Is autumn far behind?

Press, 29 January 1982, Page 11

Is autumn far behind?

Gardener’s IM DIARY

Derrick Rooney

The end of January marks a turn in the gardening year ■ as sharply defined as the change, in the opposite season, from July to August. Just as August is the month when the crocuses open, and other spring flowers begin their run up to the spectacular displays of September and October, so February in many gardens is. the first month of autumn.

The days are still hot, but the nights are coolfer, and perceptibly longer, we begin again to get dew, and some time during the month we can hope for the _first of the autumn rains; ' And everywhere, amid the sun-tattered foliage and the fading summer flowers, there are clues to treasure.

The response of plants to the cool nights and dews of autumn is as dramatic as the response, in the opposite season, to the spring sunshine; maybe it is less conspicuous, because at first much of the action is underground. Long-dormant autumnflowering bulbs are beginning to fatten up and make vigorous root growth. Some cyclamen are already in flower; they will go on, in their various species, until autumn has passed to winter, and winter to spring. The brilliant crinums, tritonias, and their cousins are coming into flower, and soon they will ■be peaking. Other big bulbs are sending up flower shoots. New leaves are appearing on the zephyranthes. Underground, the crocuses and colchicums are busy. Dig one up in a couple of weeks and you will find it has strong, new roots and a fat flower-bud already formed and ready to burst out; in a month or less they will be in flower.

On the rock garden, too, there are signs of renewed life. Fat flower buds are poking out of the lovely, latefloweririg Galtonia viridiflora; elsewhere in the garden, among a group of rhododendrons, its green bells are out already. Geranium wallichianum has begun its long run, the miniature astilbes are out, and the late-flower-ing members of the campanula tribe are showing colour. Some of the early ones are gathering a second wind.

Among these there are, as there always should be in any garden, however large or small, surprises. One is an albino which turned up in a batch of seedlings of the dwarf Platycodon “Apoyama.” This is a sort of “Reader’s Digest” edition of the familiar balloon flower — a border favourite seated down to rock-garden size.

The balloon flower is one of the Oldest Inhabitants of our gardens, having been in English-speaking cultivation since the mid-1700s, at which time it was sent from China (or maybe Japan) by some intrepid travelling salesman. English and American catalogues list numerous named varieties, but only one is readily obtainable here — a form which grows 30cm to 40cm high, has stout stems which need no staking,

and in early summer begins to open a succession of large blue flowers which will continue at intervals until autumn. The colour is a clear, mid-violet blue.

“Apoyama” is a Japanese reduced form, said to come true from seed; and my seedlings, in their second year, are less than half the height of the border plant. Most of theip have the ex-

pected blue flowers but one — as luck has it, one which I planted in a prominent place — has extra large, milkwhite flowers with all their ribs and veins marked by vivid violet lines. If this exciting perennial has a defect, it is that the flowers are useless for picking — on the plant they last for several days, but if picked and put in a vase they collapse almost immediately. The blue ones are no better.

Their popular name, incidentally, was prompted by the singular appearance of the unopened buds. These couple the remarkable property of colouring up long before they open with an apparent reluctance to open: the buds huff and huff and puff until finally, at bursting point, they look like perfect replicas of a fleet of over-

inflated hot-air balloons ready to take off into the wild blue. At that stage it is difficult to resist the temptation to squeeze a bud or two to make them pop, and disappointing to find, as you pick squashy petals off your fingers, that unlike real balloons, they don’t. Platycodons are closely related to the campanulas, the family of bellflowers which has produced innumerable treasures for both border and rock garden. A new one, only a few centimetres high, was starting to flower in my garden last week. This came a few' months ago from a Southland nursery noted for its magician’s hat from which garden treasures pop out like rabbits at regular intervals. It is called “Crimp,” and it is so new that as yet it isn’t in the catalogue, but I daresay that soon it will be as keenly sought by the rockgarden fraternity as that other beautiful little campanula, “Maie Blyth,” which it closely resembles in habit. I have no information on the pedigree of “Crimp,” and “Maie Blyth” occurred as a chance seedling in a Timaru garden, so its parents are unknown, too, but there is a suggestion about both of them of the Carpathian bellflower, Campanula carpatica, admixed with, something very much more rare and choice. Some small campanulas, beautiful as they are, behave like bulldozers: they blunder about all over the rock garden, fill all the crevices, arid bury anything in their way. But “Maie Blyth" and "Crimp” are stay-at-homes which form hard little clumps that look as if they will take years to reach any size.

“Maie Blyth” has the larger flowers, in two curiously luminous tones Of campanula blue: those of “Crimp” have a firmer texture, and a deeper colour. The name puzzled me until the first flower opened, whereupon all became clear: down the middle of each petal is a perfectly ironed pleat, as though the flower had been processed by some abnormally fastidious laundry.