Colour of the Year 2025 - Maroon

We ship nationwide here at Australian Plants Online, so we take a very nationwide view on almost everything we do.
No regional bias or preference.

Except, for some of our staff, when it comes to sport!
And especially in a year like this one, when the Brisbane Lions win the AFL Grand Final - again; and the Brisbane Broncos win the Women's and Men's NRL Grand Final.

So for Spring 2025, we're looking at maroon flowers and plants for the garden!

This rich deep purple-red-brown shade on the far left has been the official colour of QLD since November 2003, formalising a long tradition. The specific shade of official maroon is #73182C, a warm reddish tone. You can see the Lions colour is cooler, plum-maroon; and the Broncos shade almost wine-purple.

Maroon Flowers

Maroon isn't a common colour for flowering plants, but keep your eyes open and you'll come across one or two to brighten your garden.

Our first choice is Boronia megastigma, the native fragrant boronia.

Each little hanging bell is deep plum-maroon on the outside, and golden yellow inside, a perfect match for the more purple-toned Broncos logo with its golden accents.

These boronias enjoy somewhere sunny, with light free-draining soil, and a sheltered position will enhance that sweet fragrance.

Our variety here is Dark Prince, chosen for its much bigger flowers for more garden impact. Go big or go home!

 

Second match is the lovely and often overlooked toad lily - perfectly named for us Queenslanders!

These freckled flowers appear on the top of long slender stems - and early on, as our tubestock plants are often in bloom in the nursery.

They love shady moist places, just like toads do, and are so easy to add a little colour to a drab patch of the garden.

 

Dahlias bring a lot of rich deep maroon shades to your garden - in complex golfball flowers like this one, spiky echidna flowers (called cactus), and simple ones shaped like a child's drawing of a flower.

We sell dahlias once a year in spring when it's the right time to plant them - you can find out more about planting bulbs in season here.

 

Another seasonally available maroon plant is the delicately dainty aquilegia or columbine.
You might also know it as granny's bonnet.

These shade-loving cottage garden flowers usually pale pastel shades, or candy colours, with bell-shaped flowers.
This variety, Black Barlow, is a deep wine red, and with multiple layers of petals - very unusual for aquilegia.
No wonder it always sells out fast each year!

 

Hellebores like this beauty get their common name of winter roses because they pop up to flower through the winter, into early spring.
A handy reminder each year to get more beers and snacks in, ready for the sharp end of the fixtures season...

Some, like this one Ice Breaker Ruby, and Ice n Roses Merlot, even wear a golden ring in the centre, perfectly branded!

 

We can't go past maroon flowers without stopping to admire the stunning display that is a tea tree in full flower.

This one is our most popular variety, Leptospermum Burgundy Queen, a tall variety which along with the thousands of magenta-maroon flowers it produces, has deep plum-purple foliage all year round too. Definitely a dyed-in-the-wool Queenslander!

Leave it be for more dark foliage, clip it hard for more bright flowers (that's what we did here).

And if you love that dark foliage, and you've got he space, plant some Copper Glow tea tres too - they make showstopping hedges.

 

We've got a sneaking suspicion that Hollywood superstar Drew Barrymore might be a closet Queenslander - as she really loves the colour maroon!

 

"We lived on Poinsettia Place in a tiny duplex that had a giant wall of bougainvillea up the front, about twenty-five feet high, which to a little kid seems like a skyscraper, and it made our place stand out on the street. This dramatic, hearty flower with its deep maroon made me so happy. I was so in love with its color, and it taught me that beauty could live in a seedy area. Not only live but also be strong!"

 

Drew Barrymore, Wildflower

Maroon Plants

It's heaps easier to create a maroon garden with foliage plants. There are so many to choose from, and the transfer window is all year round!

As well as green plants which turn sumptuous shades of maroon once autumn comes - like liquidambar trees - there are plants which wear their team colours proudly every month of the year.

Let's work from the ground up. Our first choice here is alternanthera, a fast-growing sun-loving frost-tender groundcover full of colour.

Little Ruby is the most popular and well known variety, but the colour is a little too purple for our liking : Sea Eagles, dare we even say veering to Storm, territory.

Better choose the less ubiquitous varieties Red Threads, Fire Bug, and Brazilian Red Hots to be sure of true maroon hues.

 

We're big fans of alternanthera varieties but they don't like the cold or the shade.
For a wider range of climates, including cold and shade, heuchera are more resilient.

They're not well known yet here in Australia, but we're doing our best to put that right.

These lovely foliage plants come in a wide range of astonishing colours (as well as more classic green-based forms)but to really show our support, Fire Alarm and Forever Red are the way to go. Don't worry, the colour is defo Forever maroon when you see it, and you'll never have to tell people its real name...

 

Low-growing, fast-growing, adaptable in a range of positions, blood grass (Imperata Rubra) has to be worth a place in your garden. Dark burgundy in shade, when the sun shines through it looks like it's on fire.

 

We can't go past maroon without selecting a cordyline or two for the team!

Whether it's tough, rugged, slender-leaved australis types, like a bouquet of swords - we choose Red Sensation;
or frost-tender, humidity-loving, broad-leaved fruticosa types, a fountain of foliage.

Put your money on shorter Dr Brown and Pink Lady; taller vibrant Firestorm, pictured, for a guaranteed return.

 

Once you have the pitch covered with alternanthera and heuchera, time to mark out those boundary lines.

And what better hedging choice than nandina, the sacred bamboo? It's a ripper shrub for cruisy low hedges full of intense colour.

Plant the Asian species Nandina nana and you'll get a chamaeleon rainbow of shades, red gold and green;
plant Australian-bred Blush and Obsession and you'll get dinky-di deep maroon foliage, all year round.

 

If you've got a neighbour that hasn't seen the light and is still supporting other teams, block them from view with a big beautiful maroon privacy screen.

For neighbours who might yet be converted to the true religion, where there's hope there's slim, head-high, native lilly pilly Acmena Forest Flame.

For those neighbours beyond redemption, Photinia is the perfect choice. Variety Red Robin is the usual team pick and a fine reddish-brown hue; but Black Jack here, topping out at 4 metres unclipped, has much more of the maroon intensity we're looking for. And that handy height.

 

Time for the stars to shine! Big bold plants that will fill a stadium and draw a crowd.

First off the bench is leucadendron, a South African shrub with tough leathery leaves that loves the sunny spotlight.

Now, there's gold ones, and cream ones, but we're accepting nothing less than supermaroon Safari Sunset, probably the best known variety - bigger than a Broncos prop and a Dally M shoo-in for any garden with free-draining acid soil.

 

For a wider range of soils, and colder winters, sub in smoke bush (Cotinus). Rich maroon purple colour? Check. Tall and bold? Check. Fast-growing too. Seasonal flowers? Oh yeah. Fluffy clouds of them. This player's covering all the positions.

 

Oh, you want homegrown talent, not imported stars?

Here's one of our favourites and a big hit with coastal gardeners too - native cottonwood (Hibiscus tiliaceus Rubra).

Give it space to develop and it transforms into a broad shady domed tree, covered in maroon heart-shaped leaves and pale golden hibiscus flowers. Doesn't mind wet soils, salty soils, sandy soils, bore water, windy sites - whatever the playing conditions, it's got its cleats on.

 

These little rosette succulents, commonly called hen and chickens or stone roses, have the botanic name Sempervivum.
That means ever-living, just as the Broncos and Lions will be ever in the Grand Final for years to come, hope the fans...

Sempervivums are rugged, resilient, tough little plants, long-lasting, drought-hardy and sun-loving. Like the players.

 

Did somebody say tough, drought-hardy, and sun-loving? Must be talking 'bout Mangave!

That's a new agave hybrid that's bred for compact size, fast growth, rich colour.
We love Mission to Mars, the maroonest of all.

Hey, that gives us an idea - maybe we can take the AFL and NRL intergalactic...

 

Also tough like mangaves, are berberis plants - though these are more attack than defence!

They have thorns along the stems, which makes them fantastic hedging for keeping out wildlife, or the opposition forwards.

Little Favourite is our favourite for little hedges, Helmond Pillar our pick for taller slimmer screens.

If you leave them to grow out a little you'll be rewarded with golden yellow clusters of bell flowers, because maroon and gold is the best colour combo.