It's The Most Magical Time of the Year!
Halloween is the night when the veil between this world and the next, the dead and the not-dead, is at its thinnest.It is believed at this time the living can contact and communicate with the other side.
Listen - can you hear them?
This night and the days that follow are a traditional time around the world for lighting bonfires, visiting graves, and honouring ancestors, often with flowers. We’re in a spooky mood at Australian Plants Online, so we're channelling our inner sorceress and celebrating Halloween with gothic dark-leaved plants and black-purple flowers. All treats for your garden, all year round!
If we're talking about dark plants for Halloween, we have to start with the High Priestess of them all, the bat plant.. It's a unique, unmistakable plant in flower, those broad back petals like wings, or a leather cape, enclosing the fat rounded cluster of flowers within, and long moustaches of whiskers hanging down.
Truly spooky! Bat plants come in a wide range of flavours, there's even a couple native to Australia that are all whiskers, no bats. There's generally two main bat plant species available for us home gardeners to grow; they're the two we grow on our nursery.
Black bats, Tacca chantrieri; and white bats, Tacca integrifolia. They both need the same growing conditions - warm, humid, shady, like a jungle floor.
Truly spooky! Bat plants come in a wide range of flavours, there's even a couple native to Australia that are all whiskers, no bats. There's generally two main bat plant species available for us home gardeners to grow; they're the two we grow on our nursery.
Black bats, Tacca chantrieri; and white bats, Tacca integrifolia. They both need the same growing conditions - warm, humid, shady, like a jungle floor.
Tropical climates conjure up images of blue skies, vibrant parrots, waves crashing on a palm-shaded beach... but tropical climates can produce a surprising number of moody mourning-toned plants to appeal to the emo inside.Cordylines are a favourite foliage plant for tropical and subtropical climate gardens, for their bright orange, hot pink, and showy golden-lime... wait, what? They also come in black?!
Caruba Black, darkest of all, has a glossy sheen; Negra changes from emerald to jet as it grows. Goldfussia lightens the darkness of its purple-black foliage with little pops of ghostly lilac blossom. Colocasia Black Leaf Illustris, a relative of alocasia with big soft matt-black leaves. Clockwise from top left : cordyline Caruba Black ; cordyline Negra ; Strobilanthes, known as goldfussia ; Colocasia Black Leaf Illustris
Caruba Black, darkest of all, has a glossy sheen; Negra changes from emerald to jet as it grows. Goldfussia lightens the darkness of its purple-black foliage with little pops of ghostly lilac blossom. Colocasia Black Leaf Illustris, a relative of alocasia with big soft matt-black leaves. Clockwise from top left : cordyline Caruba Black ; cordyline Negra ; Strobilanthes, known as goldfussia ; Colocasia Black Leaf Illustris
Phew. The warmth and humidity of the rainforest is getting a bit too much for us in these long black capes; and it's hard to keep the sunlight off our pale faces... so let's move indoors where it's shaded and cool. There's dark-leaved rubber plant Ficus Burgundy (left), dark-leaved philodendron Black Cardinal; and astonishing black anthuriums like Black Love and (right) Black Beauty (right).
It really is that colour, and that glossy - eerily unnatural and yet deliciously like a giant bar of 70% cocoa chocolate.
It really is that colour, and that glossy - eerily unnatural and yet deliciously like a giant bar of 70% cocoa chocolate.
Begonias are a handsome family of foliage plants, every one supermodel-sexy and shimmering with colourful patterns. We spurn their frivolous gaiety.
Halloween aficionados like us know the true glamour is in varieties like this raven-ruffled Begonia Black Fancy. It makes an intense pairing with the black-leaved sweet potato, Ipomoea batata.Plant the begonia in the centre of a large pot, with fast-growing ipomoea all around, and you'll have a volcanic fountain of leafy lava enlivened by mauve trumpets.
Halloween aficionados like us know the true glamour is in varieties like this raven-ruffled Begonia Black Fancy. It makes an intense pairing with the black-leaved sweet potato, Ipomoea batata.Plant the begonia in the centre of a large pot, with fast-growing ipomoea all around, and you'll have a volcanic fountain of leafy lava enlivened by mauve trumpets.
Get your fix of spooky plants, whatever your climate. There's heaps of fantastic cold-hardy herbaceous perennials and shrubs that stay almost-black all year round, or transform with the seasons, like Mr Hyde emerging with malevolent intent from the mind of Dr Jekyll...
It covers itself in white cup flowers in spring-summer, like when you have to visit grandma and she wants to see you in a nice dress... Clockwise from top left : Heuchera Black Sea ; Ajuga purpurea ; Ligularia ; Geranium Black n White
Heucheras are fantastic plants all ways round for lively leaf colour, and when it comes to night-shades they are deadly keen. We carry four or five varieties that stay purple-black or chocolate-black all year; this one is Black Sea. The flash of contrasting colour from the leaf undersides - red, or pink - only amplifies the intensity of their dark leaves. Ajugas are another solid dependable choice for lots of leaf colour (and bright blue flowers to lighten the mood when Dr Jekyll is back in charge). Ajuga purpurea, the purple-leaf bugle, is so purple as to be almost black; the smaller-leaved Chocolate Chip has a more brown-purple hue, equally dark.Leopard plant Ligularias come in all green, tan-olive, and this lovely green-black we recently added : Ligularia Pandora . It relishes damp soils, and glows with a shower of golden daisies, like sparks from a bonfire, in spring-summer. Most surprising of all is the last here. Geraniums are a classic cottage garden plant, frothy and pastel and pretty as can be. Black n White is like the emo teen of the family, except it's not a phase, mum - it's like this all year round, gorgeously gloomy.
It covers itself in white cup flowers in spring-summer, like when you have to visit grandma and she wants to see you in a nice dress... Clockwise from top left : Heuchera Black Sea ; Ajuga purpurea ; Ligularia ; Geranium Black n White
Are you loving this occult-infused garden of mourning we're creating, as much as we are? We need bigger plants, maybe some shrubs to really bring the blackness - they won't live for a thousand years or more, but they will appreciate some blood (-fish-and-bone fertiliser) or maybe just a sprinkling of controlled release plant food to keep them growing. Purple Pixie is one of our best sellers; the deep wine-plum of the leaves is a perfect foil for its spring-seasonal shocking pink flowers. It's low and groundhugging, creating cascading mounds of foliage.Occultist John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's very own scryer, saw the future in an obsidian mirror - through a glass darkly, indeed.
He'd love this mirror bush, Karo Red, which shines more black than red for most of the year.
Perhaps you too might glimpse the future in its glass-smooth leaves? Hebe Black Satin is a new introduction, only recently out of trials; and like Purple Pixie its evergreen dark foliage is a high contrast to hot pink flowers.Is that the paranormal whisperings of a ghost caught on tape, or the innocent rustle of purple fountain grass in the flower border? Clockwise, from top left : Loropetalum Purple Pixie , Coprosma Karo Red , Hebe Black Satin , Pennisetum advena Rubrum
He'd love this mirror bush, Karo Red, which shines more black than red for most of the year.
Perhaps you too might glimpse the future in its glass-smooth leaves? Hebe Black Satin is a new introduction, only recently out of trials; and like Purple Pixie its evergreen dark foliage is a high contrast to hot pink flowers.Is that the paranormal whisperings of a ghost caught on tape, or the innocent rustle of purple fountain grass in the flower border? Clockwise, from top left : Loropetalum Purple Pixie , Coprosma Karo Red , Hebe Black Satin , Pennisetum advena Rubrum
Up up and away we fly, into the night sky, with tall shrubs to hide behind... Just between us, on the quiet, certain Leptospermum tea trees are the Nick Cave of natives - surprisingly night-clad for plants that spend all their lives in the bright sunshine of this sunburnt country. If you want to plant the darkest leaves of all, choose compact deep-pink-flowered Kiwi and Rubrum nana; magenta double-flowered Burgundy Queen, and tall white-flowered Starry Night. Any one of those will add a little Halloween horror to a garden space.
In descending order of size, all equally wine-dark of leaf, are Grande Red, Canopy, Pinky Pink. Clockwise, from top left : Cotinus atropurpureus , Breynia Ironstone Range , Lagerstroemia - crepe myrtle
Meanwhile we're looking for a broader bigger leaf for dramatic impact - like these four. Purple smoke bush has these gloriously gothic leaves, and in summer plumes of flowers that look like smoke from a cauldron bonfire. Native coffee bush Breynia presents very deeply plum-black in this handsome variety, Ironstone Range. It's a beautiful big shrub, layered and imposing.And we're enthralled with these new dark-leaved crepe myrtles from Ozbreed; glossy and intense, fast-growing, magically transforming with enormous showy clusters of flowers in red, magenta, lolly pink.
In descending order of size, all equally wine-dark of leaf, are Grande Red, Canopy, Pinky Pink. Clockwise, from top left : Cotinus atropurpureus , Breynia Ironstone Range , Lagerstroemia - crepe myrtle
There's four plants we really can't go past when it comes to a coven-worthy Halloween garden. Funereal in their blackness, with not a hint of purple or chocolate to lighten the depth of their colour, these are the ultimate in true black.Salvia discolor, black flowering sage, shyly peeps its black petals from beneath a veil of grey-green; while native black kangaroo paw is far more brazen about its blackness. These two are highly seasonal in our range and sell out super-fast when in stock.Pansies, happily, are much more accessible and easy to grow from seed. This friendly little fun flower comes in infinite rainbows of colour - and this one, literally the black sheep pansy of its family.And ruler of all, the Jack Skellington of Halloween plants, is black mondo. Occasional ghostly blooms highlight just how dark, how bat-black, how ravenesque those leaves really are.
Happy Halloween gardening!
