Go to any nursery and you will see large colourful labels designed to entice the buyer. Only the best flowers are used and even then, they may be enlarged and photoshopped. Names such as Peaches and Cream, Goliath and Golden Lyre are evocative and give some indication of what might be expected.
However, labels are generic and often can’t be relied on to give you what you need to know.
Someone who buys a plant at Thirroul will have the same label as the same plant purchased in Wagga Wagga. What labels often won’t tell you is whether the plants will grow well in our conditions on the east coast.
Nurseries stock plants from the desert, the rainforest or the tropics and people who buy them are disappointed when the plants quickly die.
At the Grevillea Park Botanic Garden, we grow many of the plants we sell on our open days, and have done so for many years. Those that won’t grow we often graft onto a hardy rootstock so that even desert plants can thrive in our gardens.
Our next open days are on the first two weekends in July, so come and have a look at the gardens, find a few special plants to take home and don’t be shy to ask us for our advice.
