LITTLE JESS™ Dianella caerulea ‘DCMP01’ PBR on The Bluedale Plants Online Show, Episode #2

This week’s episode of The Bluedale Plants Online Show is about Little Jess™ Dianella caerulea ‘DCMP01’ PBR

This week I want to feature a Dianella cultivar called Little Jess™

Now Dianellas have been a favourite native grass for many many years among many many people. In recent years there have been a lot of cultivars of Dianella that have come on to the market and many of them haven’t worked real well in the home garden but…

Little Jess is an absolute star. It’s a beautiful plant, it’s evergreen with beautiful lime green foliage. What’s great about little Jess is that it gets these beautiful purple star shaped flowers in spring and early summer that are held way above the foliage of the plant that make it a stunning feature.

How do you use Little Jess?

Little Jess again is a plant that can be used in a wide range of areas. If you’re an inland gardener and where you may get frost you may have to select a fairly frost free location, either that or protect it from frost in the middle of winter because it will get some frost burn on it.

On the coast its an absolute stunner. Little Jess can grow in heavier soils that are clay loam soils through to loamy soils. I always believe that Dianellas should have a better quality soil.

If you have a free draining sandy soil you may be better incorporating some compost or some organic matter in to the soil to help hold moisture.

One of the things with Dianella is – or though they’re very drought tolerant – if we get extreme heat they can suffer a little bit particularly in free draining soils that don’t hold any moisture at all.

As far as using it between Brisbane and Melbourne and Sydney, there is no real cultural difference between those areas, they’ll work perfectly in all aspects.

Planted close together they form a very informal hedge so along the edge of a garden border or on the edge of a pathway they do very well. Mass planted in the garden it also does well in a big block of foliage it looks fantastic.

It’s a very compact plant, it doesn’t spread very far so it’s very containable in your garden. You won’t have any problems with this plant getting out of control for you.

It’s one of those Dianellas – out of all the different cultivars – it’s probably the number one Dianella you can buy on the market.

For more information on Little Jess™ click here

Bluedale Plants Online is an online nursery that offers No Fuss, Functional Plants delivered in Top Condition straight to your door.

Bluedale is a dedicated grower of Australian Native Plants. Our range includes Native Grasses, Strappy Leafed Plants, Sedges, Wetland Plants and Native Trees & Shrubs that you can buy online. 

TANIKA® Lomandra longifolia on The Bluedale Plants Online Show, Episode #1

This weeks episode of The Bluedale Plants Online Show is about TANIKA® Lomandra longifolia ‘LM300’ PBR

 

This Week I want to look at a plant that’s been around for well over a decade and has become one of Australia’s most favourite hardy native grasses, and that is Lomandra Longafolia, a cultivar called TANIKA®.

Now TANIKA® is an evergreen plant that grows to about 600mm high – that’s 60cm high – and it has fine lime green foliage that’s evergreen even under the frost.

It’s a very drought tolerant plant and it’s a plant that gets used extensively throughout the east coast of Australia, from Melbourne all the way through to Brisbane.

Lomandra TANIKA® is a plant that is suited to a wide variety of climates throughout the east coast from Melbourne through to Brisbane, now naturally with such a wide diversity of climates you just have to have to be conscious of a few things.

If you are using TANIKA® in Brisbane I always recommend that people plant them with plenty of space in between the plants to allow good airflow.

Another thing to consider with planting Lomandra TANIKA® in Brisbane is that you should have a free draining soil. So you don’t want to have a soil that holds too much moisture around the crown of the plant.

In the past people have used it in in correct situations and some people have been disappointed but used in the correct way with a raised garden bed and giving the plant plenty of space around it to allow airflow is a really good way to plant TANIKA® in Brisbane.

There are other benefits of that too, you really get to see the full form of the plant, TANIKA® is a beautiful native grass that has arching foliage that forms a beautiful bun shape on the ground.

Now if we were using the plant in Sydney and in regions around the Sydney area or Melbourne, you don’t have the same issues you do in the northern parts of New South Wales and in to Queensland so TANIKA® can be used planted closer together . It forms a really nice suade of grass so if you’re looking for a grassy effect that will have movement in the garden it is a fantastic plant for that.

Another feature of TANIKA® is that it has nice yellow flowers coming in the Spring and Summer which have a very subtle perfume and it’s just a fantastic for gardeners to use in their home gardens.

For more information on TANIKA® click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bluedale Plants Online is an online nursery that offers No Fuss, Functional Plants delivered in Top Condition straight to your door.

Bluedale is a dedicated grower of Australian Native Plants. Our range includes Native Grasses, Strappy Leafed Plants, Sedges, Wetland Plants and Native Trees & Shrubs that you can buy online. 

How Do You Decide What Plants To Plant In Your Garden?

How Do You Decide What Plants To Plant In Your Garden?

Thinking along the lines of the plants Bluedale Plants Online sells, a lot of them are native grasses and strappy leaf plants, native trees and shrubs. They’re not delicate soft plants so you can (theoretically) plant any time of year but just say for instance you were looking for a group of ground cover plants that you can plant in your garden that will minimize your maintenance and keep weeds at bay then choosing some of the strappy leaf plants, particularly the ones that have a good spread and give you a good coverage on the ground. That’s going to be a good starting point.

So really thinking about what you’re wanting to achieve. If you were looking for colour then maybe think about some coloured foliage plants or some coloured flowered plants. Of course our website offers some great pictures of the plant varieties.

One example of a plant that seems to be quite popular at the moment is actually a New Zealand plant – and we don’t grow many plants from outside of the Australian climate – called FLAMIN’® Phormium and it has vibrant red foliage. It’s a really good plant for colour and you can get a splash of colour in your garden.

Most of the Australian native plants we have are green but you do have various shades of green and you have various heights, foliage contrasts and textures. You also get some blues coming through with those greens so if you’re looking for colour you can still add a splash of colour using many of the Australian native strappy leaf plants.

Thinking about other styles of planting, you may have hedging, you want to put a hedge in for privacy or for screening then choosing the right plants and getting the height that you’re looking for and of course the website provides all those details for you.

You can pretty much select according to height, so if you wanted something a meter high well there’s a range of plants that are under that meter up to that 1 meter point.

If your looking something that’s over that 1 meter mark then up to 2 meters then you can actually hand select the plants, you know, have a look at the type of flowers they have.

Many of the hedging plants we have, have got beautiful flowers. A couple of the Callistemons that we have on the site get beautiful big red flowers that will be bird attracting to your garden.

Really when you’re thinking about planting I always encourage people to think about what they’re wanting to achieve. Are they looking for ground covers? Are they looking for screening or hedging and that’s really a good starting point for you if you’re thinking about going ahead with your garden.

From that point of view thinking of timeline, most of these plants are pretty tough, you can plant all year round just being conscious of that if you’re in a cool climate where you’re get frost you may just need to wait ’til spring in that environment.

The same in summer, you could have a hot summer where you haven’t got a lot of water on your property or you don’t want to be using a lot of water you may want to wait until you get some good ground moisture. So there’re just some sensible things that you can do, it’s not rocket science it’s just knowing your environment, where you actually live, the climate that you live in and your lifestyle and choose something that will be suitable for you.

Knowing what you’re looking for is the first step and the rest becomes easy after that, it’s just a matter of choosing the plants that are going to work in your climate.

You’ll find Bluedale Plants Online very easy to navigate, very easy to shop with and we’re always looking for ways to improve the experience people have on the site so if you have any advice on how we can serve you better then please let us know in the comments section below.

Click here to check out our range of plants

When Is The Best Time To Plant In My Garden?

When Is The Best Time To Plant In My Garden?

There are a few things to consider when thinking about when to plant and the first one is that there’s always ideal times of year to plant. Traditionally Spring and Autumn are fantastic times to plant virtually any plants (within reason).

Thinking of the plants that Bluedale Plants Online sells, the plants we sell are tough, Many of them are native grasses, trees and shrubs. They’re improved cultivars of trees and shrubs and are very hardy plants which is really why we decided to grow these plants. At the end of the day we want customers to be have a product that is low maintenance and doesn’t need a lot of work.

So Spring and Autumn are a great time to plant but it doesn’t mean that you can’t plant in winter and in Summer, you just have to take some considerations, for instance, if you decided you wanted to plant in to winter and you’re in a frost prone area then you’d have to take some precautions against frost that may damage the young plants.

In those sorts of climates you may be better off waiting until spring and early summer because you’re going to get the best results anyway. 

Thinking of more temperate climates, you can plant pretty much any time of year, just be conscious to make sure if you’re planting in the middle of summer that you don’t plant your plants then go away and leave them, thinking that they’re going to be o.k. because generally you’ll came back and the plants haven’t been watered and you’re going to have losses.

So to really answer the question, you can plant most times of the year with the plants that we grow but you just have to be conscious of things like Summer and winter conditions in your local climate.

 Click here to check out our selection of plants

 

How can you deliver plants all along the east coast of Australia?

How can you deliver plants all along the east coast of Australia?

Something people always want to know is how are we going to get our plants?

One great thing about the wholesale side of the business is our way of distributing plants through out the different regions.

Being a regional business we are very familiar with and work well with our couriers.

At Bluedale Plants Online  we primarily use Fastway couriers and Australia post. We find that they’re very efficient. Fastway is always our preferred method for shipping plants because you can track and trace the number and so for instance if a customer has ordered plants and they want to know where they are at any point in time, we can go on to the Fastway website and put in the label number and from there we know exactly where the plants are. They maybe ready for shipping in the depot for instance or they maybe on board for delivery.

So, when you order plants on Bluedale Plants Online, what we actually do is we ship the plants out on either a Monday or a Tuesday and they would come down to you over night or on the second day.

For example with the Sydney region, customers are actually getting their plants within 2 days of us despatching the plants to them.

One thing that we are very conscious of is the fact that we need to get plants to people very quickly. So the express nature of plants is very important to plant delivery.

For that reason, if say, you ordered plants on a Thursday or a Friday we wouldn’t despatch them on those particular days but we would wait for the Monday or the Tuesday the following week so we can guarantee that the plants would arrive to you within that 2 day period in to the Sydney Region and you get your plants exactly as you would expect them to be, in good condition.

Click on these links to view our range of: >>>  Grasses and Ground Covers – Trees And Shrubs

 

How has the internet affected business in the nursery industry?

How has the internet affected business in the nursery industry?

I know colleagues who have nurseries and they find that if they can specialise and offer good service to their customers then they’re maintaining their market share.

I don’t think the online side of retail for clients is effecting retailers as much as it is say for people like Harvey Norman and those electrical stores where you’ve got companies over seas importing in to Australia because the one thing with plants is that you can’t bring plants in to Australia so they have to be grown in the country or a vicinity close to where they’re actually going to be distributed.

With in Australia there are quarantine issues and so for instance, moving plants from South Australia or the Northern Territory in to Western Australia or Tasmania there are quarantine issues and regulations that come in to play and you have to be conscious of those.

For instance there are nurseries who might be in WA and have a market in WA. For Bluedale Plants Online, we’re based in Wauchope, Port Macquarie in NSW and we ship plants on the east coast of Australia. From Brisbane to Sydney, Melbourne and all the regional areas in between in those states.

So we find that with plants it hasn’t had the same impact as some of the electrical retailers and those types of businesses.

Click here to visit Bluedale Plants Online  and check out our selection of plants.

 

 

What’s the difference between Wholesale and Home Garden Markets?

What’s the difference between Wholesale and Home Garden Markets?

In the wholesale plants market there tends to be bulk quantities. For instance, most projects they’re looking at a minimum of a thousand plants or more and with some of the bigger projects we’ve worked on there could be up to a hundred and fifty thousand plants.

(Pictured above is Cassa Blue® Dianella)

So the whole nature of wholesale plants is completely different to a mum and dad who are looking for plants to put into their 1/4 acre block, or even smaller these days. Traditionally home gardeners have gone to their local retailer and bought a selection of plants.

One of the things that home gardeners found and we’re getting good response to is that we’re actually offering them different sizes of plants, for example:

A viro tube 10 pack, (e.g. LITTLE JESS™ Dianella) which is based on a commercial sized plant so in a commercial project, a landscaper wouldn’t necessarily always use pots that a traditional mum and dad would buy at their local garden centre. They often put in tube stock and this is where the Bluedale Plants Online has been successful in that we’re offering that size plant to mums and dads for their home gardens.

They obviously appreciate that because we sell quite a lot of them and the demand is actually building all the time for those viro-tube 10 packs. They’re a fantastic size, good value for money and people are finding them handy, easy to plant and working well in their gardens.

Here’s what the Viro Tube 10 pack looks like:

How Bluedale Plants Online Got Started – Buy Plants Online

 

 

How Bluedale Plants Online Got Started:

My career in Horticulture actually started back in the early eighties when I studied Horticulture through Charlestown TAFE. From there I had a number of other businesses, landscape businesses but then about 10 years ago I started up a wholesale production nursery called Bluedale Wholesale Nursery which specializes in native grasses and wetland plants.

Our focus was the commercial landscape market, so we did a number of commercial projects and have continued to do that over the time.

One of the latest ones was the Kempsy bypass project which was a large project that completed just before easter in 2013.

From there we developed a wholesale website. and we noticed we were getting a lot of calls from home gardeners who were frustrated that they couldn’t find plants they wanted at their local nursery.

Because lots of the local nurseries are actually closing down due to the impact of bigger stores like Bunnings, and the super stores, they really weren’t getting the service and they came to us looking for plants they couldn’t actually buy locally.

From that we thought we can see a need and have what they’re looking for.

We developed the Bluedale Plants Online website with a full shopping cart so people can actually look online, browse, find plants and there are pictures of the plants on there. They can easily move from the individual plant profile to a shopping cart and actually purchase online.

Payments can be made via Paypal and then their plants are actually delivered to their door or to their nominated postal address.

Check out these ranges:

Grasses and Ground Covers   Trees and Shrubs   Garden Accessories