Thursday 31 July 2014

Blaugust 1, 2014 - Winter Colour

Looking for a splash of Winter colour for your South Australian garden? Well look no further, friend! Here are three suggestions that go together well, from tall to small, just for you!

(Please forgive the lack of pictures. I'm not planning these out in advance, and I don't feel like using other people's photographs)

Acacia pycnantha, the Golden Wattle, is the Australian floral emblem. The immediately recognisable stunning yellow flowers start to appear in July, and really bring the bush to life. It grows to around 4 metres tall generally in the form of a small tree.This Acacia has a reputation for being short-lived, with a lifespan ranging from 6 years at the low end in the wild to a possible 14 years with careful care in a garden. However it makes up for this through rapid growth and ready seeding; it isn't hard to have a couple on the go at different stages of their life-cycle to always have this extremely rewarding plant in your garden.

Hardenbergia violacea occurs naturally in the Adelaide/Mount Lofty Ranges region. The local form tends to be a roughly one metre shrub with dark green leathery leaves and bright purple flowers on a long raceme. Climbing, prostrate, pink and white forms also exist in cultivation.

Correa pulchella 'Autumn Blaze' is a form of Correa pulchella found originally on Kangaroo Island and introduced to cultivation via cuttings. It has a ground cover habit, growing no more than about 30cm tall but spreading to about 1.2 metres. From Autumn it puts on a fantastic display of pink-orange flowers shaped like bells. It is an excellent plant for attracting native nectar feeding birds, such as New Holland Honeyeaters and Eastern Spinebills. It works extremely well in a pot.

Enough of the salesman. Obviously I'm spending too much time at work.

I've been having garden designs on the brain lately, and I keep coming up with interesting planting combinations for all sorts of environments and styles that I inevitably forget to write down. I'm looking forward to having a garden of my own to have free-reign in some day, something I have wanted for many years. Starting from scratch. I hope to have one big enough that I can create several sections with very different styles, but to satisfy all of my cravings I'd have to have gardens in five or so different parts of the state. For now I'll keep dreaming.

2 comments:

  1. Ha, you've given me a name for Correa pulchella - for ages I'd only known it as "that sort of shrubby plant with bell-shaped flowers". The more you know.

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    1. There are lots of Correa species and cultivars that you might find in gardens, though pulchella and it's children are among the more common.

      In the Adelaide region you might also find reflexa var scabridula and glabra var turnbullii.

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