Growing for Success | New blooms await at Riverside Gardens

We certainly enjoyed our couple of days off with the Garden Centre closed and not having to think about it — except for an hour or so of watering each day.

It was a great time to catch up with family and friends or just relax in the garden.

With the new year comes a fresh wave of plants arriving at the Garden Centre over the coming weeks and months.

Some are exciting new releases, while others are popular recent releases that have been in short supply.

We will do our best to keep you updated as they arrive, but here are a few worth mentioning now:

Hydrangea Runaway Bride is a stunning new variety of hydrangea that grows to 1.2m high by 1.5m wide.

It was awarded Plant of the Year at the Chelsea Flower Show and Japan’s Flower of the Year in 2020.

Runaway Bride features large, crisp white blooms that form a garland around the stems.

These flowers develop on old growth, so they get better and better each year, with no pruning required.

Flower buds form at each pair of leaves along the branches, and the beautiful blooms last for over four months, providing a long-lasting flush of flowers from late spring into autumn.

Best grown in a full sun to partly shaded area with well-drained soil, this variety requires only moderate watering once established, unlike some other hydrangea varieties.

Hydrangea Magical Revolution offers a whole new way to enjoy hydrangeas.

This variety can be used as a living bouquet, serving as an indoor plant while flowering.

It can bloom continuously for up to 150 days before transitioning outdoors to the garden or a large patio pot.

Magical Revolution boasts improved resistance to sun, frost, rain and other elements.

Its smaller ball-shaped flowers can transition from blue to pink and burgundy depending on soil pH, just like the older, larger-flowered varieties.

Scaevola Fantastic Blue is a vigorous native ground cover that produces a prolific display of blue, fan-shaped flowers during the warmer months.

It’s ideal for cascading over retaining walls or embankments, or for forming a compact ground cover about 20cm high and 1.5m wide.

Scaevola Fantastic Blue’s quick-growing, dense, spreading habit suits native, cottage or wildflower-style gardens and works well in containers or hanging baskets.

It thrives in full sun to partly shaded positions, is easy to grow and requires minimal maintenance.

Lomandra fluviatilis Shara Blue is a beautiful fine-leafed native grass known for its resilience and ornamental appeal.

It is drought- and frost-tolerant, and thrives in wet, soggy soils, making it ideal for a variety of climates and garden conditions.

The clean blue foliage retains its colour year-round with minimal browning, providing a striking contrast to the masses of golden-yellow flowers that appear in spring.

Growing to just 50 cm by 50 cm, it’s perfect for mass plantings, borders, roadside plantings, swales and rain gardens. It thrives in part shade to full sun.

Last year, we added Acer rubrum Frank Jr Redpointe to our Canadian Maple range.

This latest addition to the Lipstick Maples is prized for its improved tolerance to heat and extreme growing conditions, as well as its relatively slender crown form and straight-growing main stem.

Its striking red autumn foliage rivals that of other Lipstick Maples, and its darker green summer foliage sets it apart.

It makes a lovely shade tree with its dense canopy or a stunning avenue tree when planted along a rural drive.

It will once again be available in our bare-rooted tree range this year, but we also have beautiful specimens in 35-litre bags for those seeking an advanced shade tree.

Arriving soon in the Garden Centre is the colourful Echinacea Sunseekers range, including new additions such as Carmine, Mineola, Golden Sun and Scarlet.

These, along with older varieties, can provide a striking burst of colour over a long period, even during the extreme heat of summer.

So, slip, slop, slap, and drop by the Garden Centre to see what’s new.

It’s also a great opportunity to look around and observe how different plants withstand the extremes of summer.

You might even find that perfect addition for a tricky spot in your garden.