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Winter BLOOMS

The shortest day of the year is the perfect time to appreciate the flowers in this incredible garden.

This large, artfully composed plantsman’s garden has been created by Peter Cooke and Anna Moore over almost 40 years. It is also a five-star garden as awarded by the New Zealand Gardens Trust. Each year, for the last seven years, Peter has written a list of the plants in bloom on the shortest day of the year. He was inspired to make these notes when he read that a list of the plants in flower was created annually on the shortest day (in December) at the Italian garden La Mortola. One year, there were 100 blooms on Peter’s list.

Last June, I visited Hereweka to photograph some of them. (You can visit by appointment: hereweka.co.nz/.)

From the Brazilian woody perennial salvia (S. confertiflora), pollen and nectar rich flowers emerge in autumn and extend through the winter, attracting bellbirds and bees. Camellia relative Polyspora speciosa (syn. Gordonia), from north Vietnam, is a small tree that blooms all winter with gorgeous intermittent blooms; another plant tūī and bellbirds love.

On this shortest day, early hellebores were beginning to move, including a particularly dark hybrid: H. cyclophyllus, a species from Mount Olympus, was just emerging from a bowl which also contained the snowdrop Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’ (the snowdrop was flowering in the sheltered bowl before it had emerged in the garden). Peter says that H. foetidus is prolific with its flowers – and its seedlings.

Some hydrangeas decorate the garden in winter too. One called ‘Trophy’ has semi-double flowers for most of the year, more especially in winter. I photographed ‘Hobella’ which has particularly large, soft pink cups.

Some native plants flower amongst this cornucopia of exotics. Hebe (Veronica obtusata), grows naturally at Piha in west Auckland. This coastal plant, which grows downwards on a stone wall at Hereweka, was flowering profusely that day with lots of buds; the promise of more flowers to come.

Tecomanthe speciosa is one of the world’s rarest plants with only one specimen known in the wild; on the Great Island of the Three Kings Islands. When happy, it’s rampant! Here it grows on a New Zealand red beech tree which Peter calls the sacrificial tree (although a big tree, it is smothered by the tecomanthe). Cream, cornucopia-shaped flowers are produced all winter.

‘Mrs Henry Shilson’ is a lolly pink-flowered rhododendron but oh so welcome in the dark days of winter. Similarly, Camellia ‘Donation’ is bright pink and can be relied on to flower well this far south; it does it in the middle of winter.

Half-hardy shrub Greyia radlkoferi from Swaziland, with its prolific orange-red flowers, has made itself at home here and is truly beloved by bellbirds and tūī.

Peter grew his kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos flavidus) from a packet of seed. These Australian perennials flowered in colours of yellow, greenish yellow, orange and red. Tūī pierce the long, tubular flower to reach the nectar.

How about a dandelion that’s 2m tall! Yellow daisy flowers, like sunshine, emerge all winter from black buds from this shrubby sow thistle, Sonchus hierrvenus.

Hereweka rings with song from the massed choir of bellbirds and tūī. Peter attributes this to the plentiful flowers in the critical winter months.

Winter never truly gets a grip at Hereweka, nestled on the northern flanks of local landmark, Harbour Cone, where it slopes to meet the calm inland sea of Hooper’s Inlet.

OAMARU

en-nz

2023-06-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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