SUMMER GLORY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22718, 2 November 1935, Page 25

SUMMER GLORY

COLOUR IN THE GARDENS THE INCOMPARABLE AZALEA DISPLAY OF THE YEAR Summer has brightened everything in the Gardens to high colour and has blazoned hillside and river flat with a prodigality of hue which changes as one looks at it—a hue that recognises no proscribed territory but invades rock garden, flower bed and flat with myriad tones, rioting through everything and finally losing itself in • the mystery of summer green which clothes a thousand trees. The hawthorn, the rowan, the chestnut, all bloom in unusual profusion this year, breaking the massed bank of green ' in the arboretum, spreading wide branches over grassy slopes and glowing beds, and here and there a late cherry showers its snow white petals on the sward, the sober solanum. Crispin adds a touch of faint mauve, the laburnum blooms yellow in the yellower sunlight, and Japanese maple, scarlet oaks, lilacs, and a host of others give to the scene a gaily variegated aspect which only summer can know. • The flower beds are yellow and cream and red with polyanthus, gold and russet with wallflowers, and multicoloured with violas, anemones, ranunculi, stock, and here and there dainty nemesias, the first of the spring-planted annuals to break blossom. The daffodils, born to bloom for a day, have all but passed, the tulips are going, and in their place the panoply of summer is assembling for advance. The r- ses are leafing strongly, hardy annuals of all kinds arc reaching out in bad, irises are bursting their well-filled ears, hydrangeas are a mass of green and ready to bloom. The sweet peas are struggling upwards on their high supports and the lily garden is a mass of sprouts and shoots which will soon be soft-toned, fragile flowers. ' Among the exotic shrubs and trees the broom in a dozen forms displays as many colours, the peony blossoms blood red, the lilac sheds white and mauve and purple about it, and a host of strangers to the climate and surroundings in which they find themselves add more or less to the general scheme. The rock garden is a mass of contrasting hues which sweep in drifts of yellow and white and mauve over rock and earth alike. THE AZALEA GARDEN But for all the beauty and colour and variety of them all, even their massed effect cannot compare with the glory ot the azalea garden. Innumerable spikes of yellow and pink and white and red cover the squat bushes to the exclusion of almoflt'every touch of foliage, and the whole odorous mass seems to radiate warmth and brightness, stifling the green lawn with loveliness and providing without exception the moat glorious display of the year. Hundreds visit the garden every day, and have done so for the whole of the time this glory has blazed. Nor is the picture simply one of ; azaleas. Flowering cherries still linger, and magnolias, as though loath to depart while so much beauty continues, still cling to fading wax-like blooms, and every bed of azaleas is ringed with slender seedling polyanthi, and above tfiein; Ttave the blossom-laden fronds of labutnuhi;-or the shivering leaves of Japanese maples. DELL . Even the:rhododendrons in all their glory cannot outdo the azaleas in richness and beauty. Their piled up masses of pink, magenta, white and creamy yellow fill the dell, the general effect being rudely disturbed where now and then a splash of scarlet picks out some choice and rare variety. The dell is not yet at its best. While scores of bushes are simply submerged beneath a burden of colour, as many more are still carrying burgeoning buds that will later burst to maintain that continuity of appeal which is one of the main charms of this section of the Gardens. Flower lovers generally and the rhododendron fancier in particular will find scope for interesting and careful study in the dell this year, inasmuch as many of the young shrubs and seedlings which are blooming for the first time hail from the native habitat of the rhododendron —the highlands of Tibet —where they were gathered by the Kock Expedition of a few years ago which visited the Forbidden country under the auspices of the National Geographic Society. When these varieties come of age and bloom properly there will he many new types and shades to be admired in the dell. THE WINTER GARDEN In the winter garden the ceaseless cycle of beauty goes on. The houses are full and the benches almost groan under the odorous weight they bear. The cinerarias have had their day and have ceased to be, and in their stead the schizanthus reigns. Few flowers, hothouse or outdoor, can reproduce the exquisite markings and butterfly frailty of these vari-coloured blooms. Their dainty petals are marked with the most beautiful tracery and their shades exhaust the spectrum. Side by side with them clarkias and rhemanias flower in slender grace and provide a delightful contrast. In another department the calceolaria holds sway and fills the air with sweetness, while two whole benches through another doorway carry tier after tier of primulas generously sprinkled with the red and white of cyclamen, the modest little primulas hiding with their freshness the fading beauty of the cyclamen, which are rapidly approaching their finish. Conceding nothing in either loveliness of form or distinction of colouring, the quaint streptocarpus more than justifies the setting aside of a whole house to its special charms, and just through the doorway in the tropical house a dozen exotically coloured blooms flourish in their steaming atmosphere and provide a welcome contrast to the profuse green of healthy, moist foliage which grows thick and large and almost unnaturally green. BEHIND THE SCENES And while Nature works her wonders in the out-of-doors and fills the landscape with colour the genius of the expert gardener is at work behind the scenes in the houses on top of the hill. Here Mr Tannock works out the rotation of his displays and prepares for their continuity, sowing, forcing, pricking out, potting on, hardening, and doing those hundred and one things that good gardeners do when they want to make sure that the succession of colour and growth will be maintained unbroken. There is an immense amount of work to be done here, as well as in the flower beds and the plots, and a staff of more than a dozen expert gardeners and students is kept constantly busy coping with the requirements of the season. The trainees at present under Mr Tannock's care number a dozen, of whom half a dozen are girls, and so attractive does the prospect of such work appear to young girls that Mr Tannock has a waiting list with which he has been unable to cope for years. But even with the assistance of 12 students, he and his expert staff are hard pressed to keep pace with Nature when she is in as benevolent a mood as she is at the moment.