In brief:

• The team at Yarralumla Nursery have discovered a new plant variety.
• Hardenbergia violacea ‘Out of the Dark’ has burgundy leaves and violet flowers.
• Limited stock of the plant is now available at local nurseries with more in production.

Staff at Yarralumla Nursery have discovered a new variety of the plant,  Hardenbergia.

Unlike the standard Hardenbergia with green foliage, this variety has deep burgundy leaves.

In 2018, seed was collected from the base of the Brindabellas along the Murrumbidgee River.

The nursery team grew 1500 plants from those seeds. Out of the entire batch, a single plant had distinct burgundy foliage.

The team at the nursery isolated the plant. They monitored it over the following four years to make sure the leaves didn’t revert back to green. The leaves kept their striking burgundy colour, which contrast against the deep-purple pea flowers.

Yarralumla Nursery chose “Out of the Dark” as the name for this variety. It references the flowers emerging from the dark burgundy foliage in late winter.

You can use this plant as a groundcover or as a twining climber for a trellis. It loves dappled shade and is frost tolerant once established. Out of the Dark can be planted in a wide range of soil types.

A discovery like this has only happened a handful of times in the 110-year history of Yarralumla Nursery.

“The whole team at Yarralumla Nursery are proud to release this new variety of Hardenbergia violacea, Out of the Dark, to the Canberra community and the whole country,” Dr Matthew Parker, General Manager of Yarralumla Nursery said.

Yarralumla Nursery have released a small number of this new plant to local nurseries across Canberra.

If you can’t get your hands on any this time around, don’t worry. Yarralumla Nursery are producing more for future sale.

Watch this short video to find out more.

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