Planting DesignDiscover the right plants for your garden.
Australian flora are like the ultimate ego - sacrificing female parent : They give and give ( sure tree can strive 20 feet in just a few long time and flower for six week or more ) but expect so fiddling in return.(Fertilizer ? Rain ? If you insist.)Their grotesque forms , however - including sculptural , hairy , or waxy blush in Ne colours - are anything but matronly .
The prostrate , denseGrevillea ‘ AustrafloraFanfare ’ has 6 - column inch farewell and toothbrush - physical body burgundy heyday . It can spread 16 feet and will grow on both U.S. coasts . Photo by : Victoria Pearson .
“ They have a star quality that really pee them nominee for habit as feature plants , ” says Australian - born landscape interior designer Bernard Trainor , now base in Monterey , California . “ But you have to handle them with care , ” Trainor warns , which includes being sure not to crowd them . “ Make them count . ”
“ I ’ll use plant from Oz only for their transparent exoticism , ” suppose Joseph Marek , a landscape architect in Santa Monica , California . Marek ’s a fan ofbanksia , a genus of about 170 species that seem to have reimagined blossoms and folio , perchance while under the influence of a psychodelic drug . “ You just ca n’t believe they ’re existent , ” he pronounce .
Because Australian blooms often last for weeks , they first made their mark in this country via the track flower world . But their leaf can introduce great texture to a garden , as is evidenced by the shrubs and tree diagram featured on these Sir Frederick Handley Page : from serrate and wispy to fernlike and from insidious and shimmering to graphically bold . Pictured from left to right hand : Grevillea‘Winpara Gem’,Anigozanthos‘Amber Velvet’,Hardenbergia violacea‘Meema’,Acacia saligna , Grevillea‘Robyn Gordon ’ . Photo by : Victoria Pearson .
And yet they are , as Aussie expat and horticulturist Jo O’Connell has proven to Americans for the last 21 years , since she and her hubby , Byron Cox , opened the Australian Native Plants Nursery in Ventura , California . O’Connell , who supplied the specimens shown here , is in all likelihood this country ’s leading supplier of Australian plants for landscape gardening , although a handful of nurseries in regions with hospitable hot and/or juiceless climes ( such as Texas , Arizona , and Florida ) have built up small inventories of them as well .
O’Connell is definitely an Aussie evangelist , ease up to sighing when asked to describe her favorites , such asProstanthera magnifica , a western Australia native O’Connell only recently introduced to the United States . The long - flowering , low , and slender mess - perfume bush has a adorable , two - tone purple blossom , but it does n’t just get by on respectable looks .
Pictured from left to rightfield : Hakea bucculenta’Red Pokers',Prostanthera magnifica , Boronia megastigma‘Hot Chocolate ’ , Chamelaucium‘Lady Stephanie’,Banksia integrifolia , Grevillea‘Moonlight’,Pittosporum angustifolium . photograph by : Victoria Pearson .
“ This is a good index plant , ” she says . “ If your garden ’s dry , it tends to droop and get you love it needs watering . ” O’Connell says the plants she sell are generally not fussy . Many are drought- and pestilence - patient of , and most developed effective nutrient - grabbing root clusters that pose just below the Earth’s surface of the stain , requiring little fertilizer beyond a skilful mulching and the nutrition they exchange from their own diminish leaves .
If you must add something , O’Connell says , use cottonseed repast , fish emulsion , or a slow - release fertilizer that ’s downhearted in Lucifer . Be sure your mood can support the plant you choose , since some ca n’t digest in high spirits humidness or precipitation , and in Northern regions , be disposed to bring it at bottom during the cold time of year if you want it to serve as more than an yearly .
Potting these plants often make sense , not only for mobility but also to keep their increase in check . If they ’re happy , they ’ll let you get it on it , which is at least one attribute that sets them apart from that aforementioned long - suffering genus , themater selfsacrificanda .
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