Proteas performing in the UK
Words: Phil Clayton, Features Editor of The Garden
In the last 10 or so years I’ve noticed a growing range of Protea, Banksia and Leucodendron has been offered by specialist nurseries- particularly evident at RHS Flower Shows, usually sold as fairly young plants. They are certainly tempting.
I grew a plant of Banksia marginata fairly well for several years, in a raised sunny, well-drained border at my old garden in Surrey, and it did pretty well, surviving winters and producing the odd flower.
Other plants from the same family include more familiar Grevillea ‘Canberra Gem’ (above) and Chilean fire bush Embothrium (left). I have tried in the open ground, but none stood the alkaline soil. However, in areas with acid soil they are really spectacular. When I worked as a landscaper I remember visiting a garden in Esher with a tall but slender Embothrium, growing in the shelter of a house wall in full flower, a pillar of flame.
Lat summer, Matthew Pottage, the new Garden Manager at RHS Garden Wisley showed me well-established flowering plants of Banksia marginata (left), flourishing on the Mediterranean Beds, facing the Trials beds on Portsmouth Field; sadly they died this March, having seemingly survived the bitter December weather. A variety of plants in the Protaceae family grow in the Glasshouse at Wisley successfully, to compare.
The solution to bitter winters and alkaline soil seems to be to grow these plants in containers; a friend in Peterborough recently flowered Protea cynaroides (left) he grew in a pot on his balcony- protecting it overwinter in a conservatory.