How to GROW Rhododendron's | GARDEN | Great Home Ideas

Name: How to GROW Rhododendron's | GARDEN | Great Home Ideas
Uploaded: 2025-09-22T06:36:17.152Z
Duration: 5 min 20 s
Channel: land of flowers
Description: Graham Ross is in the Emu Valley Rhododendron Garden, an 11-hectare stunner set up as a series of ‘countries’, within which the wild varieties of these beautiful flowers originate. With over 23000 varieties of rhododendrons, walking tracks, lakes and even a resident platypus, there is so much to see here.

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6 Video Views·Sep 22, 2025

Graham Ross is in the Emu Valley Rhododendron Garden, an 11-hectare stunner set up as a series of ‘countries’, within which the wild varieties of these beautiful flowers originate. With over 23000 varieties of rhododendrons, walking tracks, lakes and even a resident platypus, there is so much to see here.

Isn't this gorgeous? Absolutely fabulous and dramatic. Rhododendrons are real showstoppers in cool climate gardens right around the world. This beautiful woodland garden just outside Burnie in Tasmania is inviting you to take a trip around the globe. So get your passports ready. Emu Valley Rhododendron Garden covers a huge 11 hectares and is planted out in country regions. Interestingly, the area with the most flowers they're calling the Australian section. Now it's not that these large plants are actually native to Australia, they're hybrids that have been developed here by plant breeders, enthusiasts and nurserymen over the last 150 years. And the colours are just sensational. This is one of the darkest, richest ones I think I've ever seen. So what hybridists do is the same thing as bees. But what breeders are looking for is maybe this shape and this colour and they're wanting to cross it with this beautiful bicoloured one here to see what the end result is. So they'll bring pollen from one, put it on the little female stigma there and then collect the seed. Sow the seed, cross your fingers and see what comes up. That's how you get new plants and new rhododendrons. It's very exciting. Juanita, you're the horticultural manager here. That's a pretty fantastic job. How did you end up with that? It is. I started as a trainee back in 2010 and progressed from there and I love every minute of it. This must be one of the largest collections of rhodos in Australia, isn't it? That is correct, yes. There's over 900 species and we've got just over 450 of that here. Wow. This is a really special garden because it was created by volunteers. That's right. They were passionate hybridisers that needed a place to put their rhodos and because of the volcanic soil here, it was just the right atmosphere, the right temperature, the right climate. Everything was working in its favour. The rhododendrons belong to the Ericaceae family which is very diverse right across the planet and here in the North American garden section, they've got some of its relatives that belong to the same family. Now, they're not as big and blousy and over the top like rhododendrons but they're more exquisite and delicate. Some say the calmia is one of the most delicate flowers of all but there are lots of different varieties here. This one is called Olympic Wedding. There's a pale pink one called Elf which is actually a dwarf version of the regular calmia and just next to that is a really deep red burgundy one that hasn't fully opened yet but when it does, like all of these, it's going to be an enormous attraction here at the garden. All of the large ponds and lakes here are filled with local platypus. Yeah, this is their home. Fossicking around, looking for food, popping up to say g'day and then diving down again. This section here is called the Vireya rhododendron garden and for a long time, vireyas were known as tropicals because they don't come from the mountains of Asia, they actually come from, well, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia and they've been hybridising and cross-pollinating them so much that now we end up with this incredible array of colours, different flower shapes, some are midgets, some are tall, some are big flowers, some are small. They're very different from the cool climate ones that I've been showing you. Interestingly, they're actually epiphytes. They grow up in the trees in the forests, just like maybe stags and elkhorns. So how do they grow on the ground? Very well-drained soil. They grow beautifully in a heap of sort of leaf litter or maybe even in a tree fern stump like that one just over in the corner there. In pots, they're perfect. Vireya rhododendrons. We're going to see a lot more of these around because they'll grow in a wider range of climates. It is truly a spectacular garden, but it's more than that. The volunteers for nearly 40 years have protected, collected, propagated and preserved the rhododendron, not only for home gardeners, but from global extinction in forests right around the planet so that we can enjoy it for generations to come.