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  • Dalea
    • purpurea   CAG02646

      (Purple prairie clover)
      Height60cmWidth30cmFlowering SeasonSp / AuWaterM - LLightFull Sun
      CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE

      Wand like stems lightly dressed in small divided leaves spring from a deep perennial taproot and are topped with small cone like heads of bright magenta flowers. Found throughout central North America and a natural component of the tall grass prairies, it is an appealing companion for your choice grasses, I might suggest Little blue stem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and/or Big blue stem (Andropogon gerardii) which are both natural and stunning associations, scatter it through a gravel garden to exemplify its form or simply mass it for a swathe of unadulterated summer colour.

      A nitrogen fixing legume well regarded for its ability to thrive in hot dry summers and poor soils in its native home. I will reserve my judgement until I have known it a little longer but strongly suspect we have a winner.

      Winter dormant and attractive in seed. For any sunny reasonably well drained soil, some amount of summer irrigation will be appreciated.

  • Pelargonium

    (Storksbill)
    Geraniaceae

    Not to be confused with Geranium commonly encountered in temperate gardens. Pelargonium offers a diversity of growth habits, form and foliage for warmer climates and have little tolerance of cold winters.

    Species from winter rainfall southern Africa are mostly drought loving and favour lean sandy soils, prime targets for exploitation in Perth gardens.

    The common "Geraniums" of Australian gardens are typically hybrids involving summer rainfall species, developed for hot house culture elsewhere and are of variable hardiness on the west coast. Many struggle with dry heat and high leaf surface temperatures while some, predominantly older varieties, can be very robust.
  • Salvia

    (Sage)
    Lamiaceae

    A genus whose popularity has risen exponentially in recent times. Offering a diverse range of form and colour there is a Salvia for nearly every garden situation with more and more being discovered and described all the time. The count now stands somewhere in excess of 1000, including subspecies, according to The Plant List. They are found on every continent except Antarctica.

    From a gardeners perspective they can not all be treated the same, they come from many different climates after all, but as a rule of thumb can be grouped into winter rainfall and summer rainfall species and with few exceptions they all prefer well drained soil.

    Soft leaved species from Central and South America are usually autumn and winter flowering. Coming from summer rainfall areas they typically need protection from dry heat and the accompanying high light intensity and they vary in their tolerance of winter damp. As with most plants the larger the leaves the more water they require, this also dictates how fast they grow with many growing several metres in a single season.

    Species from south western North America, South Africa, the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands are all winter growers and are tolerant or demanding of dry heat and summer drought. Slower growing but usually longer lived these all tend to have small, densely haired, silver or grey leaves or a combination of these traits which help them conserve moisture. Most of these require no additional water in Perth and are well adapted to our climate. They tend tend to flower from spring into summer.


    Prune back to where vigorous new basal growth is seen, never to dead wood, they appear to store little food in their stems and without leaves stand a chance of starving to death or at least struggle to regenerate. The exception is those few that are tuberous or clump forming, these can be cut to ground level once the stems start dying back in late autumn.
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