Valentine's Day Plants

14 February is Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to you!
Here at Australian Plants Online we don't believe in waiting for one special day to tell someone we love and appreciate them!

We love you every day, for supporting us and choosing our plants to help you achieve your garden dreams. Thank you.

If you want to tell someone that you love and appreciate them, here's our suggestions on how to do that, with plants.

Whoever you love, whatever your budget, we bring you love-themed plants and flowers, heart-shaped plants and flowers; and lovely leafy creative ways to show you care, with flowers and plants.

Join us in celebration of this Festival of Love

Anthurium - the patron saint of Valentine plants

Anthuriums are the classic tailor-made plant for 14 February!

They come ready to romance with big glossy perfectly heart-shaped flowers, in traditional scarlet, which makes them practically the patron saint of Valentine plants! <3

They're beautiful and rewarding plants for growing indoors; and for shaded places in a subtropical or tropical garden.

Anthuriums grow slowly, like strong relationships, and they need little looking after, like the best kind of partners.

Anthurium flowers are prized because they last a long time - weeks on the plant, and even up to a month when cut and displayed in water.
A beautiful symbol of lasting love.

Anthurium flowers come in a range of colours, for full-on passion; for when you feel a little more shy and cautious; and for sharing some platonic friend-or-relation love, rather than the romantic kind :

OG classic red, perfect for heartfelt Valentine gifts
pure white
shades of pink
warm orange and coral
and vibrant purple!

We carry a range of anthurium colours through the year to suit all tastes, and levels of emotion.

And talking of tastes... there's even chocolate anthuriums!

A great choice for the friend or partner with a sweet tooth, and plant connoisseurs who are on the lookout for something rare and unusual.

These plants are not dyed - the flowers really are that colour!

Choose variety Giant Chocolate for warm rich burgundy-brown shades in leaves and flowers; and Black Beauty for intense cocoa-brown flowers and toast-brown leaves.

When you choose anthuriums, the flower hearts are joined by leaf hearts for extra helpings of romance.

You can see the heart shape leaves already forming even in tubestock size plants (top left).

The new anthurium leaves often take on pretty colours too - shades of pinky-red, olive-copper, and bronze-chocolate.

Once you start looking, you'll notice a lot of leaf hearts in the natural world!
Especially in indoor plants, and those that like a more hot and steamy climate.

Running anthuriums a close second as perfect patron saint of Valentine plants, are the beautifully-patterned leafy caladiums.

Leafy Hearts

Angel Wings - Soft Hearts

Heart-shaped Caladiums are perfect for showing love and affection - and their common name of angel wings is pretty romantic too!

With Caladiums, the heart and the colour is all in the leaf.

They like the same kind of growing conditions as anthuriums, which means you can grow double the hearts in your lounge room or garden border.

Caladium leaves are soft and matt on the surface, contrasting with the firm glossy leaves of anthurium. They pair beautifully together.

For bright bubbly leaf colour, you can't go past both philodendron and syngonium or arrowhead vine.

There's a range of shades to choose in both plants - white, lime, gold, bronze, maroon - and the pink ones of both plants are supercute for Valentine's Day.

Here is Philodendron Pink Princess, with marbled markings; and Syngonium Neon, an all-over blush pink. (Syngonium Infra Red is another good pink variety, more angular in outline.)

Here's heaps more heart-shaped leafy loveliness for your valentine delectation :

Clockwise from top left:

Anthurium clarinervum, perfectly formed and graphically patterned
the glorious velvet philodendron, Philodendron gloriosum,
super-popular alocasia - many of this family have pointy heart-shaped leaves;
and the Final Boss of romantic Valentine plants, chain of hearts Ceropegia.

An exquisitely delicate necklace of tiny silver hearts, made by that master jeweller herself - Mother Nature.

This pretty little indoor plant is a cinch to grow, and trails delicately from a hanging pot or high shelf.

Love Plants, Heart-Free

Give someone you love a little flowery orchid Lemon Kiss!
An everlasting succulent Chocolate Kiss or Key Lime Kiss!
A lavender Romance bouquet!

Sugar, honey, sweetheart, baby - whatever your pet name, we bet we've got a plant for it (unless your pet name is chubbychops-snugglebutt, that might be tricky...)

Glamorous passion flowers turn to passion fruits, sweet and juicy and delicious. They're fast-growing vines that need a lot of water and sunlight. In ideal conditions you could get fruits the same year as you plant them.

Gardenias are a popular choice for romantic plant gifts, and for wedding bouquets when romance gets serious!

The pure white waxy flowers are impossibly glamorous, and have an intense seductive fragrance too.
This variety tops them all - huge blooms, and the perfect variety name, True Love.

“This is true love. You think this happens every day?”

Westley, The Princess Bride

These pretty, delicate-looking flowers are the annual Nigella, commonly known as love-in-a-mist for the fine feathery leaves that surround each starry flower.

The flowers are usually blue as here, sometimes white, occasionally pink.

They're fast-growing from seed for quick results, and after the flowers die you'll enjoy big papery seedpods that are longlasting, excellent for drying and arranging.
Lots to love!

“Eccolo!” he exclaimed.
At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood.
Light and beauty enveloped her.
She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered with violets from end to end.
“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above.
“Courage and love.”

EM Forster - A Room With A View

Secret Language of Love

The Victorians were huge on sending hidden messages through their floral bouquets and gifts, and in flowers they wore in their buttonholes and entwined in their hair.

Each flower had a secret meaning, a symbolism, which everyone knew and understood.

We still do this in a small way today, sending long-stemmed red roses to those we are passionate about; orchids to those we want to congratulate; and sunflowers to those we want to make happy.

If you like the idea of flower symbolism, here's some emotions that have been attributed to plants, to carry a hidden message: