Here’s a plant with rich, dark chocolate and plum coloured foliage. It’s a reliable beauty, looking dark and sensual all year round, performing magnificently month after month. As a succulent it will tolerate very dry conditions, but in summer it will look more beautiful if watered during dry periods. As a container plant, Aeonium Schwartzkopf is ideal, easy to grow, as well as stunningly good-looking.
Often sought after, but sometimes difficult to obtain, this is a magnificent specimen plant. One is reputed to be the most photographed plant in Auckland's Regional Botanical Gardens! A tree-like species from South Africa, it can grow to 15 metres in ideal conditions with a 2 metre trunk - in cooler NZ though, such vigorous growth is highly unlikely. Rich green, sword-shaped leaves, with rose-tipped green flowers in winter.
A unique and striking multi-branched shrub or small tree from South Africa's southwestern Cape where it's known as the fan aloe - a reference to the unique layout of its strap-like leaves. As the bush matures, racemes of tubular scarlet flowers are a spectacular sight in late-winter and spring.
This fascinating succulent's been in high demand for many years, but until now only a few connoisseurs have been satisfied. Its spiraling leaf pattern bedazzles all who see it. It can spiral either clockwise or anticlockwise and long-established plants flower in spring or summer, though not always reliably so.
Native to Western Australia, Kangaroo paws make excellent garden and patio subjects and wonderful cutflowers for a bold indoor statement. Bush Eclipse flowers later in summer and spot flowers almost year round, certainly to its own timetable. It has a high natural disease tolerance and needs little water - summer droughts eat dust!
Royal Cheer's something different in Kangaroo Paws. It forms a glaucous-grey-green clump which is tidy and compact. From spring, tall flower stems grow from the base and are topped with striking large red-green flowers. These exquisite flower heads are a wonderful cutflower and look great in the garden too.
Wonderful structural plant for gardens in coastal and warmer parts of New Zealand - attractive, narrow silver foliage. It'll grow to form a tight, compact and tidy clump that needs little care, though will benefit from protection from harsh winds. A great choice for coastal and seaside gardens, coastal cliffs being its natural habitat.
This evergreen tuft-forming perennial sedge makes a dense spreading mound. It has green leaves with white tips. Frost-hardy, it is best suited to moist free-draining soils in full sun or partial shade. May be grown with effect in containers or borders. Grows 30x 45cm.
Carex Frosted Curls
Carex comans 'Frosted Curls'
This evergreen tuft-forming perennial sedge makes a dense spreading mound. It has green leaves with white tips. Frost-hardy, it is best suited to moist free-draining soils in full sun or partial shade. May be grown with effect in containers or borders. Grows 30x 45cm.
Carex testacea
Carex testacea
A beautiful densely-tufted native grass with a rich golden-brown-orange colouration intensified by sun and winter. Its arching and spreading foliage is handsome year round making it a plant of choice upfront near entrance ways, along paths and in patio pots. A great foil for dark or silver-foliaged structure plants.
