Gardening: Abelia - all things to all gardens - well, almost

This variegated abelia is beautiful ground cover. Minimal trimming keeps it round and tidy.

I have a pair of shoes branded "Abelia", as well as a vintage camisole I bought in the UK 10 years ago, and an Italian dinner plate.

There are also thousands of lodges and motels with Abelia in their names, as well as quite a lot of cheap jewellery.

My interest, though, is in the plant - a hedgy-looking thing with red stems and pink flowers - which grows like a weed in the north, and like something rather better-behaved in the south.

Initially, I took abelias for granted, as most northern gardeners do.

Then someone gave me half a dozen straggly leftovers in disintegrating plastic pots and I tossed them behind the wall of the carport to await the day when I might feel enthusiastic enough to plant them. Of course, that day never came, because why would you plant an abelia when there are so many more interesting things to plant?

So, in true abelia style they planted themselves and grew speedily into a thick, glossy, free-form hedge. Their determination to survive has provided us with a vastly improved carport.

Atop the timber sleeper wall is a double row of miniature agapanthus, and behind that, the abelia hedge. My new best friend, then.

Anything you might read about abelia will probably only reinforce the notion that it is a rather uninteresting plant. Most of the descriptions I've read say: "Excellent hedging plant. Green foliage, small white flowers. Evergreen. Hardy to cold and drought. Height when mature 3m." So exciting.

But this little wonder is hiding its light beneath a bushel.

Quite apart from its speedy growth - always a plus when you're planting a hedge - it does absolutely everything right. It's non-invasive. It's easily pruned. It makes pretty little white, pink or mauve flowers all through summer and beyond. Ours were still flowering in June.

It's said to prefer light shade. Ours are planted in virtual darkness. It's also said to need regular watering in summer. Not at our place they don't. We had months without real rain at the start of the year and the abelia have yet to notice. Even in the far north they're not much bothered by pests and diseases.

These wee treasures are native to eastern Asia and southern North America. The species from warm climates are evergreen but in cooler climates they're deciduous.

According to the UK's Royal Horticultural Society website, they may need hard pruning every three to four years. (I am yet to forgive The Landscaper for taking this to heart and whacking ours off at the halfway mark a year or so ago. Fortunately, they regenerated in about half an hour and I managed to propagate a heap from the cuttings.)

Not long after I fell in love with the hedge which, by the way, is Abelia grandiflora, I was introduced to a variegated version called Abelia Snow Showers. Snow Showers is one of the few plants I've ever bought that has behaved exactly as the nurseryman said it would.

"It'll grow into a big bun and keep its shape," he told me, and it has.

What's really great about abelias is their versatility. They make great formal hedges and equally good casual hedges. You can turn them into standards or topiaries for fun.

They grow in pots, they work as ground covers, they're fantastic filler plants and they look just as good all by themselves.

An arum lily adds class to the kitchen.

If you get to like them as much as I do, you can very easily make more of them by taking softwood cuttings in early summer or semi-hardwood cuttings in late summer.

Plant them in pots and throw them behind the carport and, presto, in a few months you may have a handsome hedge.

Weeds saved by their looks

Our garden's not big on flowers - or at least not flowers for picking. I'd love to have a real picking garden with old fashioned irises, lilies and dahlias, but that's quite a long way down the priority list.

In the meantime, I make do with what's around, be it flower or weed. At the moment the white garden is offering up arum lilies by the bucketful, and although some consider them weeds and say it's bad luck to bring them inside, I maintain that the arum is the only flower you can stick in a milk bottle on its own and it looks classy and elegant.

Carrot weed is good company for olive foliage and a late agapanthus.

I also use carrot weed. It's an invasive pasture weed, especially in Northland, lowering the quality of the hay made from infested paddocks. It can become quite dominant in pastures so I'm doing my bit for farmers by grabbing the flowers (they're mostly white but I've seen the odd pink version, which is rather pretty) and teaming them with olive leaf foliage. A blast with hairspray stops them dropping bits on the windowsill.

Verbena bonariensis, or purple top, is a tall, slender-stemmed perennial with creeping rhizomes. It has vibrant purple flowers that appear from summer until autumn and look a bit like the statice we used to use in dried flower bunches.

You wouldn't look twice at it on its own but, stuffed in a vase with a couple of seed heads, it makes a stylish arrangement.

Of course, I'm not recommending we cultivate weeds for floral arrangements, but if you've got weeds, you may as well get some use out of them.