty line full of students to view this vegetal hulk and convey its magnificence to you, constant readers.
 
​YOU'RE WELCOME.

The Bicácaro- Canarina canariensis

7/9/2020

 
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Personally, I fucking loathe most campanulas, those dirty ship rats of the perennial world, but don't let that prompt you to dismiss C canariensis.  It displays none of its obnoxious family's shitty proclivities and abundantly rewards a bit of consideration, which is more than we can probably say for most our own relatives.  There seems to be some confusion around this genera with some peeps' canariensis looking suspiciously like C eminii, a similar African species, but who knows?  One is as nice as the other.

Mine is around three years out from ye olde tiny seedling stage and this is its first flowering, hence my excitement.  

In its native islands, canariensis lolls about as an understory plant in remnant forest up to 1000m elevation, draping itself over other vegetation in an attitude of endearing vegetal sluttiness that should earn it a place in any garden.  A scandent creature rather than a true twining climber, you can send it up or down, over wire or hanging from a basket and I intend to do the latter with this plant now that it has attained a decent size.
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I bought my Canarina from a local weird plant lady on a whim because Canary Island plants tend to do well here in our introverted little microclimate, they are often endangered in their native range and because the flowers are insanely beautiful.  You can see something of its Campanulaceae heritage in the shape of that pendant bell and delicate foliage, if not the plant's habit or marmalade palette. 
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C canariensis is a bit of a seasonal contrarian in that it dries out and retreats back into corky, dahlia-like tubers just below the soil surface in early summer, sitting out the stinging UV of our hotter months and reemerging in autumn.   ​Here the flower appears in early spring and can continue for a while until edible fruits occur, a prospect I hardly dare hope for.

In lieu of any specific advice about soil needs, I stuck mine in a 50/50 blend of rose mix and coarse pumice, guessing from its forest-slope origin that a relatively open, well-drained but humusy medium was called for.  It gets a good watering about once a week while in growth, and bugger-all over summer when dormant, so it's not particularly high maintenance.

While I have found most plants hardier than conventional wisdom allows I really would not roll the frosty dice and leave this fleshy guy out over night in any sort of high winds or winter.  The stems are hollow and easily munted.   Mine sits outside with my Aloes and has probably experienced close to freezing under a polycarbonate verandah, but any direct icing would turn it to sludge in fairly short order.  Too hot is no good either; C canariensis will apparently decline if your summers inflict extended temps over 25 C.  

Well shit, that makes two of us.
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Other Vegetative Glories because Plants don't Talk Shit or Cough On You in the Supermarket


Arisaema flavens

2/2/2020

 
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I haven't had this species long so I can't really comment as to its ease of cultivation and durability, but I thought I'd post some clear pics of this nice little group of young bulbs as it emerged in early summer.  As mentioned before, I had lost a bunch of Arisaemas after planting them out without pondering our soggy winters; they went off to plant heaven soon after that fateful day so maybe don't plant them out unless they're protected by a dry, snowy winter or tree cover that will keep them from rotting.
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To provide some perspective, this flower is about as large as my thumbnail, but it is full of intriguing, lizardy detail- veiny striations, an almost furtive little hood and pale, waxen spadix.  The lemon yellow in the spathe curls around a smoky umber throat.

Arisaema flavens is a variable species/cluster that originates from an enormous range stretching from Ethiopia to Sichuan, so you may not be shocked to hear it has a bulletproof reputation and is probably a good and inexpensive candidate for the cobra lily novice.  I keep mine in a dry bark-heavy mix under cover over winter and put them out in late spring to wake up and catch the rain, but they're staying potted.  Arisaemas are forest creatures, by and large, so don't bake them in the sun as maltreatment will cause the bulbs to dwindle over time.  Some are invasive and you should check out their weed potential in your area before unleashing them on your unsuspecting biome.  Most are perfectly benign, though.  

Some of the rarer, trendy species are fuuuucking expensive.  I don't suggest you start with those guys since attrition can be frustratingly high before you find your cultural footing.  This site is a great, unpretentious resource for the enthusiast.
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Late Spring '19: General Garden Business

6/12/2019

 
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We can't afford to smash a bottle of champagne against the prow of our new porch to declare it officially open, so just imagine video hos twerking in a semicircle to celebrate the occasion.

Unlike those other bloggy people who pretend they love working together as part of their particular romantic coupley brand, R and I usually end up at each others' throats in the course of practical projects, due to our shall we say conflicting modi.  I am proud to report that nobody died during this one, but I feel it was more of a fluke than personal progress.  I'm sure plenty of people still got to hear me losing my shit at crucial moments as they walked their dogs past the site.

This structure was necessary due to a month of downpours and high winds robbing us of our treasured purple bird plum, which provided shelter to this spot before keeling over toward the house one morning during a gale, almost taking the aviary with it.  It was gut-wrenching to have to cut it down and we will miss the yearly blossom spectacle horribly.  
Neither I nor our textile collection can stand much UV beaming directly into the house so this newly naked northern aspect needed something to replace the plum's generous shade.  As a bonus, I now have a place to house the cacti and aloe oveflow from elsewhere as everything gets bigger.  

​You don't really think about that as you're amassing a collection of tiny little baby plants; the Aloe alooides in the centre of the above image used to fit in the palm of my hand.  Now it could scoop the brains from ten craniums at once with its monstrous extremities, if it were so inclined.  If you want to save yourself some hard choices, be wiser than me- take a rational moment in the midst of your compulsive acquisition to wonder about ultimate sizes and where all that arrant vegetation is going to live, long-term.  

Half an acre and a knack for building awkward polycarbonate structures mean I can flip moderation the bird for a few more years.  Here are some of the fruits of those happenings.
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Various Rebutias, Lobivias and Sulcorebutias.  I cannot be arsed trying to keep up with their highly mutable taxonomic nomenclature so they remain 'that purple/orange/yellow one' to me.  Most are easy to both both acquire and cultivate, so if you're looking to get into cacti, you might as well start with these guys.  The flowers are gorgeous and reliable, often repeating throughout the summer months.  The pale crustiness you see on a few is supposedly spider mite damage, but it doesn't seem to affect them too much and we are anti-spray, except in the case of losing a valuable plant I couldn't replace (it hasn't happened yet).  Mealy bugs are their worst enemies.  I squish the bigger ones with tiny twigs and blast them off with a hose or camera-blower thingy.
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The incredibly luscious, neon-emerald velveteen of Tibouchina 'Moonstruck's foliage.  I planted the darker purple variety out last year but it shit itself over winter, so I'll keep this guy potted.  Tibouchinas are super-draggy in flower but I don't accept that there's such a thing as bad-taste plants.
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Below: the lovely silver and indigo stylings of Salvia discolor.  It's a brittle, slightly awkward plant but the near-perpetual flowering and scent of blackcurrant cordial pleases me greatly.
With the newish potted garden out the front of the house, I've been getting into Salvia in a big fucking way.  These are a selection of the earliest flowering wee jamensis  and microphylla hybrids; there are red and yellow varieties just coming on.  I have other larger species, including the obscenely green involcruta below left, but they're generally more of a midsummer-autumn thing. 
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Ambridge Rose: one of the pretty bloody wimpy DA roses I've rescued from very moderate competition in the general garden.  Its revival from a single cane is more tribute to the quality of the graft than the plant itself.  I persist with this variety because the colour is lovely and the scent is a truely delicious hardcore myrrh.  Wish I knew how to quit you.
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Metrosideros 'Springfire', a nice little hybrid (?) Pohutukawa from somewhere in the general Pacific; I can't be more specific because every single fucking nursery claims it is something different, ranging from a true dwarf species to a hybrid larger tree.  I'm not even sure this is Springfire since it seems to have lost most of its leafular waviness, but I'm enjoying the dangerous volume of that orange and the prospect of extended summer flowering.  Bellbirds skulk around it furtively, defying my presence to get at the early nectar.  We sincerely hope Myrtle Rust doesn't make it this far south and wipe out all our fantastic Myrtaceae specimens, as it has done in Australia.

Notice the ye olde wrought iron fence panel in the background- that's new too.  We bought some online a while back that looked like they were probably yoinked out of some Victorian grave somewhere and painted them up to put up along the front garden.  Hot tip: paint your rusty iron panels before you attach them to a fence over a 15 foot drop.
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The very gratifying Urospermum dalechampii, the Golden Fleece Daisy.  The foliage is dandylionsque and the leaves you see at right belong to an unrelated nearby sage.  It's supposedly a pest in some places but guess how many shits I give.

Below: much excite-, the slow unfurling of Arisaema speciosa, the Beautiful Arisaema.  After getting a bit too fucking optimistic and planting out the Aroids I had amassed, then losing the poor little buggers to our wet winters, I decided to try again and stick to pot culture.  This guy is the first one up.  I will post more pics when the other species do something interesting.
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Roses  *   Succulents   *   General Pics


Photos du Jour: Misc Spring Scenes

24/11/2019

 
Driveway daisies (we don't drive)
Evaporation haze over Sawyers Bay
Rebutia albispinosa OR helilosa OR senilis, too tired to look it up right now. 
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Yes I know the blog has been somewhat okay very slow of late; that is because I am writing the next book a lot, and R and I are building stuff around the house, renovating the aviary, repotting my entire succulent collection (I am not talking about 5 little cacti on the windowsill, I'm talking epic triffid battles x 100), cleaning up the shitty area behind the kitchen, weeding and planting the whole garden, doing guest laundry, clearing out a tree that fell over and trying to find the right box dye shade for my new hair and it's all very fucking exhausting.  It's also rained every day for about 2 months and that has severely compromised our general flow.  We're almost on top of it, just the front fence to rip out and replace and that should be it for the major hard labour projects so shit should pick up in a week or so.

​Thank you for your patience, constant readers.  


Photos du Jour: Bromeliad Quesnelia liboniala in flower

28/8/2019

 
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Sorry I h

20/8/2019

 
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aven't been posting much lately but I am gummed up with litres of intransigent phlegm and am thusly curtailed.  And it's just been a really uninspiring arse-end of winter/not-quite-spring general bullshitty phase complete with bad light.  
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In better news, I had despaired at ever raising an Aloe thraskii past that weird wimpy juvenile stage, when all along I was doing just that in the form of this Nameless Tree Aloe #3, which has favoured us with its first flower (above) and finally ID'd itself.

Boring winters always nudge me into hardcore plant acquisition and this one has landed us with a plethora of South American species; mucho Salvias, two Iochromas, Streptosolen >, some new Brugs, a couple of Cantuas; much excite to see how they perform in the burgeoning pot garden out front of the house.  
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I'm also pampering a Champaca in the hope I can get it past the frost susceptibility stage; most Himalayan biome species tend to do well here so all fingers crossed.  Will post more soon.

Hostile Witness Review Recommendations: Binged Mindhunter- did not love this second season.  It felt sloppy and laboured and exposed a few thespianic limitations (STFU, Agent Babyvoice).  Also, the subplot with the freaky kid felt tacky as fuck: just saying.  Season two of Succession is far more pleasing to the point of actual deliciousness, what with all that nipple-tweaking McKay DNA.  Tough out the fucking drip feed and try it.
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Photos du Jour: Firecracker / Candy Corn Vine, Manettia luteorubra

5/7/2019

 
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Syn. M bicolor, etc.  A bird pollinated coffee-relative from montane forest understory in Brazil.  It's easy here in coastal New Zealand, flowering spectacularly and pretty continuously, enjoying the same sort of conditions as the other not-strictly-tropical/upland forest South American plants in our collection.  

A lot of people seem to have trouble with this otherwise desirable group; in this mild maritime situation we have canopy shelter, temps mostly under 30C during summer and cooler nights.  So if you can modify your situation in this direction with shelter and shade, you might have success with flowering and general health.

This vine is supposedly hardy down to a soft Zone 8.  Its leaves are tender and spinachy though, so I wouldn't put it anywhere it cops wind, hail or more than a brief powder frost.  This one is potted and spending some time outside during winter to kill off the bugs that had scuttled over from a manky Hibiscus I'd put on a nearby windowsill.   Other than this minor issue, it's never given me any trouble, self-twining over a 6 foot bamboo tripod in one season even with a couple of major hack-backs.  The flower cover in these pics is relatively sparse compared to its usual performance as I had unfortunately hosed most of them off getting rid of the aphids.  The bellbirds are hanging around it already, looking for nectar.  I highly recommend this plant if you can find one.
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Blackthorn Rose Review: Glamis Castle (David Austin)

9/6/2019

 
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White is also far more aesthetically problematic than one might assume.  I mean, basics the world over have gone crazy planting swathes of Iceberg Rose along their post and rail driveways, but someone should have told them a lack of positive colour doesn't mean an easy fit in the landscape. 
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It's pronounced glahrms, apparently.  First, a semi-rambling word about white roses in general.  You can skip this bit if you just want the shit on Glamis Castle. 

White isn't my favourite colour and I'm not 100% enthusiastic about its stealthy creep into our garden, largely on the back of an increasing appreciation of older varieties.  I plant them in spite of all that tasteful pallor.

Genetically, colour in roses can be completely or incompletely dominant (i.e red + white can result in red, white or pink).  But with blanc featuring so heavily in the enormous Rosaceae family (roses, berries, apples etc.), you'd think it would be easy enough to breed a decent white rose.  Or that this embarrassment of ancestral riches should have endowed any offspring with the rustic health of those progenitors.  No.  

White is no guarantee of a quality plant. Wish I'd known that a couple of years back.
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White's warm/cool and pure/dirty variations can look fucking horrific within spitting distance of each other.  Check prospective tonalities against neighbouring plants before you dig the hole and achieve this outrage aux bonnes mœurs in your own demesne.

Despite the drawbacks, some people are all about a white rose, no matter what.  If you're one of them, you've probably been pointed in Glamis Castle's direction.  It's a David Austin baby from his middle period and I'll get to the significance of that later.
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Though of limited sillage, their scent is strong and ever-presentt; R always leans over them and says 'peanut butter'.  I would personally describe Glamis Castle's scent as a classic rose myrrh, serving a warm confusion of marzipan/almond notes, vintage suede, egg nog, touches of tonka, high violet and fresh elderflower.  You may detect a funkadelic leaning in this combination and you're dead right about that, so if myrrh gives you cat's bum face, Glamis Castle doesn't belong in your trolley.
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GC's flowers are a deeply-cupped and slightly ruffled joy, containing enough petals to provide that gracious vintage payoff without looking contrived, slutty or overstuffed.  They are a pretty neutral, saturated white, sort of like milk bottle jubes, rich and selfy, neither glaringly brilliant nor disappointingly dingey.  This wonder is probably achieved via the dense, matte texture of the petals, their substance producing a white that plays well with other hues, looking dirty alongside only the purest, coldest iterations of this same colour.  

​The flowers resist rain well, flopping slightly when hammered but they don't usually ball in our situation.  
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It springs from the loins of the yellow Graham Thomas, and Mary Rose, a tall pink that's usually a good doer, and from whence GC's lovely scent probably derives.  I grow both parents.  That beguiling white skipped a generation through the floriferous Mary Rose, which features The Friar and the surpassingly beauteous Ivory Fashion in her immediate lineage.
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And now for the negatives.  


Glamis Castle is an amazingly shitty plant, holistically speaking- a typical DA spotty herbert of the period.  It is puny and unsatisfying, mine clocking in at around 90cm after many years.  Half of that is rangy, leafless twig-leg, bristling with the sort of thorns that hole your clothes from the other side of the fucking garden.  

​I've pruned with its gawky frame in mind, trying to minimise the effect to no avail, and now I just basically dead-head and let it be its bad self.  The messy crown consists of smallish dark green leaves, remarkable only for their ability to explode utterly into rust/blackspotaggedon immediately upon leafing out at the end of winter.  
The top left pic is by no means the full measure of this unfortunate tendency.  GC is planted on its own in an area with great ventilation and extra fert etc., but still it poxes up like the fucking Toxic Avenger, hangs on to the offending foliage and joins forces with its nasty dad, Graham Thomas, in spraying plague around the garden.  I suspect them of rusting my garlic during bad years.  Behold its tangled, thorny fugliness below.
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And yet I do not kill it with fire.  I really should, because there's no excuse for harbouring manky hos like GC.  Luckily, most of my other plantings were selected for health and prosper in spite of this Patient Zero lurking in their midst.  

Like a dozen other David Austin shitbirds I could name, Glamis Castle survives on the basis of two things; paradoxical charisma and hardcore myrrh.  There it is, utterly ratchet but still blooming away a week out from the shortest day.  Its flowers are divine and quite plentifully supplied in spite of well, everything. They so beautifully reconcile the other colours in a nice fat bunch (see below).  And who can stop a myrrh freak from getting their taste?  We just never fucking learn.

Seriously, don't plant Glamis Castle. I wish I hadn't and will probably summon the impetus to bin it... one day.  It needs spraying to be at all presentable and no rose is worth contaminating our struggling biome with that garbage.  If you're determined to plonk it in your spray-free garden, you need to be sure your other roses/susceptible plants can weather the persistent disease burden.  But there are other, less problematic whites and strong myrrhs out there.
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All Tea, Half Shade: More Roses for your Noses


The Blackthorn Garden: Autumnal Potplant Action

30/4/2019

 
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You know your raver days are two fucking decades behind you when you start getting just as excited about incoming blooms as you once did about BPM, random sex and synthetic stimulants.  My stimulants are organic nowdays.  Autumn used to be a bit of a dud around here since we don't get great deciduous colour, being windy and maritime; all the summer flowers are fucked out and the aloes have yet to get their shit together.  

So I decided to establish a bit of a crazy pot farm in the front yard.  It covers the scabby concrete and tarmac patches, feeds the bees and pleases the eye with an array of exotic salvias and all the half-hardy beauties that might lose their roots in the clay.  It's getting more and more crowded as I get into all those mesoamerican sages and South African bird polinated thingies that do so well here.  Above: Aloe hoffmanii, first flowers I think tee hee!
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The first flowering on this exceptionally emerald green Aloe glauca clone.  I almost lost it a couple of years back to root rot after letting too many old leaves get manky around the base.  Don't do that.  
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Salvia splendens 'Giant Form' apparently tops 6 feet and the hot red variant certainly curb stomps the colour gamut in late afternoon sunlight.  Bought both the merlot and the scarlet versions; it was the right decision.
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Salvia involucrata  
​This head is only half-out but is already gratifying us with this intense candy blue-pink. I have several largely unnamed forms of this group and I love them unconditionally.  They become enormous here with our decent rain and pissweak-to-absent frosts.  The foliage is huge and plush.  You can hear the clickety clack of bumblebees sawing into the base of the flower to get at the nectar (they are bird pollinated in native situ I think).  Plant some today.
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Salvia fulgens 'Red Dragon', a tall, open bush with attractive corrugated leaves and nonstop fuzzy scarlet floral business.  Something, I suspect a Bellbird, comes along and snaps off half the damn heads trying to get at the nectar.
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Fuzzy.  Silky.
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If I had a dollar for every euphorbia I had going on, I'd have about $12.50.  The lazy gardener's main ho.  Can't remember the name of this cultivar, but it's from Marshwood Gardens in Invercargill.  Their online shop is like a tinny house for plant tragics.  Sheeeeeeiiiiit.  Peruse at your peril.
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Salvia sagittata supposedly but it looks like it might be a hybrid with something else.  The flowers and parts of the stem are an incredibly dense Afghan lapis blue, which is as much as you can ask of any given organism really.  Not quite out yet, but you get the picture.

Below: good old Salvia leucantha, which I only discovered a couple of years ago after encountering its luxurious, almost extraterrestrial plushness in the flesh at a garden centre.  

​​Always touch plants.  The tactile dimension is a whole nother thing.
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I always try to have some Dagga (Leonotis leonurus) going, even though this plant seems to labour under a curse in our garden, attracting all kinds of misfortune and mysterious fatalities.  I have a slightly disappointing creme version too, which unfortunately looks like used bogroll a lot of the time due to the unsightly off-whiteness of the bloomage so I might pass it on.  Dagga is supposed to be psychoactive but it looks  like it tastes like something you would do in your late teens because you couldn't get any real drugs.  So I haven't been tempted.  Give it a few more years.  I may well regress to vomiting sludgy decoctions in someone's backyard.  Lol.

The honey-seeking birds tend to give it a fucking hammering, which is why some things are better closer to the house where the avian contingent is a bit more circumspect about humping the shit out of popular plants.
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We got ninety nine problems but a bush aint one: the Garden   *    More visual shit


Crazy plant lady shit

7/3/2019

 
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The best things in life get the fuck out of hand before you even know it.
 R got a new fish eye and popped this as a test.

​​It looks worse than it is.

Happy New Year feat. Pygmaeocereus akersii KK1124 flowering for the first time motherfuckers

2/1/2019

 
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My delightful nascent colony.  Opens in the later afternoon for nocturnal moth pollination.  Looks like a maternal bohemian darlek.  Smells like boiled-down jungle honey, gingery vodka and alien varnish.

A pleasant ​MMXIX to you all.  Yes I had to google the numerals.  I am wasted.  what do you want from me

Season's Greetings from New Zealand

21/12/2018

 
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Rose Fragrant Cloud

It really is, too.

Photos du Jour: Random Spring Rodeo

15/12/2018

 
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Fir is a crazy little unit with rolling sanpaku eyes and a joyous love of virtually everything.  He's a year old now, which we cannot believe.  Like Felix, he's topped out his miniature designation and gone over 35cm at the shoulder but is still small enough to sit comfortably in your lap.  He throws up on long car rides.  He treasures little pieces of fabric for hours, flipping them around and carrying them in his mouth like the little pica freak he is.  Neutering didn't take the edge off his inexhaustible mania so I think we're stuck with all that dragon energy.
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In what seems to something of an emerging pattern, late winter was warm and clement, easing into a nice early spring that then shit itself badly, turning into a month and a half of clammy sunless rain late in the season as Antartica started its seasonal thaw and threw front after front at us.  Not fun.  But the roses are gigantic.  I'll post some pics soon.
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See more of our photography   *   Port Chalmers, New Zealand


Blackthorn Rose Review: Scentimental (Floribunda)

2/12/2018

 
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Okay so I briefly ranted.  It's over now, I promise. Scentimental is a striped rose par excellence.  But even when we dismiss the aforementioned prejudice, it almost falls at the second hurdle- that name.  Rose names these days are either depressingly brutalist (City of Scungeycrust), punny/cringe-tastic (Tee Hee Lady Panties), supercilious literary references (oh hi, David Austin), or just hideously cynical (OMG Best Mum Eva!!!).  

So while it could have been worse, 
Scentimental is a crap title for this amazing floribunda and really plays into the rose snob's hands.  Look at the pic to the right there; if that plant was called Premier Ribband de la Toute Courtesan or some shit like that, there would be acres of foolios gushing over its superior qualities.  ​
Striped roses are like BDSM.  You either roll that way or you do not, so I'm not going to try and sell you this variety if you object on principle.  I totally respect your discretion.  

Ha ha!  Just kidding.  Rose snobs are the worst and they should absolutely be judged and shunned because they are wrong about almost everything.  Their assertion that striped roses are somehow intrinsically vulgar is utterly asinine; that's like arguing that tigers are in bad taste.  

​Nature knows what she's doing with those colour-break genes and she doesn't need critique from people in popped collars and taupe anything.
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​Scentimental it is, unfortunately.  Though I am baffled as to why.  I have sniffed this rose in a dozen settings and can report that there just isn't much worthwhile scent to speak of, and it's not like anyone who sees it in full bloom will give much of a toss what it smells like anyway.  To my reckoning, 'scent' must be consistently present and furthermore worthy of your nosetime to be rated as such; fucked-out pot pourri dust (as is the case here) doesn't count.  ​It may just be the particular bud material propagated in NZ, but as a sensory panel veteran I can faithfully declare this is not an anosmia.  It's hardly surprising, though- overselling scent is a rose breeder con driven spectacularly out of hand in the last few years by online sales.
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Lack of scent is just one of the reasons Floribundas deserve caution.  Despite their industrial remontance, too many are so objectively deficient in the rose's inherent virtues- beauty of flower form, fragrance and colour- that you're left scratching your damn head over why somebody bothered.  Let me assure you that Scentimental is a special case.

In our mild, often frost-free conditions this plant would roar away above 6 feet high and wide if I didn't prune to keep it around 5.  The leaves are typical of its class; flipper-esque, shiny and olive-leaning, furnished in tiers from top to bottom so it is fully dressed and doesn't suffer that horrid chicken-leg look.  There are large thorns placed irregularly toward the bottom of the canes but I had to go out and check on that, so they haven't really bothered me.

Scentimental's constitution is a straight 10/10.  It has been torture-tested; a few years back after being very carelessly ripped out of the ground on a hot day, almost shorn of its roots and dumped in half shade, this plant looked distinctly peri-mortem. 
On my return a couple of weeks later it had completely recovered and burst into another round of flowers. 

Its health, good form and performance are gobsmacking.  I mean, above left is a rose competing with Horse Chestnut roots and half day shade in early spring.  In these humid, no-spray conditions it resists rust almost completely and blackspot is never able to outshine its vigour; I can't recall seeing it more than 1/3 spotty, even in the very worst years.  Cane dieback is a bit of a problem here too among wimpier roses, but I don't think it's ever lost a single one.  

It's obvious that Scentimental draws its genes from a deep ancestral well of quality plants.  Its
 parents are Playboy and Peppermint Twist, both descended from generations of unkillable roses.  We need more like this.
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​Scentimental's blooms are produced in profusion, both clustered and individually (meaning there is always a decent number of picking prospects) over the entire plant.  Although slender, the stems support the blooms well with just enough nod to ease that awkward Floribunda brass neck stance.  They are quite Hybrid Tea-ish at first, their clean white liberally streaked with deep, vivid raspberry, the former dominating in shadier positions while the red will take over in full sun.  Few things are more lovely than a vase stuffed with an armful of Scentimental once they have opened out to reveal their generous eyes of pale golden stamens.  It flowers in lengthy pulses for me starting in late spring through to early winter, meaning it's a top choice for a position that needs prolonged and reliable impact.

Earlier stripeys like Commandant Beaurepaire and Ferdinand Pichard might have more refined individual flowers, strictly speaking.  Rosa Mundi might have more roguish vintage charm.  A number of modern striped roses promise more complex colour combinations.  But I grow CB, FP and RM and Scentimental pwns those guys by almost every criteria except fragrance.  And I can't even remember the number of modern striped varieties I've punted onto the compost heap after they've proven themselves inexcusably feeble.  

If you can reconcile yourself to the fact that striped roses are awesome and fancy just one for your own place, this is the plant to go for.  They're addictive, though, so make sure you have room for the rest of them.

See more of our new Rose Review category


Photos du Jour: Daisies

20/11/2018

 
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​in a shitty old planter on the side of the road

Photo du Jour: Roses

11/11/2018

 
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The first real bunch of the season.  The smell.  I almost forget why I am such a slave to a good rose and flowers in general, then I go out into the garden after late spring rain and find them all smiling at me.  I am hard-pressed to think of anything more gratifying.  

In the pagan canon, the Garden returns to us everything we've lost along the way-
love, virtue, honour, pleasure, even those who have departed and descended- restoring everything we require to endure.  I think that is almost true, and if not literally so, at least its gentle substitutions are resplendent and perfumed.
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Photo du Jour: Arisaema taiwanense- emergent

25/10/2018

 
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​My god I love Aroids.  Will post more pics when it's fully out.

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