'Just the right kinetic touch’

Press, 21 February 1986, Page 15

'Just the right kinetic touch’

wild plant grows mostly in seepage areas among tussocks and damp places among rocks. In the garden it tolerates drier conditions. A combination that I like places this astelia alongside Hydrangea "Preziosa,” with the heavier foliage of camellias and rhododendrons on each side. “Preziosa” is a form of Hydrangea acuminata (formerly known as H. serrata) and is a fine shrub which has never received the recognition it deserves. Of more upright and daintier habit than

more often found in damp places deeper in the bush. Female plants have attractive fruit which ripens bright orange, but even without fruit this is a handsome plant. Larger than A. nervosa, with which it was at one time confused, A. fragrans can be readily identified by its smooth green leaves with two strong red veins which run the length of the upper surface. Astelia petriei, a plant of open places among tussocks or light scrub, is similar to A. fragrans but much smaller, and has stiffer leaves. I grow it with tussocks, celmisia, and one of the prostrate manzanita shrubs (Arctostaphyylos “Point Reyes”) from California in another native/exotic combination which seems to work. Plants from islands might be expected to have some affinity, and this has proved to be the case with Olearia traversii (the variegated form) and Euphorbia mellifera. Neither of these is at all well known in gardens, though the plain-leafed form of the olearia is sometimes grown as a hedge, a purpose for which it is tailormade. Euphorbia mellifera is closely related to the Mediterranean E. characias (sometimes called E. wulfenii), which is quite a common winter-flowering shrub in gardens in and around Christchurch, and may even be naturalised (it certainly got into my

buted. The ordinary form makes a larger and more spreading shrub or small tree. Cuttings of both forms, taken in autumn, strike readily. Another very successful blend of native and exotic plants dominates a vista in part of my garden. This combines a pair of red tussocks (Chionochloa rubra) with a golden form of the evergreen honeysuckle shrub, Lonicera nitida, and a spiky-leaved conifer, Juniperus riglda, whose branches weep elegantly. Both these exotics are somewhat heavy textured, and the tussocks have just the right kinetic touch that prevents the whole group from becoming ponderous. Every now and then the lonicera grows too big for its boots, and I get stuck in with hedge-trimmers and secateurs, and give it a short back and sides. This is one of those useful shrubs that you can prune as hard as you like at almost any time of the year. Within a few weeks it will be refurnished with fresh young shoots, which are much more brightly coloured than the old ones.

Juniperus rigida, incidentally, is not a shrub to plant near a path where people will brush against it; the needles are fiercely pointed, and it is from this feature that it takes it name, and not from its branching habit, which is anything but rigid.