Rolling Out The Royal Purple

Purple may be an uncommon colour for garden flowers, but there are some spectacular indigenous plants that you can use to bring it into the garden.

- Andrea Durrheim

Even though the colour purple is no longer reserved for royalty, there’s still something regal about purple blooms in the garden. Our indigenous plant palette allows us to bring this rich colour into our gardens all year round – provided we choose our plants carefully. Contrast it with yellow or match it with white to really bring these blooms to the fore. Let’s take a closer look at some of our most popular purple-flowering beauties.

Plectranthus species and hybrids

Most plectranthus species are triggered to initiate bloom as the days become shorter, and some of the early flowering plectranthus should already be gracing garden centres. Many of the varieties also have striking foliage with rich-purple undersides that keep them looking interesting all year. Although some plectranthus species will tolerate sunny positions, most of the varieties with purple undersides to their leaves prefer being out of direct sun. They’ll keep flowering until the days begin to lengthen to longer than 12 hours.

Barleria repens ‘Purple Prince’
No selection of purple-flowering indigenous plants is complete without Barleria repens ‘Purple Prince’, especially if you like to see purple blooms for most of the year. Their prime flowering season starts now, and they continue to produce flushes of flowers all year round. The scrambling shrublet works wonderfully as a low hedge or cascading plant for retaining walls, and will even climb up fences when planted beside them, reaching a height it never would attain when planted in a freestanding position. When not in flower, the glossy leaves have their own charm.