Behind the Scenes in our nursery
We love to see all the photos and videos of your garden plants that you email to us, and share on social media!
We thought we'd share some of ours with you in return, so you can see what's flowering at our place right now. Everything's STILL going off like a frog in a sock, as it's been warm and wet for most of December here on the Sunshine Coast QLD.
Our thoughts are with you if you're drying out after floods, or trying to keep cool through a heatwave.
It's crepe o'clock here on the nursery this month - our crepe myrtle motherstock bushes are completely covered in HUGE clusters of flowers. We can see the bushes from right over the other side of the nursery. The local pollinators are enjoying the display too - stingless bees seem to love these plants.
It's paws o'clock too : even at tubestock size, our kangaroo paws are bursting to bloom. "But they're a spring flower!", you might say.
raditionally yes, but these new varieties are bred to bloom all year round, or at least for much longer than before. You can see the whole range here. - there's over twenty to choose from!
Buddleias reliably bloom from tubestock size, from late spring through to first frosts. They're fantastic value garden plants. They're pretty heat hardy, and completely frost hardy too.
We've got large shrubs in a range of colours - pink, purple, white, yellow - and brand new mini ones for pots in purple and pink. Something for every garden!
For all white classic gardens you can't go past these three - evergreen escallonia for handsome dark green upright hedging with a twist; beautiful airy white cat's whiskers, fast-growing and fast-flowering; and a pure white form of the popular Geisha Girl duranta. All flowering at tubestock stize.
For all white classic gardens you can't go past these three - evergreen escallonia for handsome dark green upright hedging with a twist; beautiful airy white cat's whiskers, fast-growing and fast-flowering; and a pure white form of the popular Geisha Girl duranta. All flowering at tubestock stize.
In fact, lots of our plants will flower from tubestock size, which makes them fantastic value for creating instant gardens of colour on a budget.
Like the white catmint, honeysuckle, and golden cuphea above. You can see more of them in our post Which Plants Are Best For Instant Gardens
More tubestock in flower right now : climbing mandevillea, so fast to flower, so colourful, such excellent value; abutilon, or chinese lantern, in shell pink; and correas.
There's a correa in flower every month of the year - and right now it's Dinner Bells, appropriately for Christmas! We love the two-tone lolly-bright colours of this variety.
Even our anthurium tubestock plants are really doing us proud this month. They're generally slow-growing, long-lived, great for shady tropical borders - and of course, lounge rooms.
But these little babies have teeny flowers! The flowers will get bigger and more intense in colour as the plants grow and mature; right now we're proud plant mamas to see them all blooming <3
Golden portulaca Sun Jewels pumps out its bright yellow flowers when the sun shines; gaura Baby Butterflies is covered with pink and white butterfly blossoms; native royal robe scaevola is a little different to its fan flower cousins, with rounded flowers, bright and perky, on this trailing groundcover plant.
Red hot pokers don't always flower red! This one, Poco Citron, is a cool lemon, and a petite size ideal for pots. New to the range, little boy blue is such a gorgeously deep colour we know it's going to be super-popular for subtropical climates.
And already proven in their popularity, native cut leaf daisies in many shades of white, pink and purple - this super-pink one is Magenta Bliss
Out in the nursery and on the motherstock paddocks, there's plenty to enjoy alongside those fabulous crepe myrtles at the top. Like the glossy, showy, radermachera, covered in big white blooms.
Golden pendas are in full flower - these native rainforest trees are so bright, and so beloved of local lorikeets! Water gum trees are in blossom too, just as bright yellow and just as popular with pollinators.
There's a bush of Leptospermum Burgundy Queen, the double-flowered magenta tea tree, right outside our office reception. So everyone who comes to visit, and to work, sees it every day. And it seems like every day, it's in flower!
Little wonder it's one of our best-selling native plants - alongside the lemon-scented Mozzie Blocker, above centre.
The native midgem or midyim berry bushes are flowering at the moment, which means bushtucker berries later in the year!
It's been an awesome summer for berries - especially the riberry lilly pillys. The ones locally have been a mass of orange-red, giving the birds a feast.
Also blinging the berries, viburnum bushes. They're grown as hedging, and if they're clipped often, you may not know that they flower in white, and those flowers turn to orange (or sometimes navy blue) berries.
The same goes for camellais, loved for their showy winter-spring blooms. In summer they are decorated with dozens of crabapple fruits for a second colourful display.
It's been an awesome summer for berries - especially the riberry lilly pillys. The ones locally have been a mass of orange-red, giving the birds a feast.
Also blinging the berries, viburnum bushes. They're grown as hedging, and if they're clipped often, you may not know that they flower in white, and those flowers turn to orange (or sometimes navy blue) berries.
The same goes for camellias, loved for their showy winter-spring blooms. In summer they are decorated with dozens of crabapple fruits for a second colourful display.
Not to be outdone by the native correas earlier, there's also a grevillea in flower every month of the year.
We reckon Christmassy-red Deua Flame flowers every day all by itself. If you're looking for fast results from a grevillea, this is the one.
Our grevillea Golden Lyres and Cooroora Cascades on the nursery are looking spectacular. So much golden colour - and such BIG flowers! No wonder there's always such a big demand for them!
Here's a few more of December's darlings. Orange Marmalade, perfect for humid subtropical climates and a favourite of tiny spinebills and honeyeaters; Amber Blaze, the most gorgeously gold cascading hedge;
and our exclusive new Apricot Hots, showing off its stuff in the sunshine. This one sold out quick smart at launch, so we're currently growing more ready for next year. See you in 2025!
There's always something to see and enjoy in a garden, every day of the year.
We hope this has inspired you to take a fresh look at your outdoor space - and maybe add a new plant or two!
