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Short Holiday/A lesson in Northern Horticulture

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Lesley Cox:
So this is where I came in. It was while trying to start this new thread last week that I was, I think, the first person to realize there was a major problem.  I was trying to post at 4pm while you were all asleep at 3am. But I thought the problem was only mine until Ian awoke and found it was everyone's.

My Northland holiday (2nd-7th November) was an amazing lesson in what they UP THERE can grow that we DOWN HERE, can't. NZ is small geographicaly but the variety of species cultivated here is enormous.

As always when I visit Ray and Theo, I brought home masses of seeds, cuttings, potted plants and assorted sub tropical fruit. Many I won't be able to grow but Ray always insists. "You never know..." he says.

Ray is 82, a retired GP from Auckland and widowed about 15 years ago; a good gardener with an all-encompassing knowledge of all kinds of plants, and much fitter than I am. If a large pot or chair is in his path as he walks though a garden, he doesn't walk round it, he jumps over!

Theo is 63 and another great gardener, brilliant propagator. He and Allan his partner had a large old-rose nursery near Auckland until they sold it around 10 years ago and moved north to beside Ray, their good friend. Allan died 4 years ago and Theo sold their very large house and garden and built an annex or "granny flat" onto Ray's house and they garden together now. In theory, Theo looks after Ray - who doesn't need it - and he does all the cooking, which is excellent.

The other members of what is a mad household are Mark, 34, chartered accountant who lives with the others at the weekend but with his girlfriend in Auckland during the week and Teddy, 18, corgi x fox terrier would be close, and waiting for God.

Paw-paws, bananas, various different passionfruit, tamarillos, kiwifruit, avocados, several different citrus fruit and the incredible cherimoya or custard apple are all picked fresh from the garden for dessert and either before or after every meal except breakfast, there are large gin-and-tonics - not optional! - but with ice and lemon juice, quite sour and just how I like them.

The garden is some 20 acres bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean, on another by a mangrove swamp, a third by an enormous bamboo hedge (20 metres high!) and the fourth by a dusty road, lined with olive trees. It is very peaty and when Ray had some samples drilled recently, at 63 metres the drill was still bringing up pure peat. Originally it was probably kauri forest (Agathis australis)

The garden is frost-free and so many tropical and sub-tropical plants grow rampantly here (about 1 and a 1/2 hours north east of Auckland) but Ray also grows alpines of the easier kind such as campanulas, phloxes, dianthus, helianthemums and many more.  In fact, this was how I met him in the first place as he has always been an enthusiastic supporter of my own small nursery. One time I visited, he had Iris cristata and Pulsatilla vulgaris both growing happily beneath an equally happy banana!

So, to some pictures -

Lesley Cox:
This is one of many modern spuria iris hybrids. They grow to 2 metres up here

Lesley Cox:
OK, stop right here Lesley. Maggi or Ian, I need help please. How can I get pictures into the preview because there's no way to know where to write the text which applies to individual pictures. I open the attachment and don't know whether it has uploaded (no upload instruction) until the post appears in the thread, so I can't see in the reply box, where the text should go. And every pic wants to be a separate post, instead several in a column in one post.

tonyg:
I can't wait for the next installment .... hope you've already had a reply from Ian or Maggi.  I have started to rename files for posting with a short descriptor.  This way they can be referenced back to the text which appears above the thumbnail pics.  Also I have started to post just a few at a time to help keep the text closer to the pics.  See the crocus thread ... I would have put all the pics in one post on the old forum but chose to split them this time.

Ian Y:
Lesley
The pictures do not appear in the preview like the old forum but they do appear in the post. At the moment all the pictures appear at the end of your post and the caption that appears with them is the actual file name. Tony's suggestion on naming the picture is a good one as we cannot insert the pictures into the text yet. We are looking into this and it may be possible for us to change the settings.
As for the time out this happens to me as well and there is a reason for it, you do not have to retype your message just hit the post button again.
This is a new forum to all of us and it will take us a while, as users, to work out how to navigate around and use all the features.
From the administration side we are also learning and we will have an ongoing program of adjusting settings and features within the limits of the software to best suit all our needs.
Thanks to you all for your support, please keep your comments and problems coming and be patient as we try and sort them all out.

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