Posted on: Friday, December 31, 2004
 |
HAWAI'I'S GARDENS
Magnolia great for gardens, gorgeous decorations
| • | Home & Garden Calendar |
By Heidi Bornhorst
Magnolia is a gorgeous tree for Hawai'i gardens, and it is also great for holiday and seasonal decor. They even use it in the White House in a silver bowl with pomegranates.
At this time of year, there are many lovely aspects to magnolia. The fruit are ripening and they are pink-tinged in the evening light. These will be followed by bright red fruit. The fruit are gorgeous on our magnolia street trees in Palolo Valley and they are also a bonus for interior decorating. There are still a few of the huge, deeply fragrant white blossoms on the trees, too. This ancient flower is amazing.
The handsome bold leaves are a glossy green on top and a coppery bronze below. They dry with a nice sheen and you can use the leaves fresh or dry in arrangements or to make wreaths or table décor.
Magnolias are a well-behaved, small-to-medium, slow-growing tree suitable for low-elevation gardens. They grow faster and larger in more mauka areas. Tantalus boasts a few big, majestic trees.
Doris Taitano and I were on a mission to help decorate Washington Place, the former governor's house that is now a museum. We went knocking on Manoa Valley doors in search of magnolia trees that might need a bit of corrective pruning for free by a certified arborist. The first house had a big overgrown tree. There were a lot of untidy branches that short girls with sharp, clean saws could reach. But nobody was home, so we left it alone.
The next magnolia tree was at the home of a friend. We asked her mom if we could prune the trees, but she said no — every branch was precious to her as her late husband had planted the tree. There were no pods on this beloved magnolia tree, either, as every bud was carefully watched over as it developed and then picked to be enjoyed indoors in memory of her late husband. She even showed us a plastic-encased note her daughter put on the tree one time when somebody came and stole a blossom. We understood her love of the tree and enjoyed her stories more than a few magnolia branches.
This was one of those wet, wild windy Saturdays. We kept going on our search mission and found a house with an unpruned tree where the young man who answered the door said we could cut all we liked. He went back into his warm, dry house while Doris and I carefully mined the gorgeous leafy branches and fruits for decorating material and also gave the tree a good professional pruning and cleaned up all the debris.
We also found a few pua-kenikeni fruit clusters and took this all down to our friend Corrine Chun Fujimoto, curator of Washington Place. Our offerings joined other holiday greenery in decorating the one-time home of Queen Lili'uokalani for the holidays.
Poinsettia time
We are having a very colorful and floriferous holiday season. Flowering plants that usually aren't in bloom at this time of year are holding on, and we also have all the usual winter seasonal bloomers to enjoy.
Advertiser library photo Recently, I was explaining to a visitor that white poinsettias can easily be grown outdoors in Hawai'i gardens — they readily grow waist-high, I told her. Then I saw one in a Palolo garden near the stream that had to be 8 feet tall and full of tiny fragrant white flowers. I also saw some big shrubs of them that were in bloom on one side only; the other side stayed green because the plant is near a street light. Too much light prevents poinsettias from developing the colored blooms.
The white poinsettia, Euphorbia leucocephala, continues to bloom and look gorgeous well after the Christmas holiday has passed. Some people call this Mexican poinsettia, but both white and red are native to Mexico. My late mentor, May Moir, considered white poinsettia the perfect flower for a winter wedding. You can cut them, and they will be durable, pretty and fragrant in a flower arrangement.
It is very simple to keep your poinsettia blooms going at least till February.
Water the plants thoroughly, all the way through the pot, once or twice a week. Take the potted poinsettia out of the decorative pot or foil and carry it to the sink. Keeping the flowers dry, let the water flow through the planting media, drain thoroughly, then replace in its pretty wrapper.
Protect poinsettias from wind as the branches are fragile and they will dry out in overly windy areas. Keep poinsettias in diffuse light, not the direct light of a window sill, for example. Pluck off any dead dry leaves and continue to enjoy this pretty plant until it fades.
The hybrid varieties nurseries grow aren't worth keeping, but if you have the old-fashioned shrub-type poinsettias growing in your garden, remember to prune and fertilize them in April and August.
Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable-landscape consultant. Submit questions to islandlife@honoluluadvertiser.com or Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Letters may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
White poinsettias, aloe in flower spike, stephanotis, even plumeria are still in bloom. I spotted some yellow ginger in my neighbor's garden and offered to clean up the patch for her in exchange for some of those fragrant buds.
Protect poinsettias from wind because the branches are fragile and will dry out in too-windy areas. Diffuse light is a good idea, too.
