WA is home to our most beautiful natives. Here’s how to grow them where you are

If you think of the brightest, showiest, most striking native plants – chances are, they hail from Western Australia. In fact, they likely come from one 350,000-square-kilometre expanse of the state.

This globally recognised biodiversity hotspot in south-west WA is home to more than 8000 plant species, about half of which are found nowhere else on Earth.

This region has the most distinctive kangaroo flowers, fan flowers, pimelea, orchids, verticordia and grass trees, the most floriferous eucalypts and the most brilliantly coloured banksias. Here, red tingle trees have trunks so wide you could drive inside them and royal hakeas have leaves laced with such vivid colours it looks like autumn year round.

Almost everywhere you turn there are complex communities of organisms supporting each other in patterns that have evolved over millennia. Fallen trees are smothered with lichen and grevilleas grow in tiny cracks in giant granite boulders. Dense mosaics of shrubs and grasses of all colours, shapes and textures create tapestry effects as far as the eye can see.

One of 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world, this WA treasure trove traverses sand plains, heathland, woodlands and tall forests. It spans from Esperance on the south coast to Shark Bay, north of Perth, and is surrounded by either ocean or desert.

Visit and invariably you want to grow everything you see. But proceed at your peril.

While some WA stalwarts – silver princesses, bell-fruited mallees and scarlet banksias, for example – can thrive in well-drained, not-too-humid gardens in the eastern states, there are thousands of other plants that are more particular. Their roots rot in too-heavy soils and their leaves succumb to other fungal diseases in air that is too moist.

South-west WA’s plants might be native for all Australian gardeners, but for many of us they hail from a place that is further away than New Zealand, and something that grows well in one part of Australia won’t necessarily thrive in another. Unlike indigenous plants that have evolved in local soil and can adapt to the environment in places around the world with similar climates to our own, plants from different conditions on the other side of the country will need extra nurturing.

The climate in south-west WA is so particular you can feel it. The air is dryer and the heat is softer than both Sydney and Melbourne. Even in downtown Perth, a string of baking hot days is somehow less oppressive and more airy than a heatwave in the eastern states. With hot, dry summers and relatively cool, wet winters, the climate in south-west WA is distinctly Mediterranean.

It changes how plants grow. So do the very particular WA soils. With no soil-rejuvenating volcanic activity in WA for 160 million years and no glacial activity either, the state’s soils are extremely old, nutrient poor and, save for some low-lying exceptions, well draining.

So how can gardeners in NSW and Victoria make these plants work?

One option is to grow WA plants in pots, which allows you to replicate some of the required drainage conditions and also allows you to move the plants to help create optimum light and aeration. Native potting mixes, which are specially designed to be low in phosphorus, can also help you mirror the west’s low-nutrient soil conditions.

Alternatively, cater to WA plants by building up mounded beds with good drainage and by creating additional microclimates with rocks and logs.

As for irrigation, be cautious: both under-watering and over-watering present risks. South-western WA receives between about 400 and 1100 millimetres of rain annually, and plants (especially wildflowers) that thrive in areas where the annual rainfall is at the lower end of this spectrum will struggle in places that get a lot of rain.

But on the upside, there is a growing band of specially bred cultivars – of WA species from all areas of the biodiversity zone – that can thrive in eastern states. Kangaroo paws, boronias, chamelauciums and grevilleas are some plants that are being bred to be hardy in a wider range of conditions.

Many can be seen growing in the Western Australian Botanic Garden, which is located within Kings Park in Perth and is a spectacular showcase of what might be possible in gardens further afield. Some have been bred on site by the Kings Park Plant Development team in a program that has been running since the 1970s, both to expand the horticultural use of WA plants and to ensure they survive the changing climate.

West Australian plants have so much beauty, colour and form that some gardeners will move mountains to grow them.

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