Mary's garden
By Mitch Graham
Standing magnificently behind hand-chipped brick walls in Tupare’s orchard paddock is a mature Fagus sylvatica ‘Pupurea’ or European beech tree.
These days, it offers welcome summer shade to garden visitors seated near the terraced cottage borders. When the tree was younger and beginning to grow strong, Lady Matthews would spend time here tending her sun-drenched garden borders, picking the flowers to take them to the local hospice.
She loved roses, and ‘Whisky’, with its rich, golden-amber flowers, was a favourite.
Conditions have changed in the borders over the years, but we still keep this part of the garden as a place Lady Matthews would enjoy for its flowers.
Along with the roses, irises and dianthus we have salvias flowering in summer now.
Salvias belong to the mint family (a family with unusual four-sided stems) and provide fragrance and flower colour to the garden. They are a diverse genus, and with hundreds of different species you may find one perfectly suited to your own garden. Most have flowers displayed on upright spikes in a range of colours throughout the spectrum.
One of my personal favourites at Tupare is the Mexican Salvia patens ‘Guanajuato’, with large deep blue flowers and copper marked arrowhead shaped leaves.
In full flower now is S. nemerosa showing off abundant spikes of violet blue flowers.
The larger and yellow flowered S. glutinosa compliments the blues elsewhere in the border.
Due to flower late summer and autumn is S. azurea, with slender spikes of sky blue flowers on fine grey-green leaves.
Carefully timed pruning of salvias will ensure you have healthy plants that flower well for years to come. The herbaceous types can be cut to ground level after flowering. The shrub salvias should have three-quarters of their growth removed by secateurs after the risk of frost has passed.
If you need proof that they’re worth looking after, come to Tupare on the next sunny day and sit the shade beneath the beech where Lady Matthews gained much pleasure tending her flower-filled gardens.
 |
Mitch Graham (left) is Garden Manager - Tupare for the Taranaki Regional Council This column was published in the Taranaki Daily News on 27 January 2012 |
