Archive record · Seasonal planting guides · 2000s · South Australia
This record rebuilds a pair of companion planting guides from the team's reference library: one covering South Australian spring and summer flowering plants, the other autumn and winter. Together they form a complete flowering calendar for a Mediterranean-arid climate, the planning tool behind landscapes that perform every month of the year.
The warm-season volume
Spring and summer belong to the wattles and their companions: golden grey mulga (Acacia argyrophylla) with its silver foliage, mealy wattle (A. farinosa), the fast gossamer wattle (A. floribunda) reaching small-tree scale in a few seasons, the sculptural flat wattle (A. glaucoptera) and spiny wattle (A. spinescens) for the driest ground. Each entry pairs a photograph with a working description: height, habit and the conditions it actually tolerates.
The cool-season volume
The winter guide is the more strategically valuable, because winter colour is what most palettes lack:
- Mulga (Acacia aneura): the dryland standard-bearer, flowering through the cold on 150 to 400 millimetres of annual rainfall.
- Fine tea tree (Agonis parviceps): clustered white flowers through autumn and again in spring, bridging both shoulder seasons.
- Rose sheoak (Allocasuarina torulosa): maroon winter foliage that reads as colour at landscape distance.
- Coastal saltbush (Atriplex cinerea): permanent silver foliage flattering whatever flowers beside it.
- Possum banksia (Banksia baueri): large woolly winter flowers that feed birds through the lean months.
Why this record matters
These guides are the raw material of flowering-calendar design: species organised by performance month rather than alphabet, with honest tolerance notes. The method they embody, plan the year first, choose the plants second, is exactly how we still build year-round palettes for resorts and public realm, and it is the subject of a full article publishing next July in the News journal.
Continue exploring the Knowledge Archive or ask about a flowering calendar review for your project.