Tea Trees For Spring Colour
Leptospermum - commonly called tea tree - is one of the most popular native plant families that we sell, widely planted and loved. They're grown for their abundant, showy, and very colourful spring flowers, which some varieties produce more than once a year. These come in a range of pretty pastel shades from pure white, cream, and pale pink, to lilac, bright pink, and magenta.Did you know that many Leptospermum varieties also have very colourful leaves too - giving you double the colour, double the enjoyment, double the value!
White Tea Trees
Many of the species forms of Leptospermum - those occurring naturally in the wild - flower in white. A simple elegant flower : five rounded petals surround a centre of green. White is a classic colour for flowering plants, fitting with a range of garden themes and styles for formal to native to cottage garden. There's also a range of sizes for you to choose from : tall shrubs and weeping hedges, petite mounds like Lemon Bun and low cascading groundcovers like White Wave.Shown, clockwise from top left :
- QLD-born Lemon Frost
- Cascading hedges of Cardwell
- Weeping Pacific Beauty
- Prolific in flower, Pacific Beauty stems in close up
Perhaps the most popular white tea tree in our range is Mozzie Blocker, a lemony-fresh citronella-scented Leptospermum. The smell is reputed to keep mosquitoes at bay; the abundant flowers entice in beneficial pollinators. It's large enough to plant as a privacy hedge; and small enough that you can grow it in a big pot on the patio.
Tea Tree Trees
We select most of the tea trees we sell to fit into the average Aussie garden, so they don't grow too big. These two white-flowered species are happy to be hard pruned into hedges; leave them be and they will grow into small trees, with slender narrow foliage and an airy light feeling.
- Left : L madidum - weeping tea tree has tiny white flowers in spring
- Right : L petersonii - lemon scented tea tree has copper-coloured new leaves which glow when the sun shines through
Pink Tea Trees
Your garden can wear pink every day of the week when you plant tea trees!There's such a range of shades to choose from.Whether you love baby pink and pastel shades, cool-toned lilac, bright bubblegum or intense rich magenta and ruby, there's a perfect pink for you.
Shown, clockwise from top left :
- Low spreading Pink Cascade ; she has a new child, Pink Crystals, just as pretty and in a tiny size
- Round-leaved large-flowered Lavender Queen
- One of many new large-flowered hot pink hybrids; this one is Tickled Pink with eyelash-like blossoms.
Take a look at Pageant, Aphrodite, Lipstick, Love Affair, and Seclusion for more vibrant candy pink colour - The richly-coloured dwarf rubrum nana, a popular favourite year-round.
If you have the room, plant it alongside taller Rudolph for extra colour impact in two layers.
Double Flowered Tea Trees
Two of our pink-flowered tea trees bloom with double flowers - that is, they have multiple rows of petals giving them a frilly look like tiny tutus.Our most popular tea tree variety is Burgundy Queen, with large double flowers in deep magenta, contrasting dramatically with the dark plum-purple foliage. It's a tall variety, ideal for informal hedging - loose and airy unpruned, dense and brightly coloured when heavily pruned.
If you can't make up your mind which tea tree you like the best, Ballerina is the perfect choice! It gives you flowers in every shade of pink, all at once, with dark chocolate centres, for a gorgeously pretty effect. You can see how even the smallest young plants are covered in spring blossom. Most of our Leptospermum varieties flower at tubestock size, for fast results.
Dark Leaved Tea Trees
Like the look of Burgundy Queen and Rubrum Nana above? There's more tea trees with dark foliage to enjoy in your garden! The exact leaf shades can change in intensity with the seasons and temperature, and depending on the amount of light that the plant gets; but they will stay dark all year round.Shown, clockwise from top left :
- The dark foliage of Starry Night changes from chocolate to copper to almost-black; but always contrasts with its pure white flowers
- The foliage of tall Copper Glow is often grown for florists to use
- Super-dark dwarf Kiwi is resilient, and small enough for patio pots
- Another look at Burgundy Queen before the flowers open
State biosecurity laws mean we can't ship this pretty native to SA, TAS, and WA. Take a look at our Myrtaceae Alternatives post for ideas on what you can plant instead to give you the look.
