From Taupo Tardis to Reluctant Geezer

From Taupo Tardis to the reluctant Geezer Monday 19 May
Last night the membership sub-committee met for the final time prior to our Board meeting in Auckland. We have been very effectively chaired for the past twelve months by Bill Barr. Bill will be leaving the committee at the end of the year and as a relative new comer to the International Board , I would like to put on record that he will be sorely missed.
The Bayview Chateau hotel sits majestically at the base of Mt Ruapehu. Our early morning guide and general manager of Taupo Native Plants , Philip Smith, remarked that he was relieved to see us survive the night, as the hotel is in the direct firing line of this very active volcano.
For those of you who feel that the tour is all about indulgence, drinking fine wines and knocking back boutique beers, please cut us some slack, as this morning we are up early and out by 7.30 am , in close to sub zero conditions, for a walk on the great mountain. Philip, who in a previous career worked for the Department of Conservation and now runs a leading native plant nursery, guided us through the native flora, as we spent the next two hours on the hillside. The flora is relatively impoverished as it is regularly covered in ash and larva. Predominant species include hebe, brachyglottis, celmisia, griselinia and stipa. Calluna vulgaris is prevalent, and is now considered an invasive weed. It was introduced to the area as a food source for grouse- they didn’t survive but the heather now thrives. We then moved on up to the ski centre, passing a mountain gulley full of one of NZ’s most spectacular plants, the mountain cabbage tree – Cordyline indivisa. This is when I begin to really get excited. It’s looks like corydline australis but on steroids and reminds me of the giant senecios found on kilimanjaro.
Philip is currently undertaking a large revegetation project across the ski runs. Each year just before the snows arrive matting is placed over the runs to protect the alpine plants that are slowly re-covering the ground. Included from this walk is a picture of GB&I’s International representatives Pete Bingham and the author. Pete often reminds me that he is from the low country, being a fen boy, so although we were at now more than 5000 feet , I think Pete was feeling a little light headed.
Next stop Taupo Native Plants. Taupo is a thriving resort town much frequented by the kiwi. The town is situated on the edge of Lake Taupo which is the largest lake in the southern hemisphere and was formed thousands of years ago as a result of three massive volcanic eruptions. It is still possible to bathe in hot spring water rising from the lake floor.
It was great to return to Taupo Native Plants. Four years back I spent a month working on Philip’s nursery, getting to grips with the native flora. Philip provided me with opportunities to look beyond the nursery and so I got involved with the revegetation of a river bank, I went out collecting seed and cutting material, visited other nurseries and walked the Tongariro Crossing, one of NZ top ten ‘tramps’ I have much to be thankful.
Philip is another one of those great characters, opinionated but open minded , someone always wishing to challenge himself and others and it is all done with a great deal of good humour. The nursery has literally doubled in size as it now works off a second site in Auckland and produces in the region of two million native plants annually. Ninety-seven percent of these are raised from seed.
Much of the material grown is eco sourced which provides the opportunity of supplying plant material from a number of different locations and environments from right across New Zealand , this is what many projects demand when re-vegetating areas with native flora.
The nursery covers an area of fifty acres and is at the centre of the most active geo thermal area in New Zealand. The nursery makes use of this and all the nursery heating is supplied via the heated waters. Most were fascinated by the steam rising from out the ground and the all pervading sulphurous odour. Of particularly note was the steaming tardis located in one corner of the nursery.
After lunch we drove North to Rotorua , stopping off briefly to visit the Huka falls. Rotorua is the Maori cultural capital of New Zealand and the home of a number of geothermal parks. We visited a Maori village where, after much coaxing, the two geezers spluttered into life.

Show me the way to a tarmarillo

Sunday 18 May Show me the way to Tamarillo
Manaku village nursery - Sue and Geoff Stent took us round their one and a half acre liner nursery. They produce in the region of 350 000 units annually, all for the domestic market. This was a great example of a well run nursery. It was tidy, well organised with systems set to match production. It communicated clearly to me the type of people Sue and Geoff are and I felt very comfortable walking round, particularly when I saw a sticker pronouncing that we were in a nuclear weapon free zone ! The photos I hope tell their own story.
They concentrate on growing trees and shrubs both from seed and cuttings with lavandula being an important crop. As a small producer they cannot always compete on price, range or volume, so instead emphasise customer care and quality. (same days delivery is not unusual) One third of production is contract grown. The remainder is sold as free stock, with the nursery producing an annual catalogue and monthly availability lists.
Next we visited Starter Plants and Eddie and Jan Walsh. We arrived at 11.20 and would you believe, we sat down to lunch. Eddie is one of those 100% kind of guys and lunch was all home made with most ingredients being home grown. He is someone it is very difficult not to immediately like.
Lunch included a choice of pumpkin and a broccoli parsnip and pototo soup, recently baked quiches and a selection of cakes, all washed down with freshly squeezed juices including feijoa and tamarillo. As a vegetarian this was definitely the culinary high point of our trip- thank you Eddie and Jan !
The nursery is equally impressive, its open ground, and concentrates on just a few genera including liriope, agapanthus, libertia, phormium and, most impressively, eucomis. Eddie has bred a range of eucomis which are now being trialed across Europe. The range of flower and foliage colours was very impressive.
The nursery is producing young plant material to the highest quality. The nursery itself is of a manageable size , with most operations not needing to be overly mechanised. The eucomis bulbs are lined out on I m long shade cloth and covered with saw dust. The bulbs are harvested by simply lifting up the netting and then knocking off onto a bench.
Eddie has one hectare under production and a second hectare on which he grows fruit and vegetables and has set up a box scheme for the residents of Palmerston North.

In mid-afternoon we set off to experience yet another NZ highlight as we spend the night within the volcanically active Tongariro National Park.
Mt Ruapehu is the more active volcano having last seriously exercised its lungs in 1997, though it is the neighbouring mountain Mt Ngauruhoe which shows off classical volcano lines.

A variety of inspirations

Dear ALL

Just a quick note to thank you for all the positive feedback, its been great fun putting together and I hope this helps to promote the IPPS, international horticulture's best kept secret.

Please see my latest report.

Committee meeting Part 2 Saturday 17th May 2008
We started by reviewing discussions from the first meeting for the benefit of those not in attendance earlier in the week. Then followed a round -table discussion looking at the structure of the relationship between the International board and the tour. Listed below are some of the questions raised.
Is the tour too long?
Is it conducive for undertaking the business of our society?
Does it provide value for money for the members back home ?
Should we provide more time and a different working environment to work constructively through the business of our society ?
We then completed the International Reports.
Southern Africa, Andy Hackman told us that their regional conference had been very successful. Attendees were very positive about the IPPS. Many volunteered to run workshops. The region now has a new general secretary and secretary treasurer. Andy reminded us that they have a web site linked to international.
Australia – part two Clive Larkman Clive reported on the Australia conference. Australia has positively targeted young members and this year had a youth session at the conference. Membership is up, initiatives like the ‘six pack’ and student exchange are creating a very positive environment.
We then broke up into three sub – committees; membership, finance and editorial. I sit on membership
This committee continues to work through a list of proposals ahead of the board meeting. Central to our work is the development of our membership tool box. The trick the international committee needs to pull off is to develop ideas, with the appropriate level of support and funding, so that all the regions can access the parts of the toolkit which can most effectively support their membership work.
Meeting closed, on with the Tour !
Bus tour for the day started with a lunchtime visit to the car museum. On arrival we were greeted with the fairground tunes of a practising wurlitzer. I am always draw to musical performances and sat in the hall listening and watching as the wurlitzer rose from below the stage. A separate tour made up of music hall enthusiasts had their picture taken with the machine. I stood in with the group and no one seemed to notice or mind. The car museum, I understand, was equally exciting !
After lunch we stopped off in Waikanae to visit the nursery of Glenys and Gus Evens. This is a manageable in-town wholesale nursery growing a wide range of trees and shrubs , servicing the local market. The nursery is now also open for retail sales and undertakes a small amount of landscaping. Each year they produce approximately 100k plants. Most is propagated in-house with a little bought in tissue culture. The nursery supports Glenys and Gus plus two staff. This was a very interesting nursery producing an excellent range of exciting plants, all grown to a high standard. Along one side of the property stock plants are grown , including a fabulous Begonia fuchsioides. Glenys and Gus clearly know and enjoy what they are doing and we were made to feel most welcome.
Then on to Te Horo Ornamentals, Otaki. Geoff Jewell owns and operates this nursery and concentrates on growing ericas and proteas .
Every now and again you come across a special nursery and this fell into this category. In the UK, outside of one or two small specialists , it is impossible to see well grown protea, banksia and leucodendron. This nursery had them all and more. Geoff took us round the nursery and provided an insightful commentary, just pausing long enough for us to ask questions as we moved through the prop house and production areas.
Geoff is right in the middle of his prop season for proteaceae. Most were on heated prop benches in poly- houses utilising both mist and fog. Bottom heat is set at twenty -three degrees celsius. Cuttings are inserted into trays (flats) and small plastic tubes with cut away bases. If cuttings root quickly and with a high degree of uniformity they are inserted into trays (Erica) while slower rooters go into tubes (Protea) The compost is free draining and made up of ninety percent, one to four millimetre pumice and ten percent peat. Good drainage, preventing water-logging, is essential along with good amounts of available oxygen at the root zone. Managing both water and humidity levels is critical and so each house also has irrigation lines set up over the prop benches. Each bed receives two minutes of watering per day during the summer, which runs quickly through the rooting media. Humidity levels are maintained at between eighty-five and eighty-eight percent. Fog is preferred for grey and hairy foliaged species as this environment is capable of maintaining humidity without continually wetting the foliage.
When heated mist and fog benches are full , unheated floor space is utilised, this has worked well for leucodendron
Cuttings come from juvenile growing stock and from their field grown plants, which are primarily used for cut flower. Most cuttings are semi-ripe, though leucodendron taken a little earlier in the season prior to the base of the cuttings firming, sometimes root much more quickly than later in the year. Rooting hormone is applied at a maximum of 5000 ppm. Success rates vary from ten to one-hundred percent. More than ninety-five percent of production is cutting raised with straight species raised from seed accounting for less than five percent. The kirstenbosch smoke disks are used to treat all proteas with hard coated seeds.
Potting composts consisted of equal parts bark, peat and pumice.
The tour concluded with a visit to the cut flower farm which sends forty- thousand bunches and six-thousand posies to market each year.
Stunning plants included the king protea Arctic Ice, Banksia Birthday Candles, numerous leucodendron and Erica White Delight.
This was a great nursery visit and showed the real benefit of IPPS membership. A specialist nursery , a leader in its field, sharing its knowledge with an international group.

The Queen Bee

Friday 16th May Blenheim to the Capital
Up early for the Picton ferry and a three and a half hour ride to the capital of NZ, Wellington. The views from the boat are spectacular, both when leaving the Sound and entering Wellington harbour . Wellington skyline is full of mini skyscrapers and if you look closely you will see the Bee Hive, the NZ parliament. For the past decade Helen Clark the Labour Prime Minister has been its queen, busy putting the legislature to work. It appears from the opinion polls that this may come to an end in November when the Kiwis next go to the polls.
From the ferry we went straight to the national museum, Te Papa and then onto the botanic gardens. At each we received excellent insightful tours. I could quite happily have spent all day at both. Evening meal at a beach side location. Photos are attached from the day’s visits.

nudes, whales and wine

Thursday 15th May from Christchurch to Blenheim via Kaikoura
First stop of the day Elliot’s wholesale nursery.
Geof f Elliot, the nursery owner, took time out from painting nudes to take us round. Geoff is an ideas person , an innovator and an enthusiast. This is a first generation nursery supplying just to the South Island with a customer base of no more than 500 K. Geoff started growing rhododendron in the 1980s but quickly found that the South Island did not possess sufficient numbers of rhodo enthusiasts for him to make a living. Diversification was again mentioned as the key to supplying a market of this size.
As with Oderings , he chooses not to supply multiples and went on to describe the different effect supplying multiples and independents has on a nursery business. The former was like submitting your business to a certain and quick death and the latter , a slow but equally certain death. He has chosen to die slowly.
The most interesting aspects of his business included his use of fertilisers, lack of use of pesticides, irrigation systems /water supply , growing structures and his propagation facilities. The photos I took reflect all of these.
Following the visit I discussed the propagation facilities with Laura Liverman the prop supervisor from Walberton nursery in the UK who is also on our tour . Her prop facilities utilise low polythene tunnels over heated concrete, while Geoff, in the main, preferred sand beds covered with mypex with mist, to maintain humidity. Much of what Laura props roots easily (penstemon, fuchsia, lavandula ) but she was very taken with the idea of using sandbeds and mist to provide positive drainage around the cutting’s base for more difficult to root subjects.
This nursery has automated its irrigation to the extent that there was little or no need for anyone to come in at weekends. Irrigation lines were also added to all prop tunnels containing mist. Geoff felt that having both ensures greater uniformity. The mist is controlled with a calorie counter, the irrigation, with a time clock and both are turned off if the temperature in the tunnels falls below fifteen degrees Celsius.
Many years ago following Geoffs visit with the IPPS to the States the nursery began to utilise fog for propagation and chlorine for disease control. Sometime later he decided to replace fog with mist and naturally occurring beneficials for chlorine. Today Geoff applies recycled ‘dirty’ water over the growing crop, and feels that this has dramatically reduced the need to apply pesticides as the plants are now growing with a greater sense of immunity.
Geoff also has a novel approach to nutrition. He has gone through both controlled release and liquid feeding phases but has since moved on to using agricultural combination fertiliser and dispensing it over the top of the crop every two months. All water is recycled so that the leached nutrients are put back on to the crop.
This was a thoughtful guy. Why apply liquid fertiliser when much of it is going to run off down the drain? The run- off is nutrient rich so why not collect it and put it back over the crop ? Changing to cheaper agricultural fertilisers and recycling water has not led to any drop off in plant quality.
The nursery utilised many different shade structures including a large area covered in hail proof netting. This area was cheaply constructed with a polythene membrane, gravel base and wind resistant irrigation nozzles (maestro) This efficiency of the irrigation reached a level of 96 CU . When every second nozzle was turned off the system still reached a level of 80CU
Geoff espoused a great pioneering spirit . ‘when problems occur on the nursery you should just get working and enjoy the effort of putting it right’ With that Geoff departed to collect the male model for the days painting session.

Whale watching in Kaikoura followed . Two sperm whales were spotted, all was excellently organised and presented during our two hour trip out in the bay. W hile many found the experience both exciting and exhilarating , I am happy to say I have seen a whale and am even more happy to subscribe to the argument that we should not be killing whales, not even for scientific purposes , however I like plants not animals so onto Blenheim and wine tasting with Montana.

A day out in Christchurch - the garden city

Wednesday the 14th of May started early with a committee meeting from 8.00 til 11am.
For those interested in the machinations of such meetings , I give below a summary of the feedback from the officers and the regions before progressing to events of the my first full day .
Pat Heuser talked through secretary /treasurers report. She reminded us that the directors’ reference manual can be found on our website http://www.ipps.org/. The ‘members at large’ region which has only just been launched now has two members. We welcome Byoung Sup Ghill, a Korean nursery owner and Olivia E. Franklin Lovell from Barbados a senior agricultural officer, to the IPPS.
For those who are reading this and keen to learn more about the IPPS, we are a professional organisation interested and committed to the production of green plants. Our membership includes nursery staff , growers and propagators, educationalists, researchers, and trades men and women.
International editor, Charles Heuser
ISHS update. 57 volumes of the combined proceedings have now been scanned ahead of uploading on to the ISHS website. This will widen the access of our propagation and nursery production information way beyond our membership base , it amounts to an amazing treasure trove of horticultural knowledge stretching back to the 1950s. We envisage t hat this information will be available on- line in 2009
International reports
GB and I, Pete Bingham Our long term secretary, Claire Shaddick has left our employment . Claire has done an excellent job over the last nine years .We welcome both Wendy Staniforth and Gyongyver Janya who have been recruited in Claire’s stead.
NZ. Grant Hayman reported on the hot dry summer the NZ grower had experienced this year. Grant also confidently predicted that membership would be up this year.
Eastern Region Jim Johnson reported on arrangements for the forthcoming joint western/eastern region conference in Denver, a high altitude conference!
Southern Region. Bill Barr acknowledged the great contribution of David Morgan, the region’s recently retired secretary and welcomed new secretary Ronnie Stisher.
Western Region . Dave Hannon reiterated support for joint conference with the eastern region and was pleased to also report that he feels membership in 2008 will be up.
Japan. Akemi Mizutani provided an excellent written report which included information about their last conference .
Australia. David Cliffe reported that membership is up . Much of the increase is amongst young members.

We will reconvene in a few days time for committee meeting part two ahead of the full international board meeting when we arrive in Auckland.
On to the visits !
Gethsemane Garden, Christchurch.
Now, I don’t do religion but you couldn’t fail to be amazed by our first stop off . We were shuttled to the top of the hills overlooking Christchurch to a garden whose central feature was a three storey wooden ark made from douglas fir. Inside we found a chapel , and two reception rooms, all lavishly adorned. I thought I was back on last year’s trip to the USA !
The garden is a dedication to Jesus and is called Gethsemane. The garden feathures amongst other things the Lord’s Prayer spelt out in buxus , much of the garden is laid out to spell GETHSEMANE, and a further area spells out JESUS. Also interesting was the novel use of shade cloth as the construction fabric for a chapel!
Lunch was served in the middle section of the Ark , I was not sure if the IPPS was not all at sea at this point. I will chalk this up as a memorable visit – though spiritually I remain unmoved.

Much more up my spiritual street was a visit to Christchurch botanics. I had been a little underwhelmed on two previous visits but was excited at the prospect of going to look round the special trees that are the backbone of this garden. Christchurch is known as the garden city and I am pleased to report that the botanics, which are within Hagley park, are much improved. I am very much in favour of first class horticulture being available to all and putting a world class botanic garden within a public park, with free access to all, is something I would be pleased to see the new mayor of London consider for Kew gardens.
As you will see from the photos the autumn colour was blazing away, Acer platanoides, Gingko biloba and a myriad of Japanese maples looked just great.
For me the garden is about iconic tree plantings. At the entrance from the cathedral side of town there is a fine example of Fagus sylvaticus Asplenifolius. There are great cedars, oaks and giant redwoods and one enormous Eucalyptus delegatensis . Since reading ‘Meeting with Remarkable Trees’ I have started collecting photos of my own remarkable trees, and this eucalyptus is close to the top of my own personal list.
Christchurch botanics includes herbaceous borders, rock garden , display glass native and rose gardens. I noted that the general standard of plant husbandry had improved and the garden now includes more sculpture and fresh planting of southern hemisphere natives and cultivated plants. The impression I have is that the gardens is back on track and on the way up.
From here we proceeded to Odering nursery. Ray Lawson nursery manager and NZ representative on the International board took us to his nursery, a seven acre site in what is now residential Christchurch, though back in 1939 when the nursery began, was on the edge of town.
Five generations of Oderings have worked this land . The nursery was like no other that I have visited. Cut flowers grew alongside houseplants, grafted tomato plants, herbaceous perennials, bedding , succulents and shrub. The nursery utilises the available space very effectively with plants packed in right up to the four corners of the site.
The key to their continuing success is knowing their market. With a relatively small population specialisation is very difficult and that accounts for such diversification. The nursery supplies all its own retail outlets, including the one on site and other independent retailers. In such a tight space it was interesting to see the investment in technology , including seed sowing and transplanting machines. All though could easily be set up again on a green field site if the land was ever to be sold off for development. The nursery was a mix of the old and new and had a slight sense of a bygone era, a nursery skilfully growing a wide range of crops, supplying a local market. It was a great visit, full of thought provoking innovation.
The visit finished in the cafe of the garden centre which was beautifully planted with exotics including the scented L.uculia gratissima A tutored beer tasting and BBQ in this setting rounded off the day.