Wisterias at Sequoia Gardens

Someone asked for more pics of wisterias… and I have long wanted to consolidate my wisteria photos into a story – so here goes! Most of our wisterias we grew from seed, taken from a plant which was the off-spring (clonal, I think) of one at the family farm which was originally planted in the early 1900s. We grew them because we – my dad and I – had just discovered the joy of germination on the farm and well: because they were there! Wisterias carry long velvety seedpods with big seeds that call out “good with beginners”!

These first two photos are in fact the last I took. This particular plant, incredibly robust, covers a camphor tree and the adjacent pin oak, which is just visible beyond the camellia on the right. It has completely swamped the small pergola built for it between the two trees and has set off through the adjacent shrubbery, where last year we realised that it was leaning too heavily on a flowering dogwood and twenty assorted shrubs. I was looking at it yesterday and thinking that it needed further curtailing. The blue spikes below it are Scilla natalensis, a bulb which grows wild on Sequoia. The netting is to protect it and the young roses from the deer (more correctly buck – duiker and bush buck). Early in the season when food is scarce they love to nibble on fresh rose foliage and the blue  firework flower stalks.

Here it is in close-up. Definitely; this year we will search for rooted cuttings amongst its meanderings. It is floriferous, with good colour and long racemes, and the fact that it is two weeks later than most can only be an advantage. I will plant it in the huge old mother-pine where its sister’s dumpy flowers are over before the yellow banksia rose gets under way.

Every year I have to act the contortionist just to get the yellow and mauve into the same frame. The banksia was planted by a friend’s mother as a young woman. When their yard was subdivided, he offered me the huge old root ball. Within three years it proved a good investment, worth transporting 350km (over 200 miles) to its new home!

Today I went and took this photo specially. The banksia flowers 10 meters up into the tree. The wisteria reaches twice as high and will eventually climb to the top of the tree – but no longer has a single flower.  Now imagine the banksia combined with the day before yesterday’s sprawling giant…

The next example I think is a brother; a sprawling good-for-nothing brat, a disgrace to the family name; why he has not been disinherited I do not know! He grew right here from a root in what used to be the nursery holding area. As a result he was a bit neglected as a child. Surrounded by trees (some of which have subsequently been removed), he didn’t have one of his own to look up to – and so he was left to his own devices and became a scruffy introvert. The brown behind him is an unsuccessful rescue job (just as well, considering where it was planted), a conifer from a terracotta pot that I valued more than its occupant. Beyond, an assortment of conifers including a gawky ginkgo not yet in leaf. The area to the right is the future Sage’s Walk, a path through a  collection of salvias (in sun) and plectranthus (in shade) culminating in the azalea crescent in the distance. It is also the area where most of my collection of seed-grown pink deciduous azaleas are concentrated. Their twiggy outlines add to the general scruffiness, but by this morning they too were coming into flower!

We now move to an area up on the boundary below the neighbour’s gum plantation across from my house,  where many of the seedlings were planted just to get rid of them. Bear in mind that it takes up to ten years for a seed-grown wisteria to flower. That is according to several sources I’ve just consulted. The figure I remember is seven, and my first ones flowered at five years if I remember correctly. It was a convenient spot to dump them while we waited. Out of sight proved to be out of mind, and not one of them was ever moved. They are a motley collection, mostly disappointing and can easily be grubbed out if something better comes along. However one of them, visible in the centre, will still make me my fortune (he said wishfully.)

This wisteria’s flowers are of good but not spectacular colour, but their length and grace is exceptional. What really makes this plant unusual though is that it chose to be a tree rather than a climber. From a young age it had a sturdy, self-supporting stem. As time passed it became clear why: the space between nodes is compressed. This has a further advantage: the magnificent trusses are carried close together, so that the flowers literally hang like a beaded curtain…

Here you can see my wisteria tree, al the way from its stem to its spectacular flowers. On the left an altogether less impressive sibling grovels before my Joseph’s Coat (hmmm: Wisteria ‘Joseph’s Coat’  - it has a ring to it!) In addition to its typically short flowering season , it is most beautifully hung with silver-brown velvet pods for many months of the year, some of which can still be seen in this photo!

If the tree wisteria is my most important specimen, this one is my most successful. It grows over the pump-house (I have to stoop slightly to fit under that green cross-beam) and the surrounding trees. To the left foreground lies my water-lily pond. I have a dream of building a deck and a pergola over the edge of the water to support the wisteria and its reflection… but that will relate to developing Sequoia Gardens as a tourist destination in years to come!

To give you an idea of the setting, here is a picture taken this morning; the wisteria is spent, but the first water-lilies are in bloom! To the left an indigenous tree fern is stretching out its 2 meter fronds, at this stage still rolled and golden. And as I tend to interrupt myself when speaking, why not do so here? So here’s a bonus pic :

As the pump-house wisteria is all round my best example, and the flowers hang conveniently low, here are a few close-ups and flower studies.

Each pea-flower is perfection in itself.

And then a bee arrived to complete the photo-shoot!

Just about the only wisterias not propagated on Sequoia are the matching clones planted in the Anniversary Garden. Their tresses are disappointingly short, but born profusely and richly coloured. If it was not a five year project – at least – I would replace them though with cuttings from the pump-house. This photo you have seen in a previous post.

To end off – a romantic shot of  a carpet of wisteria flowers and a yellow iris; one of those shots that make me feel I have achieved my objective in the Anniversary Garden!

 

More and more to see as spring kicks in!

I always say that early spring is schizo around here – all colour and no green. Bleached by winter cold and drought, grasses are blonde and trees are grey. Suddenly colour arrives like a rash on the first azaleas: one looks at it in fascination and surprise. Of course the first blossoms on the trees are magnificent, and of course – almost grudgingly - I get pleasure from those first azaleas, but it is only a few weeks later when the many trees start pushing young leaves that spring becomes overwhelmingly beautiful to me!

The pictures above – a view and two details – I took yesterday from the veranda of the big house.  As I’ve been living there since early September rather than in my own house due to my mom’s health, I’ve been able to observe the daily – make that hourly as the light shifts! – changes that make this view so rewarding. Here for instance is a view on the 13th, when suddenly the afternoon backlighting caught the young leaves on the first of the oaks to green up. It gives some idea of how much changes in two weeks!

The view from my house has been the subject of a few shots too: I do get to take the occasional walk, and my dogs sleep at home and so get let out every morning at ‘photo time’!  This is the one month in the year when I consider giving the bridge a fresh wash of white – surrounded as it is by flowering cherries and almonds, azaleas and Viburnum plicatum, it seems a little drab. For the rest of the year I like its ‘dull white’ look.

Here is another shot of the icon of my garden, taken a few days earlier from my front door. The bowl of scented freesias stands on the stone plinth in line with the bay window. In our sheltered valley reflections are often near perfect.

This early morning view shows the quality of the reflection and the greening of the trees across from my home; the centre of the view from my big bay winow is in line with the left edge of the photo.

To continue the theme of greening (or in this case reddening – or wining?), this opposite view from the above one, taken nine days earlier, shows the first silvery brown leaves on the Acer palmatum atropurpureum. The grass of the meadow which only days before waved between the house and the water, has been cut and the dogwood (Cornus florida) in the right foreground is flowering properly for the first time this year. I grew it from seed off my own trees!

To end off, a view up from Alfred’s Arches to the big house. One morning one wakes up to a garden that is no longer wintery; Erigeron karvinskianus with its white daisy flowers from pink buds self-seeds most beautifully all around my garden and contributes hugely to the blowsy, accidental overlay of the formality which I so love. Down the steps to meet me comes Doubly, the Border Collie.

 

Weekly pic: September week 4

I know I know I know my last two posts were also about the Wisteria Arbour, but of all the myriad flowers in my garden at the moment – blossoms, azaleas, rhododendrons and even the first roses, it is the wisterias that give me the most pleasure!

I peered through Alfred’s Arches to get this view, photostitched from two vertical shots. It helps give some idea of the unusual shape of the arbour. Talking of arbour – I’d been wondering what the difference is between an arbour and a pergola. Then the October issue of  Fine Gardening arrived all the way from America. (www.finegardening.com) There Brady Halverson explains that an arbour is like a doorway, a pergola is like a ceiling and a trellis is like a wall. How simple! That definitely makes this an arbour, even once the wisterias have grown to cover the structure more fully for, as he explains, “An arbour with a deep passageway adds to the sense of arrival that comes with passing through it, comparable to arriving in a home through a foyer rather than simply entering a door.” That helps me to understand why I enjoy this design so much!

 

Wisteria in the Anniversary Garden

I laid out the Anniversary Garden for my parents to commemorate their 50th wedding anniversary – it  lies below a tall wisteria arbour (the building of which was more difficult than my house!) and contains gold and mauve roses. Here is a photo taken in the last rays of the sun in November 2007 to show the mix of yellow and gold roses.

Truth be told, many of the roses have been unsuccessful and the garden is due for a major rethink, with the range of plants in the two outer beds being considerably extended, but continueing the mauve and yellow theme using shrubs and perennials and self-sowing annuals. The two central beds, flanking the rosemary-lined path, need a bit of tweaking only. Most successful have been the David Austin roses Molineux and Graham Stuart Thomas, Amber Queen and a marvellous new rose marketed as “South Africa”  here ( KORberbeni) – one of the most trouble free roses ever.

But at this season, with the roses still pushing their new shoots,  it is the wisteria that dominates, and it is these photo, taken today, that I really want to share with you. The first gives an overview of the garden. The arbour is long and narrow with a rounded edge on the garden side making the centre substantially narrower than the edges. There is a central path lined with rosemary and from the edges of the arbour paths lead down to the focal point at the end of the central path, thus dividing the garden into 4 triangular beds. It is a successful design and a potentially successful garden, but there is a vast amount of tweaking and improvement of maintenance needed before it will come into its own…

Just for the hell of it, here are a few more archive photos of the Anniversary Garden, starting with Buff Beauty grown against the reed fence under the arbour, seen through Veichenblau, the subject of the next photo. This old rambler is remarkably close in colouring to Rhapsody in Blue which is planted in the two central beds. This marvellous new rose has unfortunately not proved vigourous in my wet climate and sandy soil. To end with – the robust rose  we call South Africa.

 

Weekly pic: August week 1

Late winter is rose pruning time. With over 300 roses, and a climate too damp to really be rose country, it is quite a job, and one that this year I am trying to do myself as much as possible. There are many roses being given a year of TLC - and if they don't perform, they get dumped. Ruthless efficiency is my motto for the coming gardening year; we'll see if it goes the way of all new year's resolutions... This photo was taken in the Anniversary Garden: golden roses and mauve wisteria set the scene. It was my gift to my parents for their Golden Wedding Anniversary.

 

The main house from the arboritum

An overview of the more formal parts of the garden, below my parents' house. Alfred's Arches lead down from the front door axis with the gate that gives the Ellensgate Garden its name visible. Below that the wisteria pergola in the Anniversary Garden stands out. The long sweep to the right in the middle of the photo is the Rosemary Borders which flank the Rosemary Terrace. Beyond the next lawn is the canna bed, very frosted when this photo was taken in early July 2009 as the winter clean-up was starting. The Makou Dam that the house looks out on is visible at the bottom of the photo.