Best Grevilleas for Southern California

Low-growing woolly grevillea (Grevillea lanigera) in the foreground. Author's photographs

I first came to California in 1989-90 to develop a garden of Australian native plants for John Taft in the hills above Ojai, a project that was featured in the Fall 1996 issue of Pacific Horticulture (A Protean Garden). The soils there were slightly acidic to slightly alkaline, and many of the grevilleas that we incorporated in the garden flourished; some, however, did not, because of soils that were too alkaline, or because of weather anomalies (unexpected freezes and uncommonly strong winds).

After completing that project (and marrying my husband), I stayed on in California and began to study how and where Australian plants were being used. It was clear that only a few genera were commonly grown in gardens, in spite of their natural adaptation to the California climate; an even smaller selection of grevilleas was readily available to gardeners in nurseries, most of them hybrids that had been in cultivation for several decades. Clearly, there was a need, so I decided to open a nursery specializing in Australian plant...