Hedge maze preparation

Today Ali, Patrick (Gateway student) and I continued work on the hedgemaze and we made really good progress.

The site has already been cleared of weeds and other desirable plants have been
transplanted elsewhere. One corner of the site needs to retain its current theme and
planting to tie in with the Rainshadow theme of the rest of the garden area, so we  marked
off the area with large rocks around the border. 

The ground, having previously design in the riverbed style, was full of stones, so I collected
 as many as possible in a bucket to make the soil easier to work with and level out.

The completed large stone border. Each stone is buried to half its depth so that it is anchored in
 the ground and won't move around. 

We then leveled and raked the site to remove the worst of the humps from the previous
 landscaping style. The soil needed to compacted after raking so we walk/shuffled
 over it to pack it down.

Completed border. Coprosma rigida will be planted the other side of the border to form the outside wall of the maze.

Entrance way to the maze with a step up and flat stone at the mouth.
The Pittosporum obcordatum has been clipped to form an archway over the
 entrance and another P. obcordatum will the planted in the adjacent bed to finish the archway.

6 Coprosma rigidas were planted along the border edge next to the pathway to provide
the outer wall of the maze, they were place approx 70cm apart and are expected to grow
 up 1m in height. These will be clipped on the outward and inside faces into a straight
edge. Here the new plantings are being watered in.

After watering, I gave all the new plants a drink of Thrive fertilizer. This is a soluble power
fertilizer to be mixed with water - 1 spoon measure per 4.5 litres of water.
This mixture fed 14 plants.

When the site was fully prepared before we put in any plants I measured up the area to plot onto a plan. This will help us be able to design the maze and give us a good idea of how many plants are going to be needed, and where to put them.

13 June: Top 10 Plants of the Week

1 - Passiflora tetrandra. Passiflorceae. NZ Passion fruit. Climber with tendrils, dark waxy leaves with
 pointed tip, bright orange fruit from yellow flowers.

2 - Phormium tenax. Xanthorrhoeaceae. New Zealand Flax. Clumps of straplike leaves up to 2m,
flowers on tall shoots with alternate flowers of red.

3 - Rhopalostylis sapida. Arecaceae. Nikau palm. Only palm native to NZ, can grow up to 15m.

4 - Helichrysum coralloides. Asteraceae.  Whipcord, coral-like alpine plant covered in white hairs.

5 - Celmisia insignis 'Black Birch'. Asteraceae.  White spear-like leaves.

6 - Hebe cockayneana. Plantaginaceae. Compact and rounded habit of growth, elongated obovate
shaped leaves with pale leaf margin. Slow growing, max height 60-90cm

7 - Hebe topiaria . Plantaginaceae. Neat topiary like growth habit, compact grey-green leaves.
White flower racemes in early summer.

8 - Chionochloa beddiei. Poaceae. Beddies Tussocks, Cook Straight Tussock.
Endemic to Wellington coastal region

9 - Hebe odora. Plantaginaceae. Boxwood Hebe. Small white scented flowers that
 look like jasmine flowers.

10 - Veronica amplexicaulis (syn. Hebe amplexicaulis). Plantaginaceae. Glaucus bluey-green
 leaves, less compact than some species, white flowering.

Planting at Te Papa

AM: Te Papa this morning. Planted some new plants in the space that was left after Finn cut down the Karaka tree last week. 12 new plants went in including Leptospermum scoparium (Manuka), Rhopalostylis sapida (Nikau) and Blechnum discolour.
There are several mature trees in the area and it was hard to find a space in the ground that wasn't full of tree roots. This meant that the plants didn't go in the exact positions I had originally placed them, but close enough. The soil was also very dry, but the irrigation system at Te Papa is currently undergoing maintenace so we couldn't water these new plants in. We will keep an eye on them on our next visit.

Nikau being planted

PM: Friday duties inlcuding watering the shade house in the nursery. The plants on the bench are all different species on Celmisias, native rock garden plants. They all have characteristically white hairy foliage, and don't like having their foliage watered so should only water the stone mulch around them. I like the look of these plants.

Some of the Celmisia collection

The rest of the day included raking, leaf blowing, tidying Lancewood leaves and Chatham Island forget-me-nots.

Reveg

Reveg today at 3 different sites;
Pinkerton Park, Newlands (500 plants)
Tyers Stream, Ngaranga Gorge (500 plants)
Fort Buckley, Wadestown (200 plants)
We planted a selection of hebes grasses, flaxs and coprosmas.

Everyone on site one - Pinkerton's Park. The area to be planted used to be a cycle path that
had been turfed over. Some reveg was done last year on this site so some flaxs were
 already there. Due the heavy rainfall over the past few days the site was very wet and boggy.

Boggy ground

Phormium tenax - swamp flax

Site after planting

After planting

Site 2 - Tyers Stream. Very steep and rocky site. Grubbers were needed to dig holes as it
was too stony for normal spades

Newly planted Coprosma

Site 3 - Fort Buckley. Extremely steep site approx 50-55° slope.
The soil was very loose and easy to plant in - but not good
 for getting a firm footing!

But it had a good view at least

Why We Garden

'When you're working in the garden and there is just a moment; of bird song, or a shaft of light, or sometimes you're just planting something and all feels well with the world. You know that just for a few seconds, it's perfection.'

-Monty Don

Passiflora seed collection

Today we collected some seeds for the Palmerston North Indiginous Flora Seed Bank. The seeds were from Passiflora tetrandra, a native NZ passionfruit. We needed to collect approx 500 fruit, each contain 10-15 seeds so that we could provide approx 5000 seeds.

After collecting the Passiflora fruits we extracted the seeds

Close up of the seeds inside their red pulp coating

All the seeds were put into the sieve and then hosed to remove the red pulp

We then put all the washed seeds in a tray on newspaper to dry

Close up of the seeds without their coating

As part of the collection procedure for the seed bank we needed to supply a herbarian sample,
so we took some cuttings of the plant and pressed them to supply with the seeds.

After 4 weeks of being pressed the herbarian sample of the  passiflora was fully dried and ready to be
 sent to the seed bank.

We collected all the dried seeds in a paper bag.  At a rough estimate of 10 seeds per fruit
and approx 900 fruits collected, there should be around 900-950 seeds.

When sending off the seeds and herbarian sample we need to complete this form with the
 details of the seeds we had collected.

5 June: Top 10 Plants of the Week

1 - Coprosma grandifolia. Rubiaceae. Raurekau. Large leaved coprosma, plant can grow up to 6m.

2 - Coprosma robusta. Rubiaceae. Karamu. Leathery leaves with rounded tips. The stipules have black tips.

3 - Sophora molloyi.  Fabaceae. Kowhai. 'Dragons Gold'. Tui's love the flowers. 

4 - Coprosma repens. Smaller waxi leaves.

5 - Blechnum nuovo zealandi. Leaflets slight joined at stem. Leaf larger at base and narrower at tip.

6 - Blechnum discolour. Leaflets fuller separated at the stem, leaf shape thin at base and tip, wider in the middle.

7 - Fuschia excorticarta. Flower, green with purple center.

7 - Fuschia excorticarta. Trunk with peeling orangey bark

8 - Metrosiderous robusta - Northern rata

9 - Myrsine Australis - Red Matipo

10 - Pittosporum tenuifolium - Black Matipo

Hebe 'Otari Delight'

Whilst watering the shade house Finn pointed out this plant, Hebe 'Otari delight' first discovered and named at Otari