Otari-Wilton’s Bush

Posted on April 1, 2020 by Janet

It’s been a while since I blogged about New Zealand and our 2018 trip, but I’ll correct that today, since there was one garden omitted – and it was my favourite. If you recall, in my last blog we were sailing back to the North Island from the South Island and settling ourselves into New Zealand’s beautiful capital city of Wellington for the final chapter of our trip. Today, I want to take you to what was my favourite public garden of our entire 3-week tour, Otari-Wilton’s Bush (whose proper name is Otari Native Botanic Garden and Wilton’s Bush Reserve, but I’ll call it OWB for short). Let’s walk from the car park through the main entrance gate or warahoa…..

….. past the Kauri Lawn and the familiar trunks of the kauri trees (Agathis australis) we’d fallen in love with a few weeks earlier on the Manginangina Kauri Walk in the Puketi Forest near Bay of Islands, on our Maori culture day.

The path leads past interesting New Zealand natives towards the information centre where we can……

….. find a map. This place is massive! There are ten kilometres of walking trails over 100 hectares (247 acres) of native podocarp-northern rata forest featuring 5 hectares of gardens containing half of New Zealand’s native plants. In total, there are.1200 species, hybrids and cultivars of indigenous plants, and we have such a short time to visit! On that note, I should add that there was a reason why it took me so long to get this blog together: the complexity of the garden and our speed rushing through it meant that I didn’t feel I could do it justice without researching it a little more than the other public gardens we’d visited, which were more straightforward…. rose garden, perennial border, etc. There is not that kind of typical botanical garden approach here at OWB. It’s all about native plants and their conservation! I could have spent two days there, easily

Because it’s difficult to read the map (click on it or download it for a better look), here is the legend:

1 –      Plants for the home garden
2 –      Brockie rock garden
3 –      Wellington coastal plants
4 –      Grass and sedge species
5 –      Threatened species
6 –      Hebe species
7 –      Rainshadow garden
8 –      Flax cultivars
9 –      Pittosporum species
10 –     Coprosma species
11 –     Olearia species
12 –     Northern collection
13 –     Divaricate collection
14 –     Gymnosperm (conifer) collection
15 –     Fernery
16 –     Alpine garden
17 –     Dracophyllum garden
18 –     38
19 –     Broom garden

The garden and surrounding bush has a complicated history, from the Maori first inhabitants – Taranaki tapū or sub-tribes – who migrated to the general area in 1821 from the Wellington region; to the arrival of European settlers in the 1840s; to the allocation of 500 acres to Maori tribes; to the 1860 purchase by Job Wilton of 108 acres for farming; to the leasing by one tribe of 200 acres to three settlers; and subsequent sales by other tribes to other settlers. By 1900, prominent citizens of Wellington began to realize that the natural land around the city was in demise. As another 134 acres of tribal land was being sold to settlers, Wellington City Council stepped in and purchased it. By 1918, Otari’s status was changed to a reserve “for Recreation purposes and for the preservation of Native Flora.” In 1926, the well-known botanist, plant explorer and ecologist Dr. Leonard Cocayne presented a proposal to create a collection of indigenous plants on the site: the Otario Native Plant Open Air Museum. He was named Honorary Botanist to the Wellington City Council and effectively Director of the Plant Museum. Over the next few years, he collected 300 native plants and published the guidelines for the development and arrangement of the museum. Upon his death in 1934, he was buried on the site.

Let’s head out over the canopy bridge spanning the ‘bush’ below.

Visitors gazing out over this scene can appreciate how this part of New Zealand looked before cities and highways were built and invasive plants outcompeted native flora.

The garden has done a good job of labelling native trees to inspire visitors to choose these for their own gardens. This is karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus).

This is the tawa tree (Beilschmiedia tawa).

This is rewarewa (Knightia excelsa).

Looking down, you can see the exquisite structure of the silver ferns or pongas (Alsophila dealbata, formerly Cyathea).

It’s easy to see why this fern enjoys such an elevated position in New Zealand.

Interpretive signage is well done in the garden.

Though it is far away, I attempt a photo of New Zealand’s wood pigeon.

After the canopy walkway, I find myself in a section devoted to plants for the home gardener. Seven fingers or patē (Schefflera digitata) is a small, spreading tree fond of shade and damp places. It’s the only New Zealand species in the genus Schefflera.

The Three Kings kaikomako (Pennantia baylisiana) was down to a single extant plant in New Zealand when it was discovered on a scree slope on Three Kings Island in 1945 by Professor Geoff Baylis of Otago University. Seeds were harvested, allowing it to return from the brink of extinction.

Gold-variegated karaka (Corynocarpus laevigatus ‘Picturata’) is a colorful Otari-Wilton’s Bush introduction of the evergreen New Zealand laurel tree. Its Maori name “karaka” means orange, and is the colour of the tree’s fruit.

The Leonard Cockayne centre can be booked for small meetings, workshops and education sessions.

Our American Horticultural Society tour group listens to Otari Curator-Manager Rewi Elliot giving an overview on the garden. You can see the memorial plaque at the base of the large rock, the burial site for Leonard and Maude Cockayne.

In the adjacent Brockie Rock Garden, I find Chatham Island brass buttons (Leptinella potentillina) is a rhizomatous groundcover adapted to foot traffic.

Slender button daisy (Leptinella filiformis) is bearing its little white pompom flowers.

Purple bidibid or New Zealand burr (Acaena inermis) has become a popular groundcover plant in Northern hemisphere gardens.

Chatham Island geranium (G. traversii) has pretty pink flowers. Its easy-going nature recommends it as a good native for New Zealand gardeners.

Like a lot of shrubby veronicas, Veronica topiaria used to belong to the Hebe genus before DNA analysis. It has a compact, topiary-like nature and tiny white summer flowers.

Silver tussock grass (Poa cita) is a tough, drought-tolerant native adapted to the poorest soils.

This is a lovely view from the Cockayne Overlook.

Below, a path is flanked by some of the sedges (Carex sp.) for which New Zealand has become renowned throughout the gardening world.

We catch a glimpse of New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) on the right along the path.

Castlepoint daisy (Brachyglottis compacta) is native to the limestone cliffs on the Wairarapa Coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Like many species here, it is considered at risk in the wild.

We had seen Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis) at the Dunedin Botanical Garden earlier in the trip. It’s such a handsome plant.

A gardener trims the base of a sedge along the path. There are signs in the garden stating “Please do not pull out our ‘weeds’”, explaining that they may look like weeds but several are threatened endemics that are allowed to casually self-seed in the garden.

Orange tussock sedge (Carex secta), aka makuro or pukio. is common to wetlands throughout New Zealand.

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Gardeners are at work trimming the sedges with the podocarp-northern rata forest in the background.

The Wellington Coastal Garden, below, is home to native plants found on the rocky foreshores, sand dunes and scrub-coloured cliffs of Wellington. Many plants here have thick, fleshy leaves or waxy surfaces to cope with wind and salt spray.

The Rain Shadow Garden features plants native to Marlborough, Canterbury and Otago in the South Island, specifically to regions lying east of the Southern Alps where rainfall is scant. From Wikipedia: In the South Island of New Zealand is to be found one of the most remarkable rain shadows anywhere on Earth. The Southern Alps intercept moisture coming off the Tasman Sea, precipitating about 6,300 mm (250 in) to 8,900 mm (350 in) liquid water equivalent per year and creating large glaciers. To the east of the Southern Alps, scarcely 50 km (30 mi) from the snowy peaks, yearly rainfall drops to less than 760 mm (30 in) and some areas less than 380 mm (15 in). The tussock grasslands are common in New Zealand’s rain shadow.

To northern hemisphere eyes, New Zealand has a lot of strange plants, but none tickle our fancy more than toothed or fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox). You’ll see its mature tree form a little further down in our tour of the garden but I love this photo illustrating the juvenile form, often described as Doctor Seussian or like a broken umbrella. It is now seen in gardens throughout the world, mostly owing to the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show where it starred in New Zealand’s gold-medal-winning garden exhibit.

This is my favourite image in the garden because it celebrates plants that typify the New Zealand native palette – the buff sedges and the wiry shrubs in ‘any-colour-but-green’. Save for the sword-like leaves of the cabbage palm (Cordyline australis) at the top of the picture, there is nothing ‘luxuriant’ about the plants in this garden. They evolved their sparse foliage to outsmart hungry predators or to protect themselves from wind, heat and salt.

As an illustration, here is Coprosma obconica, considered threatened in its native niche, with its “divaricating” growth habit (branching at sharp angles) when young. Note that its tender foliage is in the centre of this wiry sphere, thus protected from the nibbles of herbivores.

But then there are the big grasses and phormiums, which lend the opposite lush feeling. I love this garden, too, with its collection of flaxes, both the large New Zealand flax or harakeke (Phormium tenax) and the smaller mountain flax or wharariki (Phormium colensoi, formerly P. cookianum). In milder climates of North America, we see P. colensoi cultivars used extensively, e.g. ‘Maori Maiden’, ‘Black Adder’, ‘Sundowner’, etc. This is P. tenax ‘Goliath’.

A closer look at ‘Goliath’. The Māori grow harakeke plants especially for weaving and rope-making. Note the leaves of the Carex, illustrating the mnemonic “sedges have edges”.

At the base of the steps is a beautiful stand of South Island toetoe grass (Austroderia richardii, formerly Cortaderia). It is related to the South American pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) which has become an invasive in New Zealand (and also coastal California).

Below we see the juvenile (right) and mature (left) forms of fierce lancewood (Pseudopanax ferox) growing side by side. Note the stout trunk and the different leaves on the adult tree. Botanists theorize that the tree evolved its narrow, young form with its hooked leaves to thwart herbivory by New Zealand’s flightless bird, the giant moa, which was hunted to extinction by Polynesian settlers five hundred years ago. Once the plant reaches a certain height – around 3 metres or 9 feet in 10-15 years – it gets on with the regular business of being a tree. The forms are so different that early taxonomists mistook them for different species.

Nearby is a garden labelled “the hybrid swarm”, featuring offspring of crossings of two other lancewood species, Pseudopanax crassifolius or horoeka and P. lessonii or houpara.

One of the tour members calls to me that she has heard the tui bird and I pass a stand of Richardson’s hibiscus (H. richardsonii)…..

…. as we go exploring into denser garden areas.

Sure enough, there it is – not the best photo, but it’s a treat to find it here. The Māori call this bird the ngā tūī, and this particular bird’s black-and-white colouration (its iridescence isn’t notable in this light) illustrates why the colonists called it the parson bird. It is one of two extant species of honeyeaters in New Zealand, the other being the bellbird. If you read my blog on Fisherman’s Bay Garden, you might have watched the YouTube video I made of that lovely garden with the entire soundtrack comprised of the bellbird’s song.

But time is fleeting and we still have the Fernery to visit. I stop for a moment to photograph Kirk’s daisy or kohurangi (Brachyglottis kirkii var. kirkii). It is in decline and classed as threatened, mostly due to predation from possums, deer and goats.

Common New Zealand broom (Carmichaelia australis) is not related to European broom (Cytisus scoparius), which is as invasive in New Zealand as it is throughout the temperate world.

Here is a large specimen of bog pine (Halocarpus bidwillii).

I pass a small water garden surrounded by rushes.

Crossing back over the canopy walkway, I come to the totara (Podocarpus totara) with its stringy, flaking bark. This specimen was planted in the 1930s and could live for more than 1,000 years. It is one of 5 tall trees in the Mixed Conifer-Broadleaf Forest type here; the others are kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), matai (Podocarpus taxifolia), rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and miro (Prumnopitys ferruginea). Totara wood is strong and resistant to rot; it was used traditionally by the Māori for carving and to make their waka or canoes. On trees 150 to 200 years old, an anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory medicinal product called totarol can be extracted from the heartwood on a regular basis. A dioecious species, female trees bear masses of fleshy, red, edible berries that the Māori collected in autumn by climbing the trees with baskets.

Now I’m on the boardwalk heading back through the Fernery to the parking lot and our bus. It was April 10, 1968 when Cyclone Giselle brought sudden winds of 275 kilometres per hour (171 mph) to Wellington, sinking the interisland ferry Wahine in sight of the harbour, with 53 lives lost of the 734 aboard. But the cyclone, the worst in New Zealand’s history, also knocked down trees throughout the country, including a swath cut through the forest at Otari-Wilton’s Bush. The opening created light favourable for the growing of ferns, and thus the fernery was launched late that year.

I see New Zealand’s iconic silver fern or ponga, which has had a botanical genus name change from Cyathea dealbata to Alsophila dealbata, courtesy of DNA sequencing. Look at the ferns colonizing its trunk.

Later, I get a closer look at the plants climbing another silver fern, which were identified for me by an Otari botanist for my 2018 blog New Zealand – The Fernery Nation. The climbing thread fern is Icarus filiformis (formerly Blechnum filiforme) or pānoko. The broadleaf plant is scarlet rātā vine or in Māori akatawhiwhi (Metrosideros fulgens).

I pause at a few low-growing ferns, including Cunningham’s maidenhair (Adiantum cunninghamii).

…… and the rhizomatous creeping fern Asplenium lamprophyllum.

But it’s the tree ferns that are most spectacular here. Milne’s tree fern (Alsophila milnei) has also had a genus name change from Cyathea. It is endemic to Raoul Island.

Kermadec tree fern (Alsophila kermadecensis) is also native to Raoul Island.

Mamaku or black tree fern has also been moved out of Cyathea; it is now called Sphaeropteris medullaris. It can grow very tall, up to 20 metres (60 feet).

I take a quick glimpse into the native bush, which encompasses 100 hectares here as our guide calls for me to hurry. I’m the last one on the bus!

Leaving the garden, I glance back at the beautiful pou whenua carved with the creatures of the forest. Given that “Otari” is a Māori word for “place of snares” recalling its heritage as a traditional place for bird-hunting, it is fitting that it is now celebrated as a place for watching birds and all manner of wildlife and plants.

As I run for the bus, I stop to take one last photo, of the unfurling crozier, or koru in Māori, of rough tree fern or whekī (Dicksonia squarrosa). Traditionally, the koru symbolizes perpetual movement, a return to the point of origin. It seems that the people of Wellington and those who fought to reclaim the bush for nature and education have done that here very well.

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If you enjoyed this blog, be sure to read my New Zealand series of blogs:

New Zealand – The Fernery Nation

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Janet

“A fernery”…. Doesn’t that sound enchanting? For me it conjures up damp air, the cool fragrance of earth and decomposition on a forest floor, lacy texture, dancing shadows, and a thousand shades of green. But as a word defining an actual place, I hadn’t run into ‘fernery’ until arriving at our first of three actual ferneries in New Zealand during our American Horticultural Society garden tour this January. As a country with a warm subtropical climate at the top of the North Island and cool temperate rainforests in the extreme southwest of the South Island — and everything in between – and with 15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles) of humid coastline, it’s an ideal environment for ferns of all kinds, but especially the native tree ferns for which it is well known, like the one below growing with kauri trees at Bay of Islands.

Before I begin, here is a little chart I made to try to remember the differences among New Zealand’s relatively small number of native tree ferns from the genera Cyathea and Dicksonia. (Which is a little like someone from New Zealand trying to understand the differences among Canada’s goldenrods…..) The most important things to remember are: Cyathea* are scaly, Dicksonia are hairy. (PLEASE NOTE THAT SINCE I POSTED THIS BLOG, CYATHEA SPECIES TAXONOMY HAS CHANGED WITH SOME BEING PLACED IN THE GENUS ALSOPHILA AND OTHERS IN SPHAEROPTERIS). The three most common are mamaku or black tree fern (C. medullaris), ponga or silver fern (C. dealbata) and whekī or rough tree fern (D. squarrosa). I think I photographed all of them, apart from C. cunninghamii.

So, from the beginning of our tour, it was here at Domain Auckland, off to the left of the reflecting pool, below, in the Wintergardens complex…..

….. under the lichen-encrusted beams of the open-air Fernz Fernery, that I saw my very first king ferns (Ptisana salicina, formerly Marratia). In New Zealand, where all the plants still bear their traditional Māori names, king fern is ‘para’; its starchy rootstock was used by the Māori as food. It is the country’s largest herbaceous fern; in perfect conditions its fronds can reach 5 metres (16 feet).

Built in 1929 as an unemployment work project, the fernery occupies an old scoria quarry carved from the flank of the extinct cone volcano Pukekawa (the Auckland War Memorial Museum, which we also visited, sits directly atop the crater’s tuff ring). During the Second World War, the fernery began to be neglected; specimens were stolen, common local ferns and weeds invaded, and the place was vandalized and used for parties. By 1992, the 1930s collection of some 80 native species from all over New Zealand had diminished to just fourteen. Two years later, the fernery was restored and its specimens – including whekī-ponga (Dicksonia fibrosa) with its persistent skirt of old fronds, below – were restocked. My regret is that the sun was shining brightly on a record-heat Auckland afternoon, creating difficult light for photography. It would have been wonderful to return to this lovely spot in the cool of morning.

Over the next several days, we visited scores of private gardens, including Mincher, the Auckland area garden of Bruce and Angela Spooner, where we had our first delightful outdoor dinner. Here I caught Bruce showing the whitish back of a silver fern (Cyathea dealbata) – New Zealand’s national emblem – to one of our tour group. The root of the Latin epithet dealbata (whitened) is, of course, “alba” for white, referring to the silvery-white backs (abaxial surface) of the silver fern’s fronds.

On our bush walk behind their manicured gardens, I saw my first black tree fern or ‘mamaku’ (Cyathea medullaris) with its dark stipes.

In the Bay of Islands on the northeast coast of the north island, we visited the Puketi Kauri Rainforest near the seashore town of Paihia, Though I’ll expand on that in an upcoming blog on Māori culture, below is a taste of this spectacular ancient forest laced with tree ferns and towering kauri trees (Agathis australis) via the Manginangina Kauri Walk. (Also the scene of the first photo in this blog).

That evening, we visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds for a cultural show and dinner and I was fascinated by the use of a tree fern frond in this enactment of a traditional Māori pōwhiri or welcome. Here, one of the performers becomes the warrior issuing the wero or challenge to the visitor. By placing the fern frond on the diagonal, he offers a provisional welcome.

We would see scores of tree ferns in the private gardens we visited over the next few weeks, but through luck and very fast walking, a few of us also managed to visit a second proper fernery during a shopping stop in the city of Whangārei (pronounced Fangaray as the Māori “wh” is pronounced “f”) on the drive from the Bay of Islands back to Auckland. What a treat to spend a few minutes wandering through the Marge Maddren Fernery at Botanica Whangārei, below.

Built in 1987, it honours local conservationist Marjorie Maddren, who was on hand to help with construction. She was the founder of the Whangarei Native Forest and Bird Protection society, which donated the funds and volunteer hours to build this enchanting place.

Within its three connected shade houses, there was even a little mossy pond or two.

I had never heard the term “filmy fern”, but there was a purpose-built adobe brick house containing these ferns, which are native to tropical or temperate rainforests and require constant moisture; many enjoy proximity to waterfalls.

Below is the filmy fern Hymenophyllum demissum, which reminded me a little of damp, weeping parsley.

After flying to Queenstown on the South Island and exploring the city and area for a few days (more on that in a later blog), we headed towards Fiordland National Park to explore Doubtful Sound. After a boat ride over Lake Manipouri, we got on a bus to take us through Wilmot Pass in Fiordland, where I photographed the prickly shield fern (Polystichum vestitum)….

….. and what I believe are crown ferns (Blechnum discolor), on our way to the boat dock in Doubtful Sound’s Deep Cove.

But it was in the spectacular reaches of Doubtful Sound itself (blog coming later), which we navigated on a memorable overnight voyage to the Tasman Sea and back, where tree ferns formed an essential component of the jutting peaks and hanging valleys of this beautiful fiord.

Below are what I believe to be soft tree ferns or kātote (Cyathea smithii) growing beneath southern rātā trees (Metrosideros umbellata) with reddish flowers.

And here they are beside one of Fiordland’s countless waterfalls. You can clearly see the persistent rachises or frond stalks of C. smithii, one of the identifying features of that species (along with their notation on Fiordland botanical lists.)

After leaving Fiordland, we spent a few days touring in Dunedin before heading towards Mount Cook. At a shopping stop in the little town of Oamaru, some of us hurried to the Oamaru Public Garden where we discovered lovely gardens with tree ferns……

…. and another charming native fernery, among many other fine gardens. However, I think this structure must be a replacement for the one celebrated in a 1917 issue of the Oamaru Mail newspaper, of which it was written: “The fernery at the Gardens is now nearing its full beauty, and those who visit its cool emerald recesses will acclaim the originators of its inception who succeeded in having set apart for its erection part of the proceeds of two Garden Fetes.”

Christchurch became our base for visits to three spectacular Akaroa gardens, which I’ll write about in time. But the first, Ohinetahi, belonging to esteemed architect Sir Miles Warren featured a small wild garden with beautiful tree ferns. Suspended over a creek was Heart of Oak, a stunning piece of sculpture from Virginia King, who also contributed to Connells Bay Sculpture Park in my last blog).

There were also ferns in this sphere by renowned New Zealand artist Neil Dawson.

We finished our tour in Wellington, where we visited what was my favourite New Zealand public garden, Otari-Wilton’s Bush & Native Botanic Garden. Here, within a vast expanse of native New Zealand plants, was the most ambitious native fernery, an outdoor collection planted in the 1970s.

I could easily have spent all day here….

…… finding new ferns like the lovely common maidenhair Adiantum cunninghamii.

The scene below took me a while to identify, but it’s a lovely example of a plant community in the New Zealand bush. The fern is a sub-canopy climber thread fern (Icarus filiformis, syn. Blechnum filiforme), and the photo shows both its string-like juvenile form and its adult form. The little orange flower is New Zealand gloxinia or taurepo (Rhabdothamnus solandri), a smallish shrub to 2 m (6 ft) and the country’s only gesneriad. Like several other native plants, it was named for Daniel Solander, the 18^th century Swedish explorer who, along with Joseph Banks, sailed on Captain James Cook’s first voyage in 1769.

I loved this vignette of epiphytic thread fern (Icarus filiformis) and climbing scarlet rātā (Metrosideros fulgens) – colonizing a tree fern trunk (Cyathea dealbata).

Unfurling croziers like the one below on the wheki (Dicksonia squarrosa) at Otari-Wilton’s Bush are called ‘koru’ in Māori. The koru is a symbol of creation, according to Te Ara, the New Zealand encyclopedia, which “conveys the idea of perpetual movement, and its inward coil suggests a return to the point of origin. The koru therefore symbolises the way in which life both changes and stays the same.”

We saw the koru shape in the Kowhaiwhai motifs on the rafters of the Māori ‘marae’ or meeting house we visited in Bay of Islands…..

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…. and even in tattoos of some of the Māori performers at Waitangi.

Perhaps the most spectacular feature at Otari-Wilton’s Bush is the elevated boardwalk that lets visitors walk above the forest floor where silver ferns (Cyathea dealbata) spread their lacy fronds amidst native trees and understory shrubs.

It’s not surprising that this fern with its silvery reverse that saw it used by the Māori as a trail marker, even at night,……

….. this fern with perfect symmetry, large fronds held horizontally and soft feathery pinnae…..

….. should have become New Zealand’s national emblem. I saw it emblazoned on airplanes …..

……and glass dividers…..

…… and on the uniforms of employees of Air New Zealand. (I asked my cheerful flight attendant to model for me on the way back to Los Angeles).

There were needlepoint silver ferns on the ‘city chairs’ at Government House in Wellington….

…… and on the sign for the fabulous Te Papa Museum in that city……

…… where, inside, a stylized tree fern was part of the natural history display,

And, of course, the famous New Zealand All Blacks rugby team sports a dramatic silver fern on its black jerseys.

It wasn’t just architecture and design where I was seeing tree ferns, though. I started to see their shadows on the road……

……. and their reflections under paddling ducks. I had clearly fallen in love with tree ferns.

For me, it’s profound that a single plant so captivates a nation – its founding people and those who came hundreds of years later – that it becomes an iconic symbol of ‘place’. After all, I live in a country that discarded its colonial Red Ensign flag after a lengthy debate and adopted a stylized maple leaf for its flag in 1965. Now the maple leaf is featured not just on our flag but on corporate logos and sport uniforms, such as Air Canada and the Olympic men’s hockey team below.

There has also been debate in New Zealand of replacing its current flag, the Blue Ensign and Southern Cross, with a design incorporating the silver fern. But a 2016 referendum defeated that motion by 57% to 43%. A shame, I think. It would have made such a lovely ending to this blog…….

In a Fern Valley at Makaranga

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Janet

It’s Day 6 of our South Africa Garden Tour and we drive from our Durban beachfront hotel about 30 miles to the Outer West region and the town of Kloof. We’re here to spend the morning and have lunch at Makaranga Lodge. Once the property of a wealthy and passionate plantsman, the late Leslie Riggall, who called it Fern Valley Botanical Garden, he developed it over 26 years, building a vast collection of camellias, magnolias, bromeliads and orchids, among other plants. He was especially knowledgeable about vireya rhododendrons, contributing to the Vireya Vine journal and growing them from seed. Many of the plants grow around a series of ornamental ponds fed by a stream running through the valley.

When Leslie and Gladys Riggall moved to Panama in 2002, their neighbours Danna and Chick Flack bought the 25-acre property and merged it with their own five acres. They renamed it Makaranga after the indigenous wild poplars (Macaranga capensis) growing by the stream in the valley and the Makaranga people of Inyanga, Zimbabwe, where Danna was born. While Chick Flack developed a 22-room five-star boutique hotel, conference centre and spa, Danna, took on the garden, which is now available for weddings and also simply for the enjoyment of guests. With the help of landscaper Phil Page and a gardening staff of 18, she designed a series of lush, flowing gardens around Leslie Riggall’s original plant collection, adding indigenous South African plants in evocative naturalistic settings, such as this small rocky koppie in front of the hotel.

As I start my tour, I pause, quite awe-struck to see such a large collection of cycads – one man’s passion donated to this garden. As a stock photographer, I can’t help but be a little excited, and stop to photograph the species, shown here in a mosaic array. Who was George Walters? I cannot find any background on him, but I hope someone sees his lovely collection online and thinks of him. (* Note in the comments below that George himself found his lovely collection here and commented!)

I walk down the hill and — peering over the bromeliads — see what has become quite a familiar sight in botanical gardens in North America: beautiful Zimbabwean sculpture, which seems so well suited to the leafy surroundings of this garden.

The collection is by renowned carver Joseph Ndandrika (1941-2002). This piece is titled Father & Son.

On the way to the valley gardens, I pass a giant rainbow gum (Eucalpytus degluptus), its multicolored trunk being caressed by another cycad, this one the Australian Macrozamia miquelii, known as “burrowang” down under.

I peer into the Japanese Garden built by Leslie Riggall. There are no blossoms on the trees, but we certainly saw Japanese cherries in full bloom in Johannesburg.

Here’s a familiar Japanese torii gate.

I get a little lost, but finally head down to Leslie Riggall’s original showplace: the lush Fern Valley filled with ponds, where giant South African tree ferns (Cyathea sp.) see their elegant fronds reflected in the water.

I veer off the road through the valley and take a path through manicured but jungle-like plantings……

….to arrive at the small waterfall that feeds the ponds.

Returning to the pond edge, I’m transfixed by this striking bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), its purplish-black, crane-like flowers so similar yet so different from the orange-flowered birds (S. reginae) I’m used to seeing in conservatories in the northeast. Called the Natal wild banana, it is like a small tree and is one of the indigenous plants introduced to the valley to grow side by side with the camellias and tropical rhododendrons.

Speaking of rhododendrons, here is one of Leslie Riggall’s beloved Vireyas exhibiting its somewhat typical legginess. Native to southeast Asia, Vireyas provide an option for gardeners living in tropical and subtropical regions.

Seen close-up, the flowers are beautiful and its easier to see their resemblance to the rhodos I’m familiar with from gardens in the northern hemisphere.

This pond, surrounded by water-loving irises, is overseen by voluptuous statues imported from Italy.

But beauty doesn’t matter much to a white-breasted cormorant waiting for the visitors to leave so he can return to fishing. Look at the lush Gunnera manicata in the background.

Another view of this pond.

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The calla lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) are spectacular here, and of course they’re native to damp places throughout South Africa. As a bee photographer, I’m fascinated by the numerous African honey bees patiently gathering pollen from the yellow spadix of the callas.

The bromeliad collection is lovely and I see staghorn ferns (Platycerium sp.) in this spot too.

The matchstick bromeliad (Aechmea gamosepala) is always eye-catching, especially when it’s in perfect flower like this one.

There are a few heliconias, like this attractive cultivar called ‘Red Christmas’.

This beautiful Streptocarpus floribundus is on the South African endangered list.

Lots of epiphytic orchids grow down here, carefully trained on tree trunks. I think this tree might be the eponymous wild poplar (Macaranga capensis) that gives the garden its name!

A closer look at the orchid. How beautiful.

And some nice specimens of Epiphyllum cacti are growing epiphytically on trees here as well.

I’ve seen kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos) in California, and love their crazy flowers.

Peering down paths here and there, I think how wonderful it is to see the plants we know as “tropical houseplants” deployed in this setting. Here are thickets of Brazilian Ctenanthe setosa flanking the path into the other side of the Japanese garden.

A little rainshower begins (hilly Kloof is in KwaZulu-Natal’s mist belt, where precipitation is frequent) and I try to keep my camera and notebook dry, while gazing at this pond, its surface spangled with tropical waterlilies.

Here is a familiar sight: beautiful yellow Iris pseudacorus looking as aggressive here in South Africa as it looks in North America. It does have a large native range, including Europe, western Asia and northwest Africa, but not down here. The bees do love it, however.

The rain is increasing and it’s time for lunch up at the lodge in any case. I return passing some of the indigenous gardens, so different from the plantings we saw down in the valley. There are various succulent flowers and a sprinkling of wild garlic (Tulbaghia violacea).

Here’s a fabulous and quite small watsonia, possibly the endangered Watsonia canaliculata.

And large aloes (Aloe ferox, I think) growing in the familiar grassland setting in which it thrives in nature.

I pass the swimming pool with raindrops splashing on the water surface. No one’s swimming today, but it’s a nice spot for the hotel guests to escape the summer heat of KwaZulu-Natal. And now it’s time to sit down, dry off a little and have some lunch. We have to keep up our strength, after all, for another garden this afternoon.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

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