Correa ‘Dusky Bells’: How to Grow Native Fuchsia

Whenever we see pictures of hanging flower baskets you can almost always note that they are a combination of violas, pansies, petunias, heartsease or a myriad of other flowering annuals.

The reason they’re so popular is basically because they’re easy to grow, flower abundantly and can simply be replaced once they’ve finished their performance. While you won’t end up with the classic suspended flowering ball, you will create some interest that is possibly a little more different to what everyone else is doing.

Introducing Correa ‘Dusky Bells’

I want to introduce you to my Correa ‘Dusky Bells’. It resides in one of my garden beds but I have been debating the notion of moving it into a hanging basket. The reason is quite simple.

Firstly, while it is not classed as a groundcover it fails to exceed more than 40 cm in height. It spreads to between 80 cm – 1m wide and sports such spectacular evergreen foliage all year round that makes it an attractive shrub.

But, the real reason for its possible move to a hanging basket are its proficient flowers. However, while it blooms, it heads off for nearly six months of the year (through the winter months here in Oz), unless you’re a pygmy you will very rarely spot them.

In fact, I only found them yesterday while I was raking leaves and had to lift one of its branches to get underneath it. Lo and behold it was packed with these gorgeous pink bells dangling under the foliage.

So, while this Correa sucks as a garden specimen, it could be an awesome standout in a flowering hanging basket viewed from beneath. Looking up into its foliage would far exceed the view from above because you wouldn’t miss any of these awesome little bells.

Herein lies the secret to our first part of producing hanging flower baskets – bells! They mainly all droop downwards and are best viewed from under the foliage than above it. So, the question becomes which plants are small enough to keep in a hanging basket and yet produce bell profusions?

Here’s a quick list;

• Correas
• Darwinias
• Hellebores
• Campanulas – especially C. cochleariifolia
• and obviously, Fuchsias 

There’s a couple to start you off. The next part of the Hanging Flower Baskets series will look at some of the trailers – though they may not all be bloomers.