Leucadendrons are hard to beat for winter colour, especially the salignum types such as ‘Jack Harre’. When the temperatures plummet, the brilliant red flower heads of this compact shrub are at their most colourful, the long lasting display bringing warm colours into the garden. The flowers are famous for their picking qualities and you can gather a bunch for the vase and enjoy them indoors as well as out.
Leucadendron ‘Jack Harre’ is easy to grow providing it has lots of sunshine and excellent drainage. It doesn’t need fertiliser and is happiest left to its own devices, proving very tolerant of dry soils once it has had a chance to establish a robust root system, which should only take a season from planting.
It’s an excellent coastal plant, enhancing beach gardens, combining superbly with other sun worshipers such as Grevilleas, Leucospermum ‘Champagne’ which provides late spring and early summer flowers, and ground covering daisies such as Arctotis and Gazanias which carry the colour on into spring and summer when the Leucadendron is past its colourful period and has been given a light pruning to keep it bushy. The new Gazania ‘Sunset Jane’ is an excellent companion plant, with its large, honey coloured flowers over dark green foliage. Drought tolerant, sun loving bulbs, such as summer flowering Eucomis ‘Sparkling Burgundy’, are good for growing with this shrub too, providing interest after the Leucadendron’s flowers have finished.
There are interesting foliage plants to grow with Leucadendron ‘Jack Harre’. Coprosma acerosa, often called sand coprosma because it relishes beach garden conditions, provides a tangled mass of coppery, fine leafed foliage which goes well with the Leucadendron’s colourings. Also intriguing as a companion plant is the native Cassinia ‘Greenhills’, which has pale, sandy-gold foliage and creamy-yellow flowers and grows as a very low shrub. Or you can have a colour contrast with real bite by growing one of the lime green Euphorbias with the Leucadendron, their flowering times overlapping. Look for Euphorbia ‘Kea’, a new, compact variety with most attractive dark green foliage and lime flowers.
|
Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants