Grevillea ‘Poorinda Blondie’

One of the so-called “toothbrush” grevilleas, I planted ‘Poorinda Blondie’ in November 2020, and its wingspan is now just over 6 feet. Height is roughly 4 feet, approximating a V-shape. (I can’t remember if I bought it in a gallon or 3-gallon.). It’s a big boy, reputed to attain a height of 12 feet but is amenable to pruning.

PB is a seedling of ‘Red Hooks,’ a grevillea I became familiar with at the Manhattan Beach nursery Deep Roots, which has a lovely, tree-like specimen of same. Deep Roots carries a good selection of Australian plants and is most likely where I found this ‘Poorinda Blondie,’ an oldish selection dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. Flowers fully opened this week and are heaviest in winter/spring but do occur year-round (see June report here). PB may prove to be less floriferous than the year-round abundance of my ‘Moonlight’ (which just got a firm pruning), but the graphic, serrated leaves won me over.

And though I didn’t know it at the time of purchase, PB is intriguingly hardier than ‘Moonlight,’ reputedly into the mid teens, which almost makes it a candidate for the zone 8b garden, whereas ‘Moonlight’ is pegged at mid 20s. (Of course, one has to take into account the torrential rain in my zone 8b garden as well as cold tolerance.)

‘Moonlight’ is a cross between G. whiteana and G. banksii and has the ferny leaves typical of the previous grevilleas I’ve grown like ‘Robyn Gordon’ and ‘King’s Fire,’ so the saw-cut leaves of this “toothbrush” Grevillea ‘Poorinda Blondie’ are a first for me. Welcome to the garden! For dryish gardens in zones 9a-11