Friday 3rd July, 2026
Hi
By all accounts it's been a hectic week. Full noise at work potting 15,000 trees: check, shifting house: check, helping relative shift house: check, family unveiling: check, two key staff members away: check. At times like this it's sometimes good to stop and smell the roses (so to speak). We all get busy with "stuff" and the simple things in life just seem to be a bit hard. Catching up with friends, enjoying a meal with family, a cup of tea and cake with your workmates...it's what life is all about. Having people around you to help shoulder the load makes it a bit more doable.
In the last week or so I have come to appreciate more the skill and care which my colleagues bring to their work-life. Having people around you who are striving to achieve excellence makes my life a bit easier. Having a laugh when life is tough generally helps too... And thanks for the cake Lloyd. It was a "thank you" to our hardworking potting team and the dedicated dispatchers who are run off their feet, and the garden centre and office staff holding everything together with a skeleton staff. Hats off to you all.
Winter is really here
On the plant front, there's been some doozy frosts this week which has really kicked us straight into winter mode. Lloyd pointed out to me the
Sally Holmes roses in our display garden which are flowering a beautiful shade of pale pink. Quite different to their normal colouring of creamy white with a faint pink blush. From a scientific point of view this is a normal plant reaction to cold weather which prompts them to convert sugar into deeper pigments. The production of anthocyanins, which are the pigments responsible for blue, violet and red, is increased when the air temperature drops into the lowest range. These pigments actually improve plant tolerance of low temperatures. You might ask "Why are your roses still flowering!?". We did prune them quite late this year and so Sally Holmes, which is such a reliable and long flowering variety, simply had to produce another flush.
Top Ten Deciduous Fruit Trees: Part Two
No list of best fruit trees should be without
Plums, in fact I will devote a whole section to them below for you to pick your favourite, but I recommend
Luisa as the best for the home gardener in the Waikato. Also on the list today are apples which are due to arrive soon. Top of my list for these are old favourites
Granny Smith and
Golden Delicious. Granny is one of my favs for eating; straight out of the fridge, crisp and juicy. Golden Delicious is great for cooking and one of the later ripening varieties which means it can be enjoyed for autumn desserts with
Feijoa or
Tamarillo, or just on its own. If you are looking for sweeter apples check out
Royal Gala - an improved form of the original Gala with darker red skin and creamy white flesh.
Splendour is another kiwi bred apple which is crisp, juicy and great for eating fresh.
Personally, I love
Figs, so I have to include them in this list as they are also easy to grow and generally very productive. The main issue seems to be that they can be hard to protect from the birds, so it may require some creative covering solutions in order to get your crop. As well as being one of the oldest cultivated crops on the planet,
Figs are horticulturally interesting as the fruit are actually inverted flowers. They require a special fig wasp which crawls into the pod-like capsule, lays her eggs and then dies. Before you say "ewww", the plant digests the wasp and absorbs it so there are no "bits" left when you bite into a juicy fig. Locally bred varieties include
Vlassoff, which has large round fruit that are purple/black when mature and contain succulent red flesh. It produces crops in January and April.
Mrs Williams is another two-crop variety and has a dark purple skin and delicious red flesh. Protect from heavy frost. If you have a really warm, frost-free position then
Panache is a great variety with stripy green/yellow skin and red flesh.
Plums
In the past there would be few backyards in New Zealand without a
plum tree. They are the ubiquitous fruit tree; easy to grow, produce heaps of fruit in virtually any conditions and versatile as eating or cooking components. I just about shed a tear or two as I listened to our neighbour cutting down the plum which stood on the boundary fence and used to drop large quantities of delicious, juicy, dark red plums in summer over on our side. They were great for eating and I preserved lots for having with my porridge and also for making desserts (and that was just my side of the fence!). I think it was a
Hawera which is an unusual plum in that it doesn't require a pollinator.
Most plums do enjoy a better crop if they have a buddy nearby which means bees travel from one to the other during sunny days. Check out the list of plum pollinators
here and further information about rootstocks and pruning
here. On the theme of self-fertile plums, I reckon that the best of the whole lot are the
Luisa Plums. In case you haven't tried it yet; you should! It is a prolific produce of large, yellow oval-shaped plums with a red tinge which are sweet and juicy (grab a basin to eat it over). As an added bonus they are healthy and disease resistant, which is certainly a plus in my book. Us older folk will also be familiar with
Black Doris which, when paired with
Elephant Heart,
Santa Rosa or
Billingtons Early,
will also be a large producer.
Top ten Ornamental trees (Part two)
Back to the Ginkgos - they will look stunning with their soft yellow leaves in autumn and will create a beautiful carpet to drive up in a few years. For other forms of Ginkgo check out
Little Weeper,
Jade Butterlies and - number 6 in the countdown -
Autumn Gold. You can see a photo of the latter, as seen from our potting shed, in our newsletter of
6th June.
7. Cercis Forest Pansy is the perfect tree for a courtyard or sheltered garden. With its delicate framework of zigzag branches, and pretty heart-shaped deep burgundy leaves, it's a stunner. Coral pink flowers along the stems in the spring add to the picture. For something a bit different, check out
Cercis Hearts of Gold which have leaves that are the same shape but golden in colour. No list of great trees for gardens would be complete without
Dogwoods (Cornus). I saw some gorgeous examples of these when I was travelling in Europe last year; spring is time to enjoy the pretty white or pink flowers (which are actually bracts or modified leaves rather than petals surrounding the real flowers). 8.
Cherokee Princess 9.
Eddies White wonder. 10.
Claret Ash Fraxinus raywoodii comes in to round out the top ten as a stunning tree for a large space. Deep burgundy leaves in autumn which are narrow and elegant and start off a fresh green in spring. See the rest of our Fraxinus (Ash trees),
here.
New at the Nursery
Boronias are one of my Mum's favourites and she particularly likes the brown
Megastima variety which has a sweet perfume and brown flowers with an underside of yellow. There are a few different forms including
Denticulata,
Lipstick and
Purple Jared which have various shades of purple or pink, all with the delicious fragrance. They prefer good drainage and love full sun to produce the best flowers and fragrance. Water sparingly until the summer months.
Banksias are newly arrived also, and these are perfect for bringing in our feathered friends. They are found in many forms from ground cover to large trees, so check out which may be most suitable for your place. These guys love perfect drainage and don't mind sandy or poor soils. Plant in full sun for them to thrive and protect from heavy frosts when young.
Have a lovely weekend. Best wishes, Tracy.
Cheers from Lloyd, Tony and the Wairere Team.
