Excerpt from June 2019 journal
Rose ramblings
by Leonie Kearney

Cooler days and nights are such a gift to Queensland gardeners, bringing huge changes to our gardens. Even though it is widely accepted that we do not have the classic seasonal changes that occur in the southern states, our gardens do flourish and evolve beautifully with these lower temperatures. Colours are richer and the greens are softer as the sun is getting towards its lowest point in the northern sky. Use this wonderful time to your advantage.

Barbara and Rex Wickes had their final Open Garden weekend with a fantastic crowd of garden lovers having a terrific time. The garden was just lovely and as usual there was a star of the day. It was Barb’s Phaleria clerodendron tree. It was just magnificent, as if it knew it was to be the star attraction. For those who are not familiar with this tree, it is roughly 5m tall and 4m wide with brilliant white flowers that appear on the trunk and branches, in great profusion. There was a lovely photograph of the tree on The Poppy cover in June 2017 if you wish to refer to it. This lovely tree is a native to the north Queensland rainforests and as a result loves a moist, semi-shaded position. It was a fantastic weekend for all garden lovers and a chance for them to see plenty of flowers and terrific ways to display them, to achieve a stunning garden. Thank you Barb and Rex.

After some beautiful soaking rain it’s a treat to see my roses flourishing and flowering in great profusion. ‘Penelope Musk’ is flowering and bringing joy to the garden. It was bred by Reverend Pemberton in the UK in 1924 and so it is getting close to 100 years old. Not so at my place, where it is a young thing around 1.1m tall, with lovely clusters of semi-double, creamy ruffled flowers with golden stamens in the centre. It does develop some orange hips in autumn that are quite attractive. Also like most of the Musk Roses it has a sweet perfume.

‘Madame Berkeley’ is a Tea Rose not commonly seen but should be in more gardens as it is one of the Tea Roses that does not grow too tall. Growing to around 1 to 1.1m high, it can fit in most gardens and the lovely apricot pink perfectly formed roses that come frequently are a delight. Foliage is healthy and there is some fragrance. A bunch of ‘Madame Berkeley’ roses with some lavender spires or some spires of the Salvia leucantha is food for the soul. This rose was bred in 1899 so has quite a history and should be in gardens for many years to come.

Another rose that is showing off shamelessly at the moment is the ‘Unnamed Single Pink Rose’. This is a Polyantha Rose which loves southeast Queensland. It came to me from an elderly gentleman and he thought it was a seedling that appeared in his garden. I did not get to ask him to name it, so it goes by this unusual name but all who grow it love it. This is a rose that can grow to 1.2m tall and easily a metre wide. It smothers itself with huge trusses of single pink roses. At every node, there is another bunch of blooms appearing. It can be kept shorter and makes a stunning plant in a large container. Some think this is not a real rose but it has plenty of prickles to remind you that it is and it gets small red hips in winter, if not deadheaded. Plant it with the Tea Rose ‘Duchesse de Brabant’ as the flowers are a similar shade of pink. Looking like trusses of hydrangea, these flowers are old-fashioned roses that I can safely recommend for the ‘picking garden’. They keep well for up to a week, looking just gorgeous. As with all roses, deadheading will encourage reasonably quick repeat blooming.

I am very aware that our membership is always changing and to new members I say welcome and please ask if you do not understand what we are talking about. The roses that I grow and recommend are mostly Heritage and Old-fashioned Roses that, after 30 years of trial and error, I feel I can confidently recommend for you to grow in a cottage garden in southeast Queensland. The main requirement I have is that they do not need regular spraying with harmful chemicals. I have trialled roses to suit our humid climate and found, most commonly, the very old roses, some up to 200 years old, do flourish here. These are the roses the early settlers brought, to remind them of their homelands. They have been found to survive neglect and still grow and flower when conditions are suited to them.
There are of course some exceptions and in the book Old-fashioned roses in a subtropical Climate, the good performers are listed. It is available for sale. See Merchants section.

Excerpt June 2018 journal
A seasonal compilation from the writings of Denise Horchner
compiled by Lorraine Roberts

Tree dahlias
The first plant I ever grew was the plain mauve one which is probably still the best and most reliable, growing to unbelievable heights, to 5m, but there are several other lovely types that grow quite well here. There are single as well as double white forms of Dahlia imperialis that do not grow as tall, usually to 3.5m. Another cultivar Dahlia imperialis var. Costa Rica has rich maroon blooms with a bright gold centre and attractive bronze foliage. The latter is a more compact type of plant (you don’t need a ladder to pick the flowers) and it also flowers for a much longer period (but starting a little bit later) from May to early October.

Tree dahlias are very easy to propagate, and should you order one by mail you will receive nothing more than what appears to be a thick, woody stalk of bamboo. If you are a new gardener you may feel outraged, maybe you will think you have been ‘diddled’. However, when you have recovered you should lay this cutting in a wide shallow pot of potting mix, cover with soil and press down firmly. Very soon shoots will appear from every ring on the piece. You can saw these shoots off to make individual plants (making sure of course that you have a good piece of wood on each side) or plant the whole section in the garden where it will make a lovely, bushy plant. You can also stand the cutting upright in a pot and cover with soil and the same thing will happen.

When your plant has finished flowering, you should cut it down almost to the base. It will then grow quite high again, and once more you should cut it down by about 50% at least or you will end up having a tree dahlia living up to its name. When a tree dahlia gets too high it will easily get broken in windy conditions.

Louisiana iris
Louisiana iris love food and the most important time to feed them is in autumn, then again in early August and yet again in late spring, after they have flowered. Alternatively, we are told that ‘little and often’ is very good with azalea/camellia fertilisers being most favoured. Also if you are potting-up louisianas make sure you use potting mix for acid loving plants. It is advisable not to use animal manures because they contain salts, seeds and fungal spores. One of this species’ requirements is to be generously mulched, especially important in cooler parts. The rhizomes should be planted about 3cm below the soil surface in rich, well composted acid soil and once established can then be covered with 5-8cm mulch. Good sources of naturally acidic mulches are pine needles, deciduous leaves, coffee grounds and lucerne pellets.

These iris will also grow in sandy soils so long as their growing conditions are improved with compost etc. They can be planted about 1m apart at any time except during the months of September and October and a slow-release fertilizer can be used at planting time. They multiply quickly and are easily divided every 2-3 years (discarding the rhizomes that have finished flowering) with autumn being the best time to do this. Ideal plants for ponds and the edges of dams, they greatly enhance these areas, especially when in abundant flower.

(Some of this material was sourced from Cicely Wylie’s great book ‘History of plants’ as well as an article by Heather and Bernard Pryor of Iris Haven)

Chinese foxglove (Rehmannia elata formerly R. angulata)
This most attractive plant which is a genus of five species has dark green, irregularly notched and serrated lance-shaped leaves which form large rosettes that lie flat on the ground. From the centre of the rosette rise dainty wands of rosy pink foxglove-like flowers that have a yellow throat marked with dark spots and splotches. The large flower is slightly flattened after it emerges from the bud then flares out with the upper two rounded petals swept back. It is most attractive and if grown in conditions to its liking (shady, bright light to sunny) it tends to romp around happily everywhere, easy to forgive. Propagation is by seed or cuttings taken in winter.

Excerpt June 2018 journal
A seasonal compilation from the writings of Denise Horchner
compiled by Lorraine Roberts

Excerpt from June 2003 journal
Autumn in the garden
by Denise Horchner

Thryptomene: Do you desire a small, dainty plant whose very pretty pink flowers will call the butterflies to your garden? Thryptomene is a small, and very pretty addition to any garden. It is an Australian native evergreen originating in WA. One of the best forms for this area is ‘Payne’s Hybrid’ which is a small plant growing to only about 1m in height with a gentle weeping habit. This hardy little plant has a very long flowering period, actually for most of the year, but particularly during winter and spring. It requires a reasonably warm position with good drainage, and should never be allowed to completely dry out. The small dainty flower sprays are very popular as a cut flower, they make wonderful ‘fillers’ in a flower arrangement. The variety T. calycina is grown particularly for the florist’s trade. However, the most popular garden variety for this part of the world is the ‘Payne’s Hybrid’.

Around the garden: Every time I step outside my back door on these cooler mornings, it pleases me greatly to see the glowing crimson bracts splashed with yellow, of Ruellia colorata. With their central spikes of apricot bells they resemble glowing candles. Have any of you noticed that the flowers of turnera, the very attractive plant with such an awful name that have the irritating habit of shutting early in the afternoon, now it is cooler, stay open until much later in the day? Datura and brugmansia flowers last much longer too.

Coming to the end of our first month of autumn everything is growing so wonderfully, now free from the shackles of heat and humidity. Some plants that are very good in my garden at the moment are gaillardias, their lovely rich autumn colours harmonising so beautifully with a tall clump of gold and rusty red Texan wildflowers Cosmidium thelesperma, and nearby, a profusely flowering clump of winter tarragon making a lovely splash of sunshine yellow. There is more gorgeous gold in the Mexican marigold bush (Tagetes lemonii) which is massed with flowers. The first flowers of the wintersweet (Acokanthera oblongifolia) are appearing, there are still some dark purple olive-like seed heads on the bush which I shall have to plant up. This interesting shrub is blooming next to a large Arabian jasmine (Jasmin sambac) which has long sprays of thickly packed glistening white blooms, so there is a double dose of perfume there.

Salvia madrensis has been wonderful as usual with its huge candles of bright yellow and one particular clump was very pleasing mixed in with thick feathery sprays of S. purpurea, such a pleasing shade of rosy mauve. Underneath, the long sprays of S. leucantha, whose velvety flowers are the richest shade of purple, get even better as the weeks go by, even though they have already been blooming for so long. S.iodantha started in early April, its sprays of bright cerise flowers are really nothing at first until all of a sudden, they fully expand and then are a beautiful sight. This colour looks particularly nice with a tall shrubby plectranthus blooming close by (not ecklonii) which has numerous sprays of soft jacaranda blue, slightly similar to salvia flowers, which will bloom for months from now on. This plant is adored by bees.

Another large shrub salvia blooming at this time is S. gesneriiflora ‘Tequila’ with large sprays of brilliant red with black, it makes a bright picture, but I found it hard to find something to ‘go’ with it until I thought of S. ‘Costa Rica Blue’ – lovely! Another pretty salvia is ‘Pink Icicles’ with its long, arching sprays of silvery pink flowers that gradually elongate. S. discolour, which I have kept in a pot for nearly nine years has never been without flowers the year round, a quite amazing plant. Waiting for their turn and building up strength are the huge winter flowering S. involucrata ‘Bethellii’, also S. karwinskii, the latter really is like a small tree in my garden. I have an interesting salvia bush which has snow white flowers all the year round, but this week there is a single spray of brilliant red and white flowers making a noisy statement amongst the white.

Beautiful Montanoa bipinnatifida is in full, glorious bloom, now that is a daisy… .3m high. And right on time year after year. There are two types of montanoa, one that has small flowers and the other, much larger, with longer petals. I prefer the latter but other gardeners like the smaller one best. Another plant flowering now is the dainty snowflake bush (Euphorbia leucocephola) and I have noticed this year for the first time my bush is flowering on one side only, the side facing our big street light has many buds but they will not bloom. Apparently this is a phenomenon peculiar to this plant, very annoying!

From the editor: Turnera elegans ‘Just Dandy’ is the plant Denise refers to and since this article was written Turnera elegans ‘Early Bird’ was released. Both plants seem to have disappeared from nurseries, however some of our members who sell at meetings are likely to have these for sale. ‘Just Dandy’, with pale lemon flowers, layers a little but ‘Early Bird’, with a bright yellow flower grows from a central stem. Both have the habit as Denise states of closing their flowers around 1pm. Stunning additions to a cottage garden.

Excerpt from June 2003 journal
Autumn in the garden
by Denise Horchner