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A wonderful plant for an architectural or a structural effect in the garden is the humble pencil pine, or Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens var. Sricta). It is an evergreen tree to around 20 metres (60′) tall, with an upright, columnar form and dense dark...
A native of the wet tropical rainforests between Townsville and Cooktown, the graceful roly poly satinash is an outstanding ornamental plant. It has glorious weeping foliage highlighted by flushes of red to pink new growth for most of the year. Like most lilly pillies...
Scribbly gums are spectacular Australian trees with smooth, whitish yellow bark. The bark has a prominent feature which puzzles many people – strange looking ‘scribbles’ resembling some form of mysterious, ancient writing. The zigzag tracks are...
Camellias are wonderful flowering shrubs for the garden, but they also have many other uses. They can be shaped into topiaries, standards or espaliers, and they can even be grown as ground covers. At the moment standardised camellias are very fashionable, but...
Until recently if you wanted a flowering gum tree you had to just go out and buy one and hope for the best. Sometimes the flowers turned out red and other times pink, but quite often it was an insipid white which you didn’t really want anyway. The good news is...
For dramatic autumn colour, tree dahlias are hard to beat. They are giant plants with huge leaves and stems, and shaggy, lavender flowers resembling ballerinas’ tutus. It’s not only the appearance of the tree dahlia which causes drama in the garden –...
Surprisingly, this beautiful Australian rainforest native is not as popular as it deserves to be. It is a member of the family Proteaceae, which includes grevilleas, banksias and waratahs. The tree is fairly slow growing and may not flower for seven or eight years,...
Have you noticed that your azaleas are looking a bit the worse for wear at the moment? If they have mottled grey/bronze leaves with sticky blobs of excrement on the leaf undersides, they’ve probably been damaged by either Azalea lace bug or Two-spotted mite (red...
Scientists are not sure how they do it, but insects like borers can single out a tree which is stressed and therefore weak, and attack that tree, leaving other healthy individuals around it alone. This is all part of the natural process and in a forest situation it is...
Citrus Leafminer Distorted growth on citrus trees is often caused by Citrus leafminer (Phyllocnistis citrella). The adults are tiny, night-flying moths with wingspans of only about 5mm. The females lay their eggs on new young growth in the warmer months of the year....