Many species of agave plant are native to Mexico and have played an important role in life in Mexico. One, Agave tequilana or blue agave, is fermented and distilled to produce the alcoholic drink tequila. Several Mexican agaves are called maguey and their leaves and...
Ornamental Tobacco Due to our excise laws, ordinary tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) can not be grown by the home gardener as the production of a tobacco crop invites the payment of excise. The good news is that there are ornamental varieties of tobacco with attractive...
New Varieties of Osmanthus One of the most fragrant of all flowering shrubs is osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans ), which flowers in winter or early spring. Its insignificant flowers have the delightful scent of apricots. There are now two new varieties of Osmanthus...
There are a number of challenging plants that most good gardeners would like to grow and these include peonies (sometimes referred to as a peony roses as the flower resemble roses although the peonies are not related to roses). Of all the peonies, tree peonies are the...
Pink Iceberg Roses The white ‘Iceberg’ rose has been one of the most popular of all garden roses since it was bred by Reimer Kordes in Germany in 1958. It is popular as it is easy to grow, disease free and flowers for many months of the year. It has...
There are two plants which have striking red flower spires in winter. Both are known as red hot pokers. One is the aloe, a succulent plant from Africa. The other, also from Africa, is a perennial called kniphofia, which forms a tufted, grass-like clump. The plants are...
One of the best things about winter in Australia is the fragrance of daphne in flower. Winter daphne (Daphne odora) originally comes from China. As well as the green-leafed variety with pink and white flowers, there is also one with a creamy yellow border to the leaf...
To show the ornamental potential of many of our native everlasting or paper daisies, the gardeners at Kings Park have created a meadow-style planting using native daisies from Western Australia. Australia has many daisy species (such as Brachyscome sp., Rhodanthe sp....
Flanders Poppies Among all of the flowers that evoke a memory or emotion, the red Flanders poppy (Papaver rhoeas) ranks highly. This is the poppy which speaks of World War I as its red flowers carpeted the fields disturbed during battles especially in Flanders. The...
Grevillea banksii – Best Backyard Native Recently Don looked at one of the most important grevilleas of all time, Grevillea banksii. This grevillea is considered to be important as it has been used as a parent of many popular grevilleas. There are three...