Rhododendron roots deep in province
Garden View
By ABBIE JURY - Taranaki Daily NewsRelevant offers
Gardening & Lifestyle
2009 may not go down in history as being the best display of rhododendrons in Taranaki because spring came somewhat early this year and festival dates are somewhat late.
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FACT BOX: The annual rhododendron advice in brief: If you have a plant with silver leaves, it has nasty sucking insects called thrips. You can't turn silver leaves to green again and the new foliage will get affected unless you do something to alter conditions. You can spray with an insecticide, though we advise alternatives. Open up around the plant to increase air movement (thrips don't like drafts) and feed and mulch the plant to encourage increased vigour. If it keeps getting infected, take it out and replace it with a healthier option. There are rhododendrons better suited to warmer climates and more resistant to silver leaves. If you have a plant that has not set flower buds, the most common cause is too much shade. Because they set flower buds on their new growth (which is coming now), open up and let more light in as soon as you can. The other cause may be incorrect pruning. Rhododendrons are surface rooting - in other words, roots go outward, not downwards. A healthy plant has a big mass of fine, fibrous roots, resembling old-fashioned carpet underfelt. Mulching is good practice to keep these roots cool and nourished. Never plant them in wet spots where water can pond. They will die quickly. Deadheading is to stop the plant from putting all its energy into setting seed. You don't actually have to deadhead unless the plant is a seed setter, though it does make them look better. Feed now, as the plant goes into growth, if you feel it needs it. Rhododendrons prefer soils on the acid side (which our volcanic soils are here). Moving plants around your garden needs to take place in autumn and winter, not now. Hard pruning of rhodos takes place in late winter or very early spring, not now.
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But it is rather a happy collision of different occurrences that sees us wearing a rhododendron crown in the first place. It is not that we grow them hugely better than everywhere else. We just happen to have Pukeiti here and that organisation and identity has given an enduring regional focus to the plant genus, along with our longstanding annual garden festival.
In fact, going back in history, that garden festival was first floated by Pukeiti and owned and run in the early years by the Taranaki Rhododendron Group.
Why rhododendrons is partly an accident of history. Just as tulips commanded prestige and price well beyond their actual worth in Holland in centuries past, rhododendrons were the high status and high prestige plant for the post-World War II gardeners and we had a cluster of serious gardeners in Taranaki at the time.
Douglas Cook, the father of Pukeiti, bought land here primarily for rhododendrons because it was clear to him that these aristocrats from lower mountain slopes in Asia would never be an option for his first choice location near Gisborne. There, he set up Eastwood Hill, with its heavy focus on drought-tolerant deciduous trees.
Around the same time, a number of Taranaki gardeners and plantspeople were creating their gardening masterpieces. These included Bernard and Rose Hollard near Kaponga, Russell and Mary Matthews on Mangorei Road (Tupare), Les Jury at Sunnybank on Tukapa Street, Harold Marchant and Les Taylor near Stratford, Jack Goodwin at Pukekura Park and Pukeiti, and Felix and Mimosa Jury in the garden here at Tikorangi. The rhododendron family featured large in all their plans and individual collections were highly prized.
Historically, back in those mists of time - around the late '40s and '50s - Duncan & Davies was becoming the major force in commercial production and that happened in Taranaki partly because all plants were field grown in those days (in other words, in the ground in real soil, rather than in containers and planter bags in modern nurseries). With its friable, volcanic soils, high sunshine and regular rainfall for 12 months, Taranaki just happened to have the best conditions in the country for field production. It needs also to be said that the charisma and dynamism of V.C. Davies was a major influence.
Times keep changing. These days, the market value of a rhododendron plant has plummeted so far that you can go to any plant shop and buy one for around the same price as a perennial, a clipped bay tree, even a semi-clipped buxus, or a large succulent. I can tell you, dear Reader, that there is a vast amount more skill and time required to get that rhododendron on to the shop floor than the other plants and that they are dreadfully underpriced, almost without exception. I am frankly astonished that rhododendrons have to some extent kept their elevated status in theory, even though reality has them relegated well down the plant equivalent of the social scale. It is a conundrum.
But, then, we still lay claim to the rhododendron in Taranaki, even though the local nursery industry continues to dwindle away (we certainly can't claim to be the Southern Hemisphere power house of plant production these days) and most home gardeners would rather plant a fruit tree than a rhodo. The rhododendron gives a focus, becomes a centrepiece, to our garden festival, which sets it a little apart from others all round the country - except for Dunedin who shamelessly (though quite justifiably) continues to challenge our claim to having the premier rhododendron and garden festival.
As our festival starts today, never underestimate the importance of this annual event on our regional garden calendar. It is the single event that keeps Taranaki right up at the top nationally in the garden scene. The 10 days of festival deliver more visitors into most of our open gardens than will be seen on the other 355 days of the year. It is the single event that makes it worthwhile to maintain gardens to the high standards we currently reach.
Without festival, there would be no incentive to keep lifting gardening standards and setting the benchmarks.
