Clever planting softens impact

Gillian Vine admires a well-dressed concrete wall.

 

Older readers may recall grinding up a steep street to reach a garden centre in North East Valley. The nursery is long gone, its huge glasshouse demolished and replaced with a driveway, but the concrete retaining wall below is still in place, forming the upper boundary to Lyn and Richard Tozer’s property.

Years ago, when they told their boys they planned to move to a new house, Lyn and Richard were told "it has to have a big tree’’.

The place they chose had - and still has - a large willow, so the boys were happy.

The wall was another matter. At least 3m high and topped with a 1.5m fence, no-one could have considered it beautiful until Lyn began to grow plants that would drape the rough grey surface.

"There was 15cm max between the fence and the top of the wall," she said.

Into this narrow space, she began to place cuttings she had propagated, about "three dozen little ones" to begin with, moving along the strip as more small plants were ready for their new home.

Fast-growing geraniums, mainly the trailing ivy-leafed kind (Pelargonium peltatum) in pink and lavender, have done particularly well and form the backbone of the garden strip.

"The ivy geranium is so reliable, easy to propagate, has a mind of its own and will grow anywhere," Lyn said.

Between the ivy-leaved varieties are garden types of geranium (P. x hortorum), adding splashes of red and pink, with fuchsia and nasturtiums growing downwards and doing their bit to hide the wall.

Of the sprawling African flowers generally known as blue-eyed daisy or osteospermum, Lyn said, "they flourish’’.

The blooms open white in the sun and show the petals’ lavender undersides when closed. Incidentally, this plant has had a name change from Osteospermum fruticosum to Dimorphotheca fruticose. It has become something of an environmental pest in South Australia, southern Victoria and parts of Tasmania, but seems less inclined to behave badly here.

Apart from some cutting back in autumn and watering in dry weather, "that’s it", Lyn said of the wall plantings.

"It has proven a very good solution to a pretty ugly wall."

Not just the wall has had the benefit of Lyn’s propagating skills.

"Whenever I cut something down, I put a few cuttings in.

"We used to have a wee indoor plant business, many years ago," she said, and the habit of growing things from cuttings continues.

Looking around, I note a tray of small hoya plants, grown from a large specimen in the greenhouse. Elsewhere, potted pink hydrangeas are ready for new homes, with numerous other cuttings on the go around the garden.

The vegetable garden and greenhouse are well-situated below the house, although they sometimes catch the wind.

Richard has come up with a useful way of reducing weeding in the vegetable patch: he pulls old pallets apart and lays the untreated planks between the rows. This practice also reduces compaction of the soil.

Numerous trees and shrubs in the garden and beyond attract tui, korimako (bellbirds) and many other birds year-round, their songs clearly heard in the quiet neighbourhood.

"We have the sun and the view and peace and quiet; it’s lovely," Lyn said.