Outdoors

Get your garden in tip top shape for the festive season

Article by Your Home and Garden

Christmas is a time when all the family get together to celebrate the festive season. Here’s what to plant, sow and grow before the masses descend

Your checklist for getting the garden in shape for the festive season:

Step-up deadheading of flowers. This removal of fading blooms means the energy that the plants would have channelled into seed production now goes to forming new blooms
Pop in fast-growing annuals now for Christmas colour. Speedy bloomers include petunias, poppies and zinnias
A light trim will sharpen up hedges and topiary
Give garden furniture, fences, letterbox and all external walls a brush and wash to remove cobwebs and grime
In the days leading up to Christmas, mow lawns, trim edges, sweep paths, weed rigorously and fluff up bare soil.

If you are going away for the holidays, give the garden a thorough soaking just before your departure. But if you can’t organise someone to water while you are away, then:

Move plants in pots into the shade wherever possible
Put house plants in a basin of shallow water in the coolest room of your house, such as the bathroom, kitchen or laundry
Gathering plants together helps reduce evaporation. Similarly, mulching plants with the likes of straw, lawn clippings, plucked weeds, compost and stones will help the soil retain moisture.

Landscape 101: brick paths

For millennia, humans have made and used clay bricks. Sustainable, durable and impervious to the ravages of weather, bricks age well. Their charm increases as their edges soften and unique patinas develop. Brick paths, patios and steps have a warm, mellow and timeless appeal that suits most architecture and garden styles.

An unidentified Māori stonemason, who learned the trade in Sydney, is thought to have made the country’s first bricks at the Kerikeri Mission Station in 1819. By the 1840s hundreds of small brickworks were operating up and down the country. Wherever there was clay and firewood for the kilns, bricks could be made. Today, only two major brickworks remain – one in Huntly and the other in Darfield. Fortunately, there is a healthy trade in secondhand bricks. Chimneys and buildings may come and go; bricks remain in vogue.

Being small gives bricks design advantages. The size enables gradual changes of direction and gradient in paving to be made more easily. According to how they are laid, they can lead the eye on; stop it right there as an edging or in a circle; they can make narrow paths wider, or narrower; or emphasise or downplay features. At the fancy of the landscaper they can be arranged into dozens of patterns, the most popular being basket weave with bricks in a two-by-two formation; herringbone; and bond,
in which each row of bricks is offset.

Bricks are usually laid in mortar or sand. While the former presents a more formal vibe; the latter being porous is environmentally kinder. Weeds are less likely to push through mortar, but a dousing with boiling water will kill most. Those who do not find attractive the moss, which may appear on bricks in
shaded areas, can easily scrub it off with vinegar and water.

Other chores

Continue mounding up potatoes to increase crops and protect tubers from greening in the sun. Resist harvesting until you are ready to cook them. As with most vegetables, potatoes taste better straight from the garden. (And early potatoes are famously not good keepers.)
Feed citrus. Try seaweed-based liquid organic fertilisers.
Thin sowings of vegetables. Too crowded and they become weak and spindly.
Remove laterals on tomatoes. Ideally, the plant should consist of one main stem and fruit-bearing branches. Continue tying the stems to the stakes as they grow.
Harvest garlic when the tops start to die off, tug off fibrous roots and hang in a sunny, dry place for a few weeks. Keep the best cloves for replanting.

How to: make a driftwood Christmas tree

A beachy Christmas tree is a lovely casual addition to the festive season. Suitable for either indoors or out, they are fun and easy to make.

Just gather pieces of straightish driftwood in a variety of lengths, from about 8cm to 40cm. (How many and how long will determine or be determined by the size of the tree.) You will also need a more solid piece of wood for the stand, such as a log with a flat base or a substantial yet short length of timber; a metal rod for the central spine; and a drill with a bit the same diameter as the rod. Again, the length of the rod will depend on how tall you want the tree. Drill through the centre of each piece of driftwood and into the base to make a hole for the rod. Arrange the driftwood flat on the ground from shortest to longest before threading onto the rod. Leave it au naturel or decorate it with shells and fairy lights.

Steal this look

Hot pink and blood red is an electric combo. Both are great colours, yet together they also illustrate how the whole can be so much more than the sum of its parts. Playing with colour in the garden is enjoyable, challenging even, and made easier when plants are in containers. They can be mixed and matched, brought out when they’re looking good, placed where they’ll look even better, and sent back when they’re not looking their best. Pots can give often-needed solidity and sculptural form to an area; their flowers bringing colour, light or brightness. Try them on steps, beside a path, under a tree, at the corner of a patio, at the base of the clothes line, next to the vegetable patch. Do as they do in the grand Italian gardens, place the pots in a flower bed or shrubbery, in pairs astride a path or repeats atop a wall. If it’s a hefty concrete pot, consider placing a lighter, plastic one inside, one that can more easily be moved.

Consider this

Ouch! Rose thorns can be nasty but this natty tool takes the pain out of picking the beautiful blooms and arranging them in the vase. It is such a simple and effective way to remove those irksome thorns on rose stems that we wonder why every gardener who has roses doesn’t already own one. Handily, it can also be used to remove leaves on a stem and available from assorted nurseries and garden centres.

Words by: Mary Lovell-Smith