The Rebel Gardener

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 [...]

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. [...]

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” [...]

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 [...]

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One of the great things about Australian native plants is that there are quite a few that will flower during winter. Correa Dusky Bells is an example. We’re now just one week into winter here in Melbourne and this little plant is just reaching its height of flower. I’ve got two growing together side by [...]

The Geelong Botanic Gardens is well over one hundred years old. A new addition to the gardens though is a very contemporary water wise garden full of some very drought tolerant plants. The garden is made of drought tolerant plants from both here in Australia and around the world. These include cactus and succulent species, [...]

A plant’s drought tolerance in something that is not easy to quantify, as there are so many factors that can determine this. So to compare one plant’s drought tolerance against another is not always a simple thing to do. The way I go about it though is to group them into three classifications. 1. One [...]

Callistemon salignus is a bottlebrush that is probably the least spectacular of the bottlebrushes when in flower. The reason why I’ve included it here is because it has so many other special qualities. It grows fairly vigorously, it is very drought tolerant, can be grown in heavy soils that don’t drain very well and the [...]

Acacia glaucoptera is a small wattle with an unusual habit. It has long serrated foliage that is a dark greeny, bluey colour that intensifies to a dark red at the tips, so it looks quite attractive even when it’s not in flower. It flowers over winter and has round yellow wattle type flowers that appear [...]