Lemon Beauty Heads

Lemon Beauty Heads (Calocephalus citreus) is a small silver grey tufted native that carries lemon yellow button flowers on wiry stems through summer. It sits at about 40cm tall and 40cm wide, a genuine front row plant rather than something that swamps a border. The foliage colour is the real reason to plant it: fine, pale and silvery, it lifts everything green around it.

Why you'll love it

• Silver foliage that works year round. The fine grey leaves hold their colour whether or not it is flowering, so the bed reads well out of season.
• Lemon button flowers on wiry stems. Small, clean and held above the tuft, they suit naturalistic planting.
• Small enough to place anywhere. Forty centimetres each way fits a rockery pocket, a narrow border or a shallow pot.
• Genuinely tough. Frost hardy, drought tolerant, wind tolerant and untroubled by poor soil.
• A bee and butterfly plant. The button flowers are an easy landing platform and keep coming through the warm months.

Where it works best

Rockeries. The tuft looks right emerging between stones, and the sharp drainage of a rockery is the condition it prefers.

Mass planting. Plant 40cm apart for a silver carpet. The tufts touch within a season or two, giving a soft grey sheet lit with yellow buttons in summer.

Borders and windy coastal gardens. Run it as a low front line along a path where it stays put, or as a filler on exposed seaside blocks.

Growing Lemon Beauty Heads in Australia

Position and climate. Full sun, and it will not accept shade. It suits warm temperate, cool temperate, Mediterranean and arid to semi-arid gardens, and it is properly frost hardy. Humid subtropical and tropical gardens are wrong for it, because the fine foliage holds moisture and rots.

Soil. Free draining is essential and poor soil is welcome. Sandy, gravelly and stony ground all suit it. On clay, raise the planting position with a mound of coarse sandy mix rather than filling a hole with compost, which creates a sump.

Water and feed. Water weekly through the first summer, then very little. It is drought tolerant once settled, and overwatering is the fastest way to lose it. One light feed with a low phosphorus native fertiliser in early spring is plenty.

Pruning. Shear the spent flower stems off once flowering finishes and tidy the tuft at the same time. That one cut keeps it compact and encourages fresh silver growth. Avoid cutting into bare stems.

What to expect when it arrives

This is grown in tube stock, currently sold on backorder, so check the dispatch estimate at checkout. Tube stock is a young plant only a few centimetres across, which is the right way to buy a slow grower: small roots adapt to your own soil rather than sitting in a ball of imported mix.

Tubes travel well because there is almost no top growth to damage. Plant promptly into free draining ground and water in. Expect the first season to be mostly root work, with the tuft filling out and flowering in its second summer. Plants are delivered Australia wide, with delivery from $29.95, and every plant carries our 30 day healthy plant guarantee.

Plant care guides and related reading

• Browse the wider Australian native range
• Plants suited to rockeries and gravel gardens
• Low growing plant ideas for borders
• Compare all plants for mass planting

Common questions

How far apart should I plant it for a drift?

Forty centimetres apart. The tufts meet within a season or two at that spacing, close enough to read as a silver sheet without the plants smothering each other.

Is this the same as the silver bush sold as a bedding plant?

It is a close relative, often sold under the same common heading. The figures here follow Calocephalus citreus, the tufted perennial with lemon button flowers grown for this listing.

Why is mine going brown in the middle?

Almost always too much water or not enough sun. Cut back on watering, check that the soil drains freely, and shear off spent flower stems to open the tuft up.