The Bogan Fuchsia

The inclusion this year of the humble garden gnome in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show could be seen as a sign that any expression of gardening from whatever class or background you come from is justified and should not be judged on matters of taste. In Australia the celebration of the suburban bogan is certainly welcome on our TV screens.

In Australian literature, Patrick White had great affection for bogan characters in his dusty suburban Sarsparilla of the late 1950's and early sixties. In the short story Down at the Dump, the garden of Wal and Isba Whalley has a big Camphor Laurel tree (Cinnamomum camphora) which is 'lopped back every few years for firewood', its trunk scarred by son Lum who slashes at the bark with a knife 'because it was something you did'. Out back standing in knee high paspalum grass is the two-tone Ford Customline...'it looked stolen and almost was ...the third payment overdue' while the twins Barry and Garry, looking like a couple of 'taffy brumbies', play in a rusty boiler they use as a cubby.

Across the road in a liver-coloured brick home with a cream Holden Special in the driveway lives Councillor Les and Myrtle Hogben and their daughter Meg. On the cool side of the house grow tall fuchsia bushes with a ground cover of aluminium plant (Lamium galeobdolon) Meg, dressed in her brown school uniform, is thin and freckly with the eyes of a 'mopey cat'. She hides from her mother, 'standing amongst the fuchsia bushes looking out from their greenish shade. Her skin was green except where the war between light and shade worried her face into scraps: and the fuchsia tassels trembling against her unknowing cheek, infused something of their own blood, brindled her with shifting crimson. Only her eyes resisted.'

White wrote later of these characters in 'Letters' (edited by David Marr) ....but Meg Hogben and Mum Whalley are the pure, the truthful, those of whom we may have hopes in the future.' 

The Victor Lemoine Fuchsias

2011 poster from an exhibition to celebrate the life of renowned French nurseryman and plant hybridist, Pierre Louis Victor Lemoine (1823-1911) in Nancy, France.

 1849 was a good year for Victor Lemoine. He was 26 years old and he had persuaded his father to lend him the money to set up a nursery on the Rue de l'Hospice in Nancy. On his bookshelf he probably had a copy of Felix Porcher's Le Fuchsia: son Histoire et sa Culture, La description ou l'Indication de 520 Especes et Varietes', the second edition of which had appeared that year, and, from his Belgian friend and mentor Louis Van Houtte he had no doubt received a copy of the horticultural magazine La Flore des Serres et Jardins de l'Europe which contained the van Houtte illustration below of Fuchsia venusta, a Colombian species first collected and described by those intrepid plant hunters Humboldt and Bonpland.

 During the course of his working life he went on to release some 400 garden Fuchsia hybrids including two derived from this species 'Gerbe de Corail' and 'Corne d'abondance' in 1905 , a first for horticulture. Many of the varieties are still around today and over the course of a century have found their way to Australia. The Lemoine bred 'Lord Byron' is readily available from specialist growers.

Fuchsia x 'Lord Byron'

While regarded as a taciturn man and a poor keeper of records, the names he chose for his Fuchsias speak volumes about his tastes, interests and which people commanded his attention in the world of politics, the arts and sciences. 

Going through his catalogue has given me an insightful french history lesson. To mention but a few, there is Pierre Beaumarchais (1732-1799) who was a playwright, fugitive, spy, horticulturist, arms dealer and revolutionary; the radical left wing politician Pierre Joigneaux (1815-1892) who managed to write a few gardening books while imprisoned: L'art de produire de bonnes graines...... 'The art of producing good seed' amongst them; and President Felix Faure (1841-1899) who is now remembered for dieing whilst engaged in la pompe funebre with his thirty year old mistress. (another untranslatable French pun)
Lemoine was obviously a big opera fan as Charles Garnier (1825-1898), the architect of the Paris Opera, Palais Garnier, and stars Lucienne Breval (1869-1935) who is remembered for her performance of Rameau's 'Hippolyte et Aricie' as well as the soprano Emma Calve (1858-1942) all have fuchsias named after them.
A year or so after his death, and with his family continuing the nursery business (It operated till 1960), a fuchsia is named in honour of Mrs Jacques Feuillet (nee Marie Hout) (1864-1912) a causality of War who died while working as a Red Cross volunteer. It is a sad reminder of our own involvement in The Great War which began just two years later.

 French writer Marcel Proust, who had a keen interest in gardening and plants was probably familiar with Lemoine's Nursery when writing his A la recherche...Remembrance of Things Past, and, a keen eyed plant detective ,with way too much time on their hands, could probably identify the lusty and impious variety growing in the window-box of Mme Loiseau's house which stood cheek by jowl to the Combray village church 'Saint-Hilaire': 'In vain might Mme Louiseau deck her window-sills with fuchsias, which developed the bad habit of letting their branches trail at all times and in all directions, head downwards, and whose flowers had no more important business, when they were big enough to taste the joys of life, than to go and cool their purple, congested cheeks against the dark front of the church, to me such conduct sanctified the fuchsias not at all; between the flowers and the blackened stone against which they leaned, if my eyes could discern no gap, my mind preserved the impression of an abyss'......

The Carl Bonstedt Fuchsias

 Fuchsia triphylla from Curtis' Botanical Magazine

Joseph Hooker (1817-1911)

The German botanist and gardener, Carl Bonstedt (1866 -1953) was a man in the right place at the right time. In the early 1880's he managed to secure a plant of Fuchsia triphylla while working at Kew Gardens. The plant had been given to Kew by Henderson's Nursery of the Edgware Road and they had originally obtained it from New York nurseryman Thomas Hogg Jr. who had connections in Haiti and the Dominican Republic where this species is found growing in cool mountainous terrain. So on return to Germany, Bonstedt, who worked briefly at the Botanic Garden in Rostock from 1892 to 1900 and then at the University Botanic Garden in Gottingen, developed and produced some fine hybrid Fuchsias based on the F triphylla species. 

While often used as summer bedding plants in Europe, they thrive in a mild winter climate like ours and will flower their heads off all through winter and spring.They have the added bonus of attractive olive green, purple backed leaves and as their flowers are terminal racemes on reddish stems they are always visible and not shy at being showy. 
The main varieties available and their original release dates are: 'Mary' 1905 ,a rich scarlet colour; 'Gottingen', 1905 vermilion; 'Traudschen Bonstedt' 1905 pale salmon pink; 'Thalia', 1905 pale orange; 'Koralle' 1906 rich salmon orange; 'Gartenmeister Bonstedt' 1906 glowing orange to brick red. A terrific book which has these photographed as individual flowers to show the difference is the Plants for Warm Gardens book by Roger Phillips and Martin Rix (Pan Books)

Carl Bonstedt retired in 1931 and left us with these wonderful hardy fuchsias which are still popular and easy to grow today.

Fuchsia x 'Gartenmeister Bonstedt'

 

The Fuchsia Basket

 Fuchsia hanging basket in mid summer glory

I am thinking about fuchsias at the moment because now is the time to prune them and re-pot ones in baskets and containers. Though fuchsias don't do well in sub tropical or tropical climates they are fine on the coast and in the city as long as they are protected from hot drying winds in summer. Avoid buying them at this time of year if they are loaded with flowers as they have probably been 'forced' in a glasshouse and may go into shock once placed in a decorative pot or garden bed and drop most of the flowers and leaves.

Basket grown fuchsias make great gifts and are fairly easy to DIY with a little effort. Always buy named varieties as it is much easier to check on whether it is a trailer suitable for baskets or one which prefers a garden site. Searching the web with a proper variety name makes it easier to source the correct information as to how big it is likely to grow.

 I re-pot existing ones by trimming down to a framework of branches and shaking off most of the soil round the roots and trimming them as well. I like the self watering hanging baskets rather than the coir ones which tend to dry out too quickly. The same rules apply for container grown fuchsias, while garden grown ones just need a tidy up and reduction in overall size. When the new leaves start to appear and the branches elongate, it is time to start tip pruning and pinching off the growing points to ensure the resulting plant will be compact and producing the maximum quantity of flowers. Liquid fertilizer helps to improve the quality and quantity of the blooms.

 My potted or basket fuchsias don't stay perfect all year long. By the end of summer they can look a bit tired and often have burnt leaves or even a bit of insect damage. I put them out of sight in a cool damp place and leave them till now to start the revival for their best months.

 Fuchsia ready for re-potting

Re-potted and waiting for warm days ahead

A Fuchsia Survey

 A Fuchsia Survey by W P Wood

Cover Illustration by Elizabeth Sorrell

Published by Williams Norgate 1950

You have to feel sorry for Mr Wood. He wrote this book as a history of Fuchsia growing, covering the time of discovery of the various species in South America and other parts of the world, to the development of the breeding programmes in the 19th Century and release of hundreds of new cultivars over the years from 1830 to the time of his writing. The War years dealt a blow to his passion for them and even by 1948 he was mourning their non appearance at the Covent Garden Market in London, as the production of fruit and vegetables instead of flowers was still at a premium. I think he wistfully longed to pack up and move to San Francisco, such is his praise for that city and its ideal Fuchsia growing climate, as Californian botanist Professor Phillip Munz (1892-1974) had published his great monograph, A Revision of the Genus Fuchsia in 1943 and America was the new centre for their research and development. 
Though there is no mention of Fuchsia growing in Australia in this book, they have always been a part of the garden scene here since the time of first settlement.
British grower Thomas Thorne, he, a descendant of the famous Lye family of Fuchsia hybridists,  gave a rundown of all the Australian bred varieties in his book Fuchsias for all Purposes in 1964. Against all the Australian entries however there are the words 'date and origin unknown'. Were we suffering from some sort of horticultural cringe? most likely. Some are still available today such as 'Canary Bird' and 'Crimson Bedder' but it would be nice to know who introduced them to horticulture. At the time there was no Australian Fuchsia Society, as that did not come till 1970 after a "call to arms" by A G Puttock (he was an ex Army officer after all) in his book on The Australian House and Garden Book of Fuchsias. Many garden books tell us much about social history and his suggestion of enclosing a verandah to make a sun room for growing Fuchsias was very much the way some older hoses were modernized at the time. Deborah Law's more recent book Growing Fuchsias published by Kangaroo Press (editions 1987 and 1990) is one of the best reference books we have on the local scene.

It is sad to report that the Australian Fuchsia Society, which had been based in Adelaide has been disbanded and the Fuchsia Club of New South Wales is in limbo. Where to now for the promotion of these hardy and delightful plants?