African violets
Tips for these old-fashioned charmers
It was almost 60 years ago that Betty Enticott saw her first African violet and commented to her husband that she rather liked the neatlooking, compact plant. Now she has one of the largest collections of African violets in New Zealand.
Back in 1959, Betty was newly married and living in Massey, Auckland. Her husband, Brian, recalled her praising the plant, and she duly received one as a Christmas gift. “From then on, I was interested, and picked up leaves from other people, putting them in water until they rooted. I ended up with about 30 plants. Then I got a book about them and started to work out the light they needed and a potting mix – I used soil combined with coarse sand.”
Once a week, Betty moved her plants onto the deck and fed them. “In Massey at the time, we were surrounded by farms, so I’d pick up cow manure from paddocks and put it in a bucket of water to break down. I’d use a dilution of that to feed the plants, then spray them with fresh water.”
When the couple set off for England, Betty’s treasured African violets were moved to her mother’s home in Tauranga. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive the change of conditions. A year later, back in New Zealand with an adopted child and a baby, Betty and Brian settled in Mt Maunganui, later adding two more children to their family. “When I had the time, I started again – and this time, I learned much more.”
She joined, as a remote member, an African violet club in Hamilton and also got to know the late George Laurenson, who had a large greenhouse full of African violets at his Cambridge home. “I visited George often to buy plants and he’d give me notes on their care.”
When the Hamilton club folded, Betty and George joined the Whanganui African Violet & Gesneriad Club, with Betty occasionally penning articles for the newsletter. There was a club in Auckland too, but it ultimately went into recess. When it closed two years ago, the Whanganui club was the country’s only African violet club. “It’s the same old story,” says Betty.
“Members were ageing, numbers were dwindling and the young ones weren’t coming on.”
Betty’s a long-time member of the African Violet Society of America, through which she’s discovered more about other members of the Gesneriad family. “I found out that I had four or five plants that belonged to the same family, although they were plants I’d bought just because I liked them.”
One plant you won’t see in her home or garden is a cyclamen, a carrier of spider mites, which also enjoy infesting African violets. Thrips are another pest, but Betty uses a potting mix that contains neem oil, which helps.
With the sudden death of African violet hybridiser Daphne Snell of Pukekohe (whose plants all carry the word ‘Kiwi’) on Christmas Day last year and the dispersal of her collection, Betty believes she now has one of the largest collections in New Zealand – about 250 plants comprising 150-plus named varieties. When she and Brian built a home in Mount Maunganui 52 years ago, they included a conservatory for Betty’s African violets that featured fluorescent lights to encourage flowering and fans for good air movement. She also took over part of the laundry for her miniature plants and “plant hospital”. When they moved to Papamoa in 1999, the violets went into a new conservatory, “leaked” into the laundry and expanded again.
“African violets like the conditions you and I like,” says Betty. “Probably the biggest mistake is to overwater them; they have to have air round their roots, but if you overwater them, they can’t get that air and develop root rot. If you put plants in a pot that’s too big, you increase the risk of overwatering, as the roots are surrounded by much more wet potting mix.”
The holy grail for hybridisers is a yellow flower. Small amounts of yellow have been introduced into white flowers in the past few years, but it has proved difficult to obtain clear, solid yellows. “Once we get a solid yellow, we’ll get all sorts of other colours too,” says Betty, smiling at the thought of orange and apricot versions of her horticultural true love.
When they moved to Papamoa in 1999, the violets went into a new conservatory, “leaked” into the laundry and expanded again