Gardens brighten hospital visit
Gillian Vine gets a buzz from a hospital visit.
WHETHER the reason is to have a blood test, hearing check, surgery or to visit a patient, chances are that the gardens at Dunedin’s Mercy Hospital have caught your eye.
In 1960, the Sisters of Mercy bought Marinoto from the Otago Hospital Board, which had owned the Newington Ave property since 1947.
For 30 years the home of Sir Percy Sargood, governing director of clothing and textile company Sargood Son & Ewing, the 1878 bluestone house was set in 4ha of grounds, ideal for the Sisters’ plan to expand, as their Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Royal Tce had become too small.
They retained many original features, among them some 20 notable trees like a huge pohutukawa, cork oak, sequoias and a massive copper beech. The grounds around the new hospital, opened in 1969, were maintained and kept looking attractive yearround. Older readers may recall nuns in blue habits busily weeding.
These days, it’s gardener Emma Paul’s domain, including planning to make the area surrounding the new car park attractive as well as fitting into the overall design.
Emma’s gardening career began at the Dunedin Botanic Garden, where she spent four years.
“That gave me a good grounding in all aspects of horticulture,” she says.
After completing her apprenticeship, she worked on three estates in England. One was Levens Hall, in Cumbria, where Emma clipped her way around the world’s oldest topiary garden, a highmaintenance role she describes as “fantastic”.
Five years ago, when Paul Reeder retired, Emma came to Mercy. Although contractors trim the trees and hedges, and help with heavy jobs, she does the bulk of the work.
“When the hospital was looking at developing a 10year plan, to have a gardener like me with broad knowledge and experience fitted the bill for the future,” she explains.
“It also involved updating and simplifying the overall look of the grounds and making more appropriate use of plants.
“First up was maintaining it and bringing [the gardens] up to a higher standard.”
Bedding plants are placed to “lift people’s mood”, so during the summer and autumn old roses and dahlias in the perennial beds are supplemented by the likes of penstemon, larkspur and petunias. This summer, a long bed alongside the walkway from the car park was filled with Music Box sunflowers. A shorter (80cm1m) variety that comes in a mix of colours, the flowers are borne on sturdy stems.
Smaller beds are packed with bright colours and two eyecatchers this season were Livingstone daisies and painted tongues (Salpiglossis sinuata),
the latter a bedding annual that did particularly well at Mercy.
“Filling up [beds] helps with maintenance,” Emma says.
On this principle, she has packed in a common sempervivum succulent at the base of the sculpture in the quiet Joseph Butler memorial area and also under two trees where most groundcovers would struggle.
Emma’s biggest challenge to date has been landscaping around the revamped car park, built in 2018. Magnolias and a flowering cherry were lifted and stored while construction was under way. They then were returned to the surrounding garden, whose function is to screen the car park.
With that screening in mind, Emma opted for a line of trunked up (pleached) English hornbeams (Carpinus betula Fastigiata). Now two years old, they have grown about a metre and “are knitting together nicely”.
Because it would be awkward to mow under the hornbeams, Emma opted for New Zealand Leptinella squalida Platts Black instead of grass.
“It’s the ideal groundcover and stays [purple] in winter.”
Visitors asked so often what the combination was that she made labels for the hornbeams and Leptinella.
Sterile holly runs along the Burwood Ave edge of the car park— “it still has berries but no prickles, so it’s people friendly” — and flaxes edge the path to the daysurgery unit, Manaaki.
A part of the garden caters for the hospital kitchen: in raised beds by the old homestead Emma grows herbs and vegetables requested by the chefs, as well as Trusty Tom tomatoes in an adjacent glasshouse.
There is also an orchard area that she would like to expand and a natural bush area, too.
“It’s a really special garden. I’m lucky to be here,” she says.
Vegetables
Traditionally, broad beans are sown from March until midMay, to stand through the winter and bear crops in early summer.
Renowned for their hardiness, broad beans are a favourite vegetable with many southern gardeners, as not only do seeds germinate in cold ground but the plants prefer heavier soils.
The soil for broad beans should be well drained and enriched with plenty of compost.
Phosphates, supplied by adding bone dust or superphosphate, will encourage healthy growth. Applying lime at the rate of 50g per sq m some time before sowing sweetens sour, acid soils.
Tall broad bean plants need to be supported, and can provide excellent windbreaks for tender spring crops. Site the rows where there will be useful shelter for the likes of lettuce, outdoor tomatoes and French beans.
Sow broad beans in double rows, about 20cm apart, with the seeds placed about 10cm apart and 5cm deep. Sow a few extra seeds at the end of rows to transplant into any gaps.
If you are growing redflowered or other heritage broad beans and want to save seeds, be aware they will crosspollinate with other broad beans within beeflying distance and may not breed true.
Flowers
Gladioli should be lifted this month, even if the tops still look a bit green.
Lift them and trim the tops, but do not cut them off. Put the corms in paper
(not plastic) bags on which the colour or variety is written and hang in a cool, dry place to ripen. When foliage is completely dry, it can be removed and the gladioli stored in boxes or paper bags, but that is not essential.
Hyacinths can still be planted, but do not delay if you want spring blooms. Bulbs should be in rich soil with some bone dust added. Snowdrops and crocuses can also be planted for a spring display.
Tulips give good results when planted later in autumn than other bulbs.
They like a rich soil, with fine river sand under each bulb to improve drainage.
Hardy annuals, biennials and perennials can still be planted for late spring and summer displays.
Sweet peas may still be sown in pots or boxes under shelter, or wait until spring and place where the plants will flower.
For those serious about sweet peas, trenches for them can be prepared now. Make them 1m wide and two spades deep. Mix garden compost, autumn leaves, seaweed, stable manure or other organic material into the subsoil. Replace topsoil, enriched with bone meal or superphosphate and crushed limestone (50g per sq m each).
Sweet pea plants already growing can have the centres taken out of their growing points to encourage branching from the base and the formation of several leading shoots.
Annuals sown for spring flowering can be thinned as soon as they can be handled, leaving 5cm divisions.
Further thinning is necessary as plants become larger until they are 20cm or more apart.
Chrysanthemums that have finished flowering should be cut down to within 15cm of the ground to encourage growth from basal shoots.
Dahlias left in the ground usually produce the earliest blooms, but unless your garden is very sheltered this is not recommended, because hard frosts can kill the tubers. Lift them carefully and store in damp sawdust for the winter under shelter, ideally in temperatures between 2degC and 5degC.
Dahlia tubers in the ground can be protected from frosts by piling extra soil over them or covering the ground with bracken or scrub. Lift them in early October and replant single pieces with a bud attached. These will produce stronger plants, bearing larger blooms.
Fruit
Fruit trees will start appearing in nurseries soon, and many garden centres supply a list of what they will be stocking.
If you want particular varieties, it pays to get in early as popular types go quickly.
Check which need pollinators and choose accordingly or your crop may disappoint.