Kapiti Coast
Some plants take on an interesting look when the rain just keeps "persisting down", as one TV weather woman used to say
Julian Matthews’ garden looks all the prettier when it pours
Those with big foliage, such as the alocasia that grows below our dining room window, accumulate quite a bit of water. It delights watchers by holding sparkling droplets of rain in the curves of its leaves until the weight becomes too much, the water tips out and the process starts all over again. It’s soothing to observe, as is the glitter on the lime green leaves of little Alchemilla
mollis, or the silvery droplets on the deep purple foliage of Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’, one of the most enchanting small deciduous trees.
An observant garden writer once described the puckered leaves of the older blue-grey-foliage hosta varieties as looking like wet sand when the tide has gone out, an illusion heightened by the ability of these densely textured leaves to hang onto raindrops for some time after the clouds have drifted away.
Some flowers look good with a coating of moisture too. For ages in summer I enjoy the scarlet blooms of the shrubbygrowing Erythrina bidwillii (available from subtropical.co.nz), which is dazzling when the sky is blue and the sun intense, and when the rains come is still bright and cheerful, despite the gloomy sky.
I used to think that the succulent
Aeonium arboreum ‘Schwarzkopf’ was a bit of a ho-hum plant.
I must have seen it too often in rows in beach gardens, where it thrives, without other foliage or flowers to provide a lift of colour for the deep chocolate rosettes of foliage. But lately I’ve seen it looking pretty compelling and thriving in some tough spots, such as beneath an old gum tree, growing in dry-as-a-bone conditions and making an interesting companion for a sprawling, scarlet-flowered, similarly drought-tolerant pelargonium.
In our garden, I’ve taken to breaking off aeonium stems, letting them dry for a bit so the ends heal over, then poking them into the ground, where they provide an interesting contrast to colourful flowers such as Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’.
‘Indian Summer’ is one of best new perennials, flowering non-stop for more than half the year, provided you tug out the old stems.
It’s a reminder that some new plants are outstanding, a point I mention because a couple of recent visitors to our garden have commented that new perennials aren’t any good and that it’s only the tried and true oldies that are worth growing.
One summertime guest seemed shocked that I had several agapanthus flowering in the garden. She was of the “all agapanthus should be destroyed” persuasion and my comments that these are a well-mannered, non-seeding varieties fell on deaf ears. The one that grabbed her attention in particular was ‘Storm Cloud’, an old favourite with very dark blue flowers on extra-tall stems.
I sometimes wonder if we make too much of a fuss about agapanthus when I see how well they do on forbidding steep banks and roadside verges, where the preferred option seems to be to remove them and let weeds and grasses run wild, creating a hay-fever problem, not to mention a fire risk – unlike fireretarding agapanthus. Listening to a rural programme on National Radio, I was intrigued to hear a Hawke’s Bay farmer extolling the advantages of planting agapanthus beneath the powerlines on his road frontages. He said that when a neighbour’s burn-off got out of control recently, it was the agapanthus that saved the day because they didn’t catch fire beneath the powerlines like grasses would have. I’m convinced that goldfish are getting a bad rap when it comes to reports of animal intelligence. The idea that they have only a 20-second memory is a load of nonsense, unless the ones in my pond are an unusually high-IQ bunch. They have no trouble remembering that when I approach in the evening I’ll be bearing food, and race from the corners of the pond, some propelling themselves half out of the water in anticipation. The short-memory theory was no doubt put forward so folk keeping goldfish in a tiny bowl, swimming round and round all day, wouldn’t feel so guilty.
Well-fed goldfish are healthy goldfish, and the old idea that you don’t need to give them food over summer because they'll be fine with the odd bit of mosquito larvae is another myth, if you ask me.