Bowling Club Entrance - Border Renovation

Following on from my Wardian Case project Finn suggested that I renovate the Bowling Club Entrance border. The existing plants were not performing well and were starting to look messy and untended. As this is one of the entrances to Otari-Wilton's Bush it deserved a make over to create a more welcoming and inviting border.

Here are the 'Before' photos:

Here was the entrance border before any work started. The sign board was very
overshadowed by the large fern tree and woodland behind it. The sun is positioned
behind the trees so it is always dark in this corner.

Overgrown Kawakawas encroached on the edge of the boarder, with a few
sporadic Rengarenags and Chatham Island forget-me nots.

The Astelia Chathamica needed a good cleanover to remove the dead leaves, and the
Rengerengas was overgrown and had spread throughout most of the border.
The Corokia hedge at he back also needed trimming.

 There were three mature sized Astelia Chathamicas which I quite liked and were in good condition, once that dead leaves had been clean up. So I decided to keep them and work with the silvery colour of the leaves to add some lightness to the dark border.

Cleared border! I removed all the Rengarengas and forget-me-nots.
Finn cut back a lot of the overgrown tree and kawakawas from the
 back of the border and behind the signpost as well.
The area suddenly had a lot more light and felt more open.

I forked over the soil and removed all the weeds then raked it smooth.
This gave me a good indication of what the soil conditions were
 in the border. There was patches are very dry soil need the
 hedge and very damp soil right underneath the drip line of the
fern tree. The rest of the soil was of a good loamy quality.

I good the hedging shears and clipped the Corokia hedge. I quite like
 the silvery colour of this hedge, it certainly lightens up the space.
It is quite satisfying to trim a hedge and see a neat
smooth line after i've finished.

Finn and Dave cleared a lot of material from the rest of the path and
 beyond with the intention of opening up the space and planted
decorative shrubs in place of the old kawakawa hedge.

Now that I could see the space and what the remaining plants were like, I could now develop my planting scheme. Using the silver of the Astelia and Corokia hedge, and the research I had already done for my white garden display, it seemed a logical step to create a Silver and Gold garden.
I wanted to use the Pacystegia I has selected for my white garden, but Finn showed me a few that he had planted in a similarly dark area and they just hadn't performed very well, so I chose an alternative plant instead. Brachyglottis greyi - it has silvery pale foliage most of the year and then flowers with bright yellow daisies.
I also chose Pimilia protrata - for its pale foliage and small white flowers, its spreading habit should fill up the lower front of the border.
Interspersed with the pimilia, I planted clumps of Schlernathus biflorus - this has a much more vivid green to contract against the other pale plants, it will spread in spongy mounds.
Behind that, Hebe albicans, my new favourite hebe. It has a neat round form with white flower spikes, gowing to less than 1m high. a good foreground shrub.
Alternating next to the hebes, an Olearia with a deep green leaf with a white margin (whose species name has slipped my mind).
Behind this is the golden grass Libertia perigrines, to add a touch of gold all year round.
To block the view of the bowling club from the garden's path, I put in tall growing Oleaia avicenniaefolia. These should grow fairly quickly and bring the view back into the garden instead of out over the hedge into next doors carpark.

Before planting anything, I laid them all out into the positions I wanted
and making sure they each had the correct spacings for the future growth.

Et voila!! One newly designed and planted border.

Now I just need to come back in a year and see how well they have grown and if they are happy in their positions. I'm very pleased with this.

Wardian Case - White Garden - Completion

After deciding on my final plants and selecting them from the nursery, I potted them up into presentation terracotta pots with grey gravel mulch.
The climbing plant that I chose, Tecomanthe speciosa, was more of a challenge to pot up. We did not have a young plant in the nursery, so instead I took a cutting from a mature plant. This was not ideal because it was not likely to survive very long in a pot, but for the purpose of completing the temporary display it would have to suffice.

Here is the final case.

Once the case was cleaned up and fresh plants put in, it looked great. I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Here is the display signs I made for the case. Using a combination of Word and Photoshop to create the graphics. I tried to keep the explanation simple as I knew I had limited space, and I feel I could have elaborated a lot more on the design techniques. However, the more text there is the less likely people are to stand and read it. So I kept it short and simple.

I was pleased with the layout of these pages. I was aiming for a magazine style spread with visible text boxes, bite- sized info, and basic care instructions.

Overall I was rather pleased with the whole project and really enjoy it. I like garden design and would happily do more design projects again. Selecting plants to fit in a specific environment is interesting, and great for learning more about particular plants. Its not as simple as just picking a few attractive plants and putting them all together because they might need different care and watering. Plants need to be selected carefully with long term growth kept in mind.

Wardian case - White Garden - Plant selection

As one of my apprentice projects at Otari I need to select some plants to be displayed in the Wardian case, write some info about the plants, and look after them.

I got my inspration for a white garden from both my recent visit to Sissinghurst, but also from watering the Celmisia collection in the nursery. I initially thought about displaying the celmisia collection until I found out it had already been done.
So I started noticing just how many plants in Otari have silvery foliage or white flowers - a heck of a lot, so I had plenty of choice of plants to create my own White Garden.

After some research and plant identification I selected the plants I wanted from the nursery...

Astelia nervosa. Silvery and stripy. 

Euphorbia glauca. Very pale and interesting.

Hebe albicans. Because I couldn't not use a hebe!

Pimelea prostrata. Low wide spread groundcover. I more I see
this plant, the more I like it.

Pacystegia insignis. Awesome thick dark green leaves with white
 undersides. Only downside is that the center of the flower is yellow
...but I like it soo much, so i'm gonna use it anyway.

My initial collection - still slightly undecided on which climber
I want, and small tree.

Cockayne lawn

Dave went through the 4 stroke mower training competency with me and showed
me how to use it. For my first test I did the Cockayne lawn to get the hang of it.
The first line was a little wonky but once I got into a rhythm I
managed to get some straight lines.

After mowing, I used the edging shears to trim the edges. The lawn is
enclosed by a wooden frame, so I trimmed hard against the frame
which helped give a neat line.

Et voila! One mowed and edged lawn. :)

27 June - Plant of the week

Pittosporum cornifolium!!

Ok, from afar it doesn't look like much, a bit twiggy.

But get closer and there are small buds coming from
 a cluster of three leaves

The bud opens to show three more leaves, and then this
 little spray of peach coloured flowers.
Fairly small and easy to miss though, until you get to...

...the seed pods!!!
Starting as a green pod, it opens to show bright
 red pod lining with a cluster of black seeds
 held in place by bright yellow goo.

Bloody amazing!

Brachyglottis kirkii in pongo logs

Brachyglottis kirkii is an epiphytal plant native to the Wellington region, however it is becoming increasingly rare and none have been spotted growing wild in Otari. So Rewi took some cuttings from 2 or 3 plants in other areas of Wellington in the hopes of reinstating them at Otari.

As B. kirkii would normally grow in a tree we have used hollowed
out ponga log as a planting container. I have made two different
potting mixes to go in the log, one with 25% pumice to soil and
the other 50% pumice. This plant likes very well drained soil,
so the two mixes should be monitored to how well
 they grow in each.

Cross section of a ponga log. Such amazing patterns! The core in the middle is
very soft - a bit firmer than apple flesh, but the black swirls are extremely hard,
making a perfect solid sided pot for planting.

Planting in the Coprosma border

The Coprosma border at the edge of the Ponga lawn was
 looking a bit bare and one or two plants had died
 so we chose a selection of new plants to put in. 

To give the new plants a good start, I sprinkled some
Blood and Bone powder around the new plants

Blood and Bone spread evenly around the plants

We then brought in some wood bark mulch to put on the beds

Finished bed with fresh plants and mulch. Looks nice and neat.

Osmocote

Today is spread some Osmocote on some plants at Te Papa that were starting to look a bit yellow and in need of a feed. Osmocote is a controlled release NPK fertiliser (Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium) that very slowly dissolves over a long period.

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.