The Rebel Gardener

How to Prune Alyogyne Huegelii and other Australian Native Plants.
From time to time I get emails about pruning Australian Native Plants and the feeling I quite often get is that there are many gardeners that have a misconception that Australian Natives don’t like to be pruned.
And this really couldn’t be further from the truth. Banksias, [...]

Agaves are plants that lend themselves to be easily grown in pots and Agave attenuata is no exception. Because of it’s drought tolerance it’s a plant that won’t drop dead if you forget to water it every second day over summer. Another great thing about Agave attenuata is that it’s really easy to propagate from [...]

When I first came across Eremophila Big Poly (E Bignoniiflora x E Polyclada) I thought of it more as just another addition to my collection and just grew it in a pot for about 2 years. It wasn’t until I planted it into the ground though, that it actually came into it’s own.
The first thing [...]

Eremophilas are a very variable genus of plants. They vary in size from prostrate ground covers to small shrubby trees, that vary in the colour of foliage from grey white to deep greens and also in flower colours which includes white, blue, purple, green, yellow, red, pink and apricot etc.
Here’s just a few of the [...]

Isopogon Formosus is a plant that you probably won’t find in many plant nurseries. It’s mainly restricted to Australian Native Plant nurseries probably because it can be considered in some circles to be difficult to grow. I’d successfully grown it before in my last garden so when I came across it about a year ago [...]

Eremophilas would have to one one of my favourite garden plants and one of my favourite Eremophilas would have to be Eremophila “Eyre Princess”.
It’s now the beginning of spring in Melbourne and my Eremophila “Eyre Princess” is now at the height of it’s flowering season. At the moment it is just covered in purplely, blue [...]

Grevillea Pink Ice, a Gem amongst the Gravel.
One of my favourite things to do where shopping for plants is to search through the “sale” plants at the back of the nursery. Not only because sometimes you can pick up a bargain but also because sometimes you can find a gem in amongst the rubbish.

Back in [...]

Alyogyne Huegelii, aka the Native Hibiscus, is a shrub that you see from time to time in nurseries but rarely see in home gardens. I’ve often found this quite surprising though as it’s has so many great things going for it.
It grows naturally in sandy and gravelly soils in arid areas of Western Australia. This [...]

Grevillea Petrophiloides is a Grevillea that really breaks the typical Grevillea stereotype. When most people look at it for the first time they could quite easily be forgiven for mistaking it for a Bottlebrush or maybe even a Hakea.
The plant itself is quite rounded and bushy but where it differs from the “typical Grevillea” appearance [...]

The first time I ever saw Brachychiton Rupestris aka the Queensland Bottle Tree, was in nursery. I remember looking at the label and thinking it looked quite a bit like the Boab tree from Northern Australia and thinking that this wouldn’t grow very well with the cool winters we get here in Melbourne.
I then pretty [...]