What are you looking forward to most...?

After a long cold winter what are you looking forward to most? Aah silly question, undoubtedly it would be a week in the sun at the beach. For me a caravan on my sisters property in the little village of Matapouri in new Zealand, swimming every day and enjoying the warmth. But no, what I mean is what do you look forward to most in the garden this spring? Which plants, which flowers, what smells and sounds, and what tastes too if you are looking forward to our tomatoes?

I have so many really great reliable plants in my garden. They simply perform all year round in that greenish sort of way that shrubs should do. I am so grateful for the dependability of these plants, many of which flower through winter….think Grevillea, Correa, and Senna to name a few.

But there is another group of plants, the perennials, which I look forward to in spring. Even though they have not graced me with their best over winter (many of them actual die back to ground level over winter) I can forgive them because of their happy faces to jazz things up just when I think summer will never come again.

Look up perennial borders on the internet and, if your search engine is like mine, it will likely throw up pictures of the most gorgeous English perennial borders. Who could not love them but honestly they mostly need far more water than we are accustomed to, not to mention a more gentle sun. So at the nursery we have been working toward producing some truly gorgeous Australian perennial plants which will handle the hot, the cold and the dry, in other words the good the bad and the ugly!

These plants will be ideally suited for grasslands, rockeries, edging of pathways, and true Aussie cottage garden styles or perennial borders.

Top of my list this year is Eryngium ovinum. This plant is a super hardy local perennial, never found in main stream plant shops. It pops its head above ground in late winter (after dying back in late autumn) and grows a strong rosette of spiky leaves at the base of the plant. Heads of striking electric blue spiky flowers rise up to 60cm in summer. Absolutely stunning mass planted as part of a perennial border with other bright flowers and great for cut flower arrangements either fresh or dried. Last year I had them growing amongst a mass of bright sunny yellow Xerochrysum viscosum, with the electric blue this was a stunning combination.  Plant them in bulk in a sunny open position. 

They are adaptable to most soils as long as they are not wet and they dont mind frost. This year I am going to start adding some to my grassland garden to float amongst the Poa grasses and Bulbine plants.

Coronidium scorpioides is another newby at the nursery and another one you are unlikely to find in many nurseries. This is a vigorous suckering plant with sage green leaves and bobbing heads of bright sunny yellow paper daisy flowers on stalks of 10 – 40cm which grows into a dense, weed occluding mat. Naturally occurring in dry woodland and forests makes this a good candidate for underplanting other shrubs or trees but equally would make an awesome front of border plant in a shady or part shade position. Although vigorous it is not hard to control. Again this plant dies back in winter but comes back with vigour in spring. And another bonus is that the butterflies love it.

Leucochrysum albicans are tough as old boots as long as you treat them to harsh conditions. We have had them in the nursery in previous years but not recently. This local plant can be found growing along road sides in the gravel. Another paper daisy this time in white with a yellow centre in spring. It prefers full sun and dry conditions so don’t molly coddle it or it will turn up its toes at you.

Rhodanthe chlorocephala is an annual I know but amongst the blue, yellow and white of the previously mentioned plants the colours of these paper daises (deep pink, pale pink or white with a yellow or black centre) won’t go amiss. This is a fast growing ground cover 20 – 60cm high and prefers full sun to part shade and tolerates dry once established.

Below is a list of a few other delightful plants (some of which are new to the nursery) which will fit well amongst the plants profiled above; Scaevola albida ‘Mauve Clusters’, Convolvulus erubescens, Goodenia glabra, Xerochrysum viscosum, Rhodanthe anthemoides, Bulbine glauca, bulbosa bulbosa, Craspedia variabilis, Linum marginale, Wahlenbergia sp. Lotus australis in pink or white. Check out our website for details of these plants and others (too many to mention here)

So if you are lucky enough to score a week at the beach good for you. I'm planning to plant a few hundred of these plants in my grasslands and then I shall take a deck chair out to the dam, put on my sunglasses and just pretend I am on vacation by the sea.