Bottlebrushes
This has been a wonderful year for bottlebrush plants.
In many ways bottlebrushes are the most useful of all Australian native shrubs and trees. They are excellent small trees, especially the weeping bottlebrush – Callistemon viminalis. There are also dense shrubs and even the odd groundcover.
Most bottle brushes produce red flowers, but pinks, purples and whites are also available. One of the outstanding new reds is ‘Scarlet Flame’: it grows about 1.5m tall and 1m wide. ‘Scarlet Flame’ produces a huge amount of flowers and it is very dense indeed. This is an excellent bird-attracting garden plant and great for use in planted aviaries.
Another superb quality of bottlebrushes is that they will grow well in damp or wet conditions.
If your bottlebrush is an older variety and has grown a bit too open, remember that bottlebrushes respond well to pruning which you can do now – as soon as flowering has finished.
Bottlebrushes are also very long-lived plants. So why not check them out.
Hooroo!
