If you ever feel like winter garden scenes lack vibrancy or seem a little monotone, look a little closer and see this is not the case at all. Sure, the intensity is not at full summer volume, but winter flowers are everywhere at the botanic garden, representing a full colour spectrum.
Be encouraged to slow down to appreciate a more subtle floral beauty at this time of year.
Colours can lift our mood, so on a grey winter’s day, you might like to challenge yourself to find a flower of every colour of the rainbow.
The Australian plant collection around the aviary is now full of sunset-toned flowers, with plenty of red through to yellow. Check out the peachy Grevillea rosmarinifolia or nearby bright yellow Australian frangipani Hymenosporum flavum.
You will need to slow down further to spot understated green flowers. In herbaceous borders, look for Helleborus argutifolius, a toothy-leaved winter rose. In the native collection, see if you can spot tiny green flower spikes among the leaves of kawakawa, Piper excelsum.
For blue, the garden’s Shanghai collection has a show-stopping Hydrangea × versicolor (evergreen hydrangea) in full bloom. Purple can be seen en masse in Salvia leucantha in the Mexican border, or erica shrubs in the rock garden - in both cases, humming with bumblebees.
White flowers abound - I recommend visiting winter-flowering Sasanqua camellias. For black flowers (and ‘‘whiskers’’), if you look closely enough in the winter garden, you will spot a ‘‘bat flower’’, Tacca chantrieri, beneath the leaves.
