YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 66, 27 September 1940, Page 35

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 46)

Spring Flowering Shrubs HRUBS are perhaps the least exS acting and the most repaying of all garden subjects grown for beauty -though many of the flowering peaches, plums and apples bear useful fruit as well as blooms. The old favourite Prunus Pissardie is still valued as a very early variety, and the purple foliage makes a delightful contrast to the spring green of weeping willows and elms. Flowering cherries are too numerous to mention here, and I would hesitate to name a "best" amongst these lovely brides of spring. However, for anyone seeking a double white, Prunus Avium Florepleno would be difficult to better. The double pink Kazan, or Hizakura, with delicate bronze foliage is a delightful spring cherry which later shows a particularly brilliant autumn tint. Then there is Ukon, bearing very large semidouble cream blossoms, There are now five single-flowered cherries in white and pink. Flowering almonds, as well as cherries and peaches, all thrive wonderfully on a chalky soil, and grow satisfactorily almost anywhere. Davidiana, an early flowering peach, is still one of the finest, while the very deep crimson flowered Russel’s Red is strikingly beautiful. All the varieties of Flowering Apples are worthy of a place and are both useful and decorative till late autumn when the apples make excellent jelly. Generally spoken of as " Japonica," Cydonia Japonica is an old springtime friend which no newcomer can oust from my affection, For several weeks I have delighted in large branching sprays of Cydonia Japonica, white, pale pink, and a deeper salmon shade, in my vases. Japonica is a very effective indoor decoration and has the virtue of not readily shedding petals if picked in the bud and allowed to open indoors. Also it is pleas-

ant to know that a change of water now and then is all your vases need to keep them attractive for at least a fortnight. Indoors or out, the brilliant otangescented Japonica is a perfect foil for the pale narcissi, There is also a dark brickred of which I have recently been promised a root. It will look particularly well grown next to my pure white one. There are so many spring shrubs all worthy that I would advise those intending to plant to pay a visit to some botanical garden or a large-scale nursery and see the shrubs in bloom now. Choose your shrubs carefully, remembering the size of your section and the particular spot your choice is to occupy -also what neighbours it will have to live beside. In buying from a good nurseryman you receive not only a good shrub, but if you seek it, good advice as to the suitability of a specimen for your type of soil or situation. A small error can destroy a perfectly good plant. I ruined two cherished brown-and-gold boronia by planting them in a well-limed soil. They died because I did not know that even in the most sheltered position, boronia will not tolerate lime. If your soil lacks sand, be sure to put a layer under each gladioli corm. The risk of rotting from a wet spell is thus reduced and your gladioli will appreciate the attention. Most gardeners plant their corms at intervals to ensure a long season of blooming. Some remarkable results have been obtained also by varying the depth of planting-the deeper plantings of course producing later flowers. I may have told you, but I really wish to stress it, that gladioli set in beds with dwarf antirrhinums — the sterile chalk pink for preference — are very attractive at flowering and can ripen off without offending the eyes of fastidious garden lovers, |