Maddingley Botanical

Maddingley Botanical Specialising in Australian and Southern African plants.

Carefully grown, drought-tolerant plants, practical advice and seasonal workshops — helping gardeners grow with confidence.

Mimetes hottentoticus ❤️
01/06/2026

Mimetes hottentoticus ❤️

Protea Pixie 😍
01/06/2026

Protea Pixie 😍

Pink Ice ❤️
30/05/2026

Pink Ice ❤️

Waratah Enchanted Red ❤️
30/05/2026

Waratah Enchanted Red ❤️

Protea Possum Magic is a truly eye-catching hybrid, combining the best traits of its parent species.Developed in the Dan...
29/05/2026

Protea Possum Magic is a truly eye-catching hybrid, combining the best traits of its parent species.

Developed in the Dandenong Ranges, it has been carefully bred to suit Australian conditions while retaining the stunning character of South Africa’s proteas.

Growing as a dense shrub, it’s perfect for creating a striking display in your garden or used as a natural screen for structure and privacy.

In winter and spring, Possum Magic produces large, showy blooms that make an impact both in the garden and in the vase.

The flowers are long-lasting whether displayed fresh or dried, with their intricate structure and bold character adding flair to any arrangement.

Originating from parents found in the Cape region of South Africa, Possum Magic carries their resilience but has been fine-tuned locally to thrive across climates.

One of its standout features is its ability to blend toughness with elegance – thriving on little water while delivering spectacular flowers.

🌸 Protea magnifica x longifolia 'Possum Magic'
🌿 Height: 2m and Width: 1.5m
☀️ Position: Full Sun
💧 Water usage: Low
🌼 Flowering time: Winter and Spring
❄️ Frost tolerance: Moderate
🌱 Soil type: Well drained acidic soil, Low pH
🏡 Suitable for: Home Garden, Floristry, Commercial Growing

A furry white acorn opens into a brush of bright orange. It looks like the showpiece of the bush. The trick is the timin...
29/05/2026

A furry white acorn opens into a brush of bright orange. It looks like the showpiece of the bush. The trick is the timing.

Banksia prionotes, the acorn banksia, flowers through autumn and winter and it's where the honeyeaters head for a feast.

The flower opens from the bottom up over weeks, half a metre (1.6ft) tall on a good plant, while the unopened top stays white. By the time the top is done flowering the bottom of the spike has turned into the start of a seed cone.

It's from south-west Western Australia, the same fire-driven sand country as most of the iconic banksias. The species name prionotes is Greek for 'saw' and a nod to the toothed leaves.

The seed cones are woody and stubborn. They hold their seed inside for years, waiting for a fire to crack them open.

Grow it in sandy soil, full sun and sharp drainage. Tough once it's settled in. Phosphorus still kills it though, manure even faster, so feeding is the one job to leave well alone.

It'll make a small tree of 4 to 6 metres (13 to 20ft) in the garden, taller in the bush. Years of orange flowers in the middle of winter and a steady supply of birds with them. Worth the trouble.

📸 These stunning images were taken by Lisa_k, Ravensraven, Klaus Bohn, Philip Green, Chris Burney and Lynda McPherson.

Banksia prionotes
🌳 Height: 4 to 6m (13 to 20ft) garden, taller in the wild × Width: 2 to 4m (6.5 to 13ft)
🌞 Position: Full sun
💧 Water: Low once established. Loves sharp drainage
❄ Frost: Light only. Mediterranean WA climate
🌸 Flowering: Autumn into winter (southern hemisphere)
🌿 Soil: Sand or sandy loam, well-drained, acidic
🌱 Fertiliser: Avoid it. Phosphorus and manure kill banksias
🏡 Best for: Specimen tree, wildlife garden, cut flowers

Two forms of the same plant. One sprawls across whole mountain ranges. The other is down to a single wild population.Leu...
28/05/2026

Two forms of the same plant. One sprawls across whole mountain ranges. The other is down to a single wild population.

Leucospermum lineare, the needle-leaf pincushion, comes from the fynbos of South Africa's Western Cape.

The yellow-flowering form is the common one, a generous sprawling shrub that runs to about 2 metres (6.5ft) tall and 2 metres to 3 metres (6.5 to 10ft) across.

The orange-flowering form is much rarer, an upright shrub of similar height with only one known wild population left. Same species, but anyone who's grown both will tell you they read as two very different plants.

Birds pollinate the flowers, but the more remarkable trick happens once the seeds are ripe. Each seed wears a fleshy white coat called an elaiosome that indigenous ants find irresistible.

They haul the seeds underground to their nests, eat the coat off and leave the bare seed buried where it's safe from rodents and from the next fire. The mature plants themselves don't survive fire. The whole life cycle hinges on those ants doing the planting. There's a name for it: myrmecochory.

Grow it in lean soil with sharp drainage and you'll have flowers fast, often by its second year from cutting, which makes it one of the quickest pincushions you can grow. Phosphorus still kills it though, manure even faster, so feeding is the one job to leave well alone. It's listed Vulnerable in the wild now, so a well-grown plant in your garden actually counts for something.

There are some fantastic cultivated varieties of this stunning plant in nurseries including So Successful, So Sincere, Carnival Sunrise and Carnival Flame.

📸 These beautiful images were taken in their wild habitat by: Felix Riegel, Andre Venter, Pieter Lag, Elliott Miot and Jeanette Clarke.

Leucospermum lineare
📏 Height: about 2 metres (6.5ft) × Width: 2 metres to 3 metres (6.5 to 10ft). Yellow form sprawls. Orange form upright, narrower
🌞 Position: Full sun
💧 Water: Low once established. Drainage matters more than watering
❄ Frost: Light only. Wild populations see frost 2 to 3 days a year
🌸 Flowering: Spring
🌿 Soil: Well-drained, acidic. Tolerates heavier clay better than most pincushions
🌱 Fertiliser: Avoid it. Phosphorus and manure kill proteas
🏡 Best for: Informal garden, large pots, cut flowers

28/05/2026

Why are my protea leaves turning yellow? It's one of the most common questions we get from gardeners. And the answer almost never involves a spray, fertiliser or a fungicide.

Yellow leaves are a sign something's changed in the plant's environment. The cause almost always traces back to the roots, not a pest or a disease.

Three things to check first:

💦 Soggy soil that hasn't drained. Wet ground pushes oxygen out and the roots can't take up what the plant needs.
🍀 Soil pH drifting out of the 5 to 6 range, which locks up nutrients sitting right there in the soil.
☠️ Too much fertiliser, especially anything containing phosphorus. Proteas evolved in lean soils and can't handle it.

Rule those three out and you're usually looking at a specific nutrient deficiency. Iron, manganese or zinc show up on the new growth. Nitrogen or magnesium show up on the older leaves.

We'll pulled together a guide, including how to diagnose what you're looking at and put it right without making things worse at proteasexplained.com.

Protea madiensis is one of the most widespread proteas on the whole African continent but it lives a long way from any f...
27/05/2026

Protea madiensis is one of the most widespread proteas on the whole African continent but it lives a long way from any fynbos: out in open savanna and the high grasslands of the mountains.

Usually a shrub of one to four metres, its leaves are leathery and change from one population to the next, narrow in some plants and broad in others, so two bushes a valley apart can look like different things.

The flower is the constant, the same chalice every protea makes, here in soft pink through to silvery white. The silver runs so pale in some that collectors once took them for a separate species.

It comes in two subspecies, an eastern and a western one, though you can't tell them apart by looking, only by the fine detail of the flower. Across its range people strip the bark for bush medicine to settle a bad stomach.

But you probably won't be growing this one in your own garden and you probably won't see it on the florist's bench, but we think this one is still worth knowing about 🤗

Protea madiensis 'Tall Woodland Sugarbush'
🌍 Range: tropical Africa, Guinea to Ethiopia, south to Angola, Zambia and Mozambique
🏔 Habitat: savanna and high mountain grassland up to 2,280 metres
📏 Size: shrub to small tree, one to four metres, occasionally 6 metres, on a true woody trunk
🌸 Flower: the protea chalice, soft pink to silvery white
🍃 Leaves: leathery, very variable, narrow to broad across its range
🔬 Subspecies: two, an eastern and a western, told apart only by the flower
🐝 Wildlife: nectar-rich heads, like all the sugarbushes
🌿 Status: one of the commonest proteas in tropical Africa, listed Least Concern
🪴 In the garden: rarely grown, a wild plant of the African highlands

📸 Bethel Clement, Rogério Ferreira, marcoschmidtffm and Jordi Vanort

Meet the bull banksia 🐂 🌼 Banksia grandis is one of the great trees of southwest Western Australia — common through the ...
25/05/2026

Meet the bull banksia 🐂 🌼

Banksia grandis is one of the great trees of southwest Western Australia — common through the jarrah forests of the Darling Range, and scattered across woodland country.

Usually five to 10 metres tall, sometimes up to 15, with a short crooked trunk and thick grey bark that handles bushfire well. Near the south coast and around granite outcrops it gives up on being a tree and grows as a low spreading shrub instead. Same plant, reading the conditions.

The leaves are the first thing you notice. Up to 45 cm long, cut deeply into eight to twelve big triangular lobes on each side, glossy dark green on top and soft underneath. Some growers reckon they'd be worth planting for the leaves alone, before you even get to the flowers.

And the flowers are worth getting to — pale yellow spikes with cream styles, sometimes reaching 40 cm long, working through spring and into mid-summer. Red wattlebirds and red-capped parrots come for the nectar, and black cockatoos work the seed cones later.

The Noongar names for the tree include beera, biara and boongura, and the flowers — mangyt — were steeped in water or sucked straight for their sweetness.

It asks for a few specific things: free-draining sandy soil, full sun, and patience. Ten years or more to flower from seed isn't unusual, and the slow growth above ground is steady root work happening below.

It's sensitive to root rot (Phytophthora), and unhappy in humid summers — which is why you see it less often in eastern gardens than it deserves. And if you don't have the ground space, it grows happily in a large pot too. Give it the right spot and it's one of the more striking things you can plant.

Banksia grandis 'Bull Banksia'
📏 Height: usually 5–10m, sometimes to 15m, low and spreading near the coast
🌿 Leaves: up to 45cm long, deeply lobed, glossy dark green, soft underneath
🌼 Flowering: October to January, pale yellow spikes up to 40cm long
🐦 Wildlife: wattlebirds, red-capped parrots, black cockatoos for the seed
🔥 Fire: thick bark and a woody base, regrows from the ground after fire
📍 Range: southwest WA, Mount Lesueur to Cape Leeuwin, jarrah country
☀️ Position: full sun to part shade
💧 Water: low once settled, hates wet feet
🌱 Soil: sandy, fast drainage essential
🪴 Pots: grows well in a large container
❄️ Frost: handles light frost
⏳ Pace: slow, ten years or more to flower from seed
⚠️ Heads up: hard in the eastern states, doesn't like humid summers, prone to root rot
🌱 Fertiliser: none. No phosphorus
🏡 Best for: foliage feature, dry-climate gardens with patience

📸 Greggu, Ruth Clark, Fay Baudins, jminchim, Georgia Neel-Hewitt, pimelea, sherriff-woody-pct, Caro Telfer

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