Plants Archives

Pleaching Standard Ficus

Written by coldev on 10/03/2016. Posted in Garden Ideas, Garden Makeovers, Plant Sales & Plant Specials, Plants.

Pleaching = (Hedging with a small trunk – like this picture)

Pleached Standard Ficus is a hot item this season, with customers doing some really cool designs and landscaping with their pleached hedges. nadina-with-ficus The secret with pleaching is that ficus are evergreen and pleach very easily. These particular ficus are the Emerald Green Ficus Flash Hilii and are very lush and are fantastic for doing a pleached hedge. Also as Ficus have been renowned for growing an aggressive root system, the pleaching effect actually keeps the roots under control and allows for you to grow these Ficus in very confined spaces and gardens. These days with the rapid growth of our cities, lots of people are having smaller and smaller gardens! The beauty of the pleach hedge is it is very good for small gardens as you can do 2, or even sometimes a 3 layer effect. It allows for a garden bed underneath the hedge, maximising your gardens beauty, colour and depth. It’s like having a 2 or 3 story garden as you really get the 2 story effect which is becoming more and more stylish in the modern garden. Pleaching creates another dimension to your garden! Make the best use of your confined space this summer and come and check out our Pleached Standard Ficus for only $29.90 each in an 8” pot, thats up to 40% off the regular price in our 80% off plant clearance sale this weekend. They are ranging from 3-4ft tall in height and pleaching from 1-2ft tall.

Ficus Pleached 2 Ficus Pleached up shot pleached-ficus-blog-image2

A large Australian baobab tree in the middle of a grassy field.

The Australian Boab Tree

Written by coldev on 09/03/2016. Posted in News, Plants.

The Australian Boab tree is commonly found in Western Australia’s Kimberly region. There you will find advanced ones of up to a thousand years old, with a height of 30 – 50 feet.

The Boab tree is closely related to the Madagascan and African Adansonia species and it is easily recognisable by the swollen trunk of it’s base. The Boab tree is easily grown in most of Australia’s dry and hot conditions, but is also suited well to Australia’s humid and cooler regions too. It can grow in most soil types, but prefers a well drained soil. It is a beautiful slow growing tree that will literally give you a lifetime of joy.

You can own a piece of that future, history with your own Boab tree today:

10” pots – $59.90 | 12” pots – $79.90 | 16” pots – $99.90

Come check out this true wonder of the world, the Boab tree and also meet King Boab himself at 1477 Sydney Rd Campbellfield.

King Boab, is a 100 year old specimen weighing over 700kg and requiring a forklift to lift him out of the Truck which he was delivered on. Click the picture to the right to watch the video of him being unloaded from the truck.

Our friends in Western Australia say that he is only a Baby, but to us he is a King!!

Also secretly, you can own King Boab for only $2999. But don’t tell him, it might offend him if he knew how cheap he was!!!!

A red ivy covered glory vine in a garden.

Amazing 0.99c Glory Vine Deal!!!

Written by coldev on 15/01/2016. Posted in News, Plant Sales & Plant Specials, Plants.

SPECIAL DEAL!!! Spend over $10 this weekend at Hello Hello Plants & Garden Supplies and get one $6.99 Glory Vine for only 99c. For every $10 you spend with us entitles you to one Glory Vine at 99c, Eg. $200 spent would get you 20 Glory Vines at 99c each.

The Glory Vine can be used over pergolas and verandahs to create luxurious shade and colour. They are very fast growing and there’s no other vine that can be used more quickly to cover a fence or a pergola. The vine is very vigorous, with purple shoots and deciduous foliage which are large (15 to 30 cm in diameter), simple, orbicular, toothed, with deep petiole. First green, they turn a lovely red-orange in autumn.

This is actually an ornamental (non-fruiting) variety of grape vine that has some fabulous features: it is very hardy, fast growing, long lived and tolerates a range of soils. Crimson Glory Vines are happy in full sun to part shade.

They are called the Glory Vine as they have glorious colour in Autumn. Check out the pictures.

A pot filled with a bunch of pink and white Crepe Myrtle flowers.

Get Amazing Colour With Crepe Myrtles

Written by coldev on 04/01/2016. Posted in Garden Ideas, Plant Sales & Plant Specials, Plants.

Crepe myrtles are a lovely small growing tree. Perfect for confined spaces. They have fabulous colours as you can see here.

They blossom for weeks and weeks throughout the Summer and in autumn they have a lovely deep maroon autumn colour. Then in winter, when they are bare, it’s a beautiful tree with a smooth bark and spectacular structure.

These trees flower with masses of vibrant colour for several weeks in summer. They have beautiful burgundy autumn color for many weeks in autumn all year round. The Crepe Myrtle has a smooth beautifully patterned bark that makes the bare tree very attractive in Winter. They come in a range of colors, reds, brilliant pinks, soft pinks, whites, and Lavender – just look at our catalog.

Best of all the Crepe Myrtle is a small growing tree ideal for a confined area. They are extremely low maintenance very hardy and with an inoffensive root system.

Crepe Myrtle is the perfect small feature tree for colour year round, beauty and interest.

Lagerstroemia ‘Comanche’ Crepe Myrtle 8″ Pot
$49.99 Read more

Flowering gums in front of a restaurant.

Wonderful Flowering Gums

Written by coldev on 29/12/2015. Posted in Garden Ideas, News, Plants.

Traditionally Flowering Gums were grown from seed and you had to wait 10-20 years for them to flower and when they do they may turn out the wrong colour!

Grafted trees are specially hybridized, selected trees with fabulous colours. Choose a tree in a colour you love now and start enjoying vibrant coulorful summers in the garden.

A stylish car is parked in front of a modern house.

Hardy Standards for Modern Stylish Gardens

Written by coldev on 20/02/2015. Posted in Garden Ideas, Plants.

If you want to add a formal and stylish touch to a garden, using standards is a great way to do it.

Standards are plants that have been specially grafted to grow in a ball-on-a-stick shape, with a tall straight trunk and a big bushy head. This can be done with many shrubs and trees, including roses, ficus, lilly pilly, english box, mop top robinias, lilacs, maples, crab apples, bay trees, olive trees and cumquats just to name a few.

However, because of the specialized techniques required to create a strong, high quality and long-lived standard, they are often expensive. Big, mature standards are one of the most expensive but very sought after plants we sell, simply because of the instant wow factor and value they add to a garden.

Our two most popular standards after 3ft Standard Roses are 3ft Standard Ficus and 3ft Standard Lilly Pillies. Both are hardy and require trimming only once or twice a year, making them perfect for a stylish yet low maintenance garden. They look great planted in rows lining a drive, wall or pathway, or in medium to large pots.

The problem we have in supplying Melbourne’s appetite for these great standards is that we have a tough time getting a Standard Ficus for less that $50, and Standard Lilly Pillies simply disappear for large periods of the year when they sell out completely.

To solve the problem, we’re bringing down 3ft Standard Ficus and 3ft Standard Lilly Pillies by the pallet load from NSW, and passing the savings on to you. Our newest batch has arrived in store and you can get them for only $24.90 each, while they last!

Here are some examples of 3ft Standard Ficus and 3ft Standard Lilly Pillies used in landscaping around Melbourne:

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Standard Lilly Pillies line the path to the front entrance.

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Standard Ficus combined neatly with a box hedge.

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Popular Standard Plants:

Sale!
Robinia ‘Mop Top’
Price range: $69.99 through $229.99 View products

Iceberg Rose Alternatives

Written by coldev on 17/10/2014. Posted in Plants.

When the Iceberg hits an Iceberg, where do we turn?

If you have been telephoning and Googling around looking for 3ft Standard Iceberg Roses and you cant find any, it is because every grower we can find is sold out! There were similar problems last year due to the tremendous popularity of this trouble-free white rose, and a few truck loads were coming in from South Australia. But we weren’t prepared for them to sell out even faster this year!

We’ve decided we might be taking matters into our own hands and growing our own Iceberg Roses soon. In the mean time we have pre-purchased a fresh crop of several thousand Standard Icebergs and we will be able to sell these from the 20th of February next year at $29.90 each, but if you order and pay for a bulk buy of 6 now you can purchase them for just $24.90 each. 2ft and 4ft Standard Icebergs are still available.

As the economy picks up, plants are in big demand. At Hello Hello Plants we are doing a good trade by continuing to find great plant specials to pass on to our customers, as well as growing our own favourites, while other nurseries are raising prices.

So while we continue to round up all the Iceberg Roses we can find, now is a good time to discuss alternatives to this garden favourite in case they really do become extinct (until next year at least).

Why are Icebergs so well loved? They’re white, they flower a lot (almost the entire year) and they’re disease resistant. They are often referred to as the World’s Best Rose, so we have our work cut out for us proposing alternatives.

White Roses:

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Both Margaret Merril and Pascali Roses are a similar pure white to the Iceberg. The added benefit of Maragret Merril is her fragrance. Iceberg roses don’t have a fragrance to speak of. Pascali is the choice for more frequent flowers.

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Disease Resistant Roses:

For the unparallelled disease resistance of the Iceberg, not many come close.

One that does is the newly released Burgundy Iceberg, being simply a colour variation of the White Iceberg.

Graham Thomas and Bonica also have a good reputation for disease resistance.

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Plants for Winter Colour in the Garden

Written by coldev on 20/06/2014. Posted in Garden Ideas, Plants.

The weather outside might be dull, but that doesn’t mean your garden needs to be! This Winter, you can have your garden looking vibrant and lush with our Winter Colour selection. These include colourful evergreen and Winter flowering plants.

From the powerful red of the Nandina and the many vibrant coloured Coprosmas, to the striking ‘Golden Diosma’, the range of stunning colours you can add to your garden today is plentiful.

Plants for Winter Colour:

Powton Sapphire Dragon Paulownia Trees 20 Years On

Written by coldev on 19/03/2013. Posted in Plants.

Yesterday we visited Chris & Marie’s former family home in Mt Dandenong and got a look at a mature avenue of Powton Sapphire Dragon trees. Chris originally planted these trees along the street, and it was wonderful to see how well they are doing 20 years on.

The secret of the Powton Sapphire Dragon according to Chris is that many Paulownia trees grow and grow and grow all their lives, and become unmanageable. This gives Paulownias a bad name. So Chris travelled to central China during his breeding and selection process and found a unique variety of Paulownia tree that grew incredibly fast in its first 24 months, then reached maturity and became a slow growing tree that put most of its energy into unbelievable flower output each year. This became the Powton Sapphire Dragon, which has flower stems up to 1 meter long with 300 flowers on each, and is a more prolific flowerer than a Jacaranda tree.

While they’re not in flower now, they still looked beautiful with their gnarled branches covered with large graceful leaves, underplanted with agapanthus and backed with a lilly pilly hedge.

We’ll have to go back in Spring and see how they look in flower!