I need to add more colour to my winter and spring garden... I have lots of trees, some bushes, lots of strappy plants like liriopes and Lomandras and box hedges - but what can I plant now to make the garden look awesome in winter and spring... I do have hellebores and lots of salvias and some sage and also succulents, but Iām just missing bigger splashes of colour .... Japanese windflowers are blooming t the moment but the salvias will be finishing soon.. . I must plant dahlias next spring which should make Autumn more colourful - but if I head to a nursery now, what do you suggest I plant? Lots of gaps in the garden - we are on an acre in outer Melbourne - Wonga Park.
Bringing more colour to the garden
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Hi Libby. I’d focus on foliage for winter colour. Check out the Four Seasons garden in Walsall UK, it’s a ripper. They use things like Fat Albert blue spruce, yellow junipers among a million others. At my place the bronze / purple natives are all looking great. Examples- Grevillea – Bronze rambler, Poorinda Royal Mantle. Moonlight has a silvery foliage and endless yellow flowers. Agonis copper wave,
Sent early. Brachyscome multifida will always have loads of purple flowers, melaleuca claret tops looking good. Happy wanderer has a nice show and for mine also a great decoy plant to keep pests off your less robust plants. Our Hakeas and banksia are just getting primed for their show too.
Cheers
If you have the room Salvia Timboon flowers through the Winter. It does get to be about 3 metres tall and very bushy. Last year was the first year I had this in full flower and it brought in the honeyeaters which I never normally get in the garden. After flowering you need to give it a really good cut down. It quickly shoots back up for the next year. Also think about Camellias. They are really drought tolerant and flower through late Autumn, Winter and into Spring depending on the variety.
It’s good to see other’s suggestions above, Libby. One of the biggest challenges is adding quick colour in winter, as everything grows so much more slowly, there’s no real equivalent to the range of quick and relatively interesting annuals you can pop in in summer. As has been touched on above, a huge number of Australian natives flower in winter (though, of course, if freshly planted, they’re not going to make a big. splash this year. The reply above referring to foliage made me think of the fabulous contribution that ornamental kale makes for months and months over winter. Where I live (Woodend, Vic) it’s so cold that by the time the seedlings appear in the nurseries, it’s too late for me to get them to any size. So I’ve had to grow them from seed myself, sowing in January. Don’t know where you are, but colour pots (at nurseries, and the big box stores) may provide, as might seedlings from the same suppliers. Winter annuals are usually a dead loss for me. They grow and flower, but the weather damages the flowers, and (unlike summer), growth is so slow that the damaged flowers aren’t so quickly replaced. Most violas and pansies in my garden don’t get good until spring. I’m a big fan (where I can protect them from the worst of wind and driving rain – usually in pots under the verandah – of those tiny cyclamen that are available now, often also in punnets, and therefore quite affordable. I always go for the white ones which seem to carry the greatest scent of their wild parent – the exact scent of Dior’s Diorissimo
Summer dry bulbs start appearing in autumn and last for years once planted. Dutch Iris look stunning with Hellebores in early Spring. Ranunculus cortusifolia if you can find it, is a good acid yellow at the same late winter period and any of the deep blue Rosemary varieties are always a bonus. None of these need extra water.
Three small groups of Canna have been terrific over the last 12 months, in Melbourne.
Bulbs, bulbs and more bulbs š
Two of my favorite winter flowering perennials in my garden are Erysimum bowles mauve and Verbena lilacina. The Erysimum flowers from the June through till September and the Verbena lilacina starts flowering in April and flowers right though until the hot weather ramps up around December. In my garden I also have Plectranthus caninus, Lavender dentata and Argyranthemum which also flower through winter.