Grevillea thelemanniana

Position and climate. South Australia's Plant Selector gives full sun for its forms of the species, with part shade as well for 'Red wings', and the Australian Native Plants Society says grevilleas in general flower best in open, sunny spots. The Plant Selector rates its forms moderately frost tolerant and ticks drought tolerance, with minimal supplementary watering, and lists them variously for plains, footslopes, hills and the second line back from the coast. No reference read gives a frost figure in degrees.

Soil. The Plant Selector says its forms need well drained soil, loam or sand and for most of them clay too, acid to alkaline. The Australian Native Plants Society says virtually all grevilleas do best in well drained soils and prefer acid ones, and that, like other members of the protea family, they can be harmed by fertiliser high in phosphorus: feed with a low-phosphorus, slow-release fertiliser or not at all. In the wild, by FloraBase and the Flora of Australia, the species grows in winter-wet, low-lying swampy heath on sand and sandy clay.

Pruning. The Plant Selector says its forms respond well to pruning, and the Australian Native Plants Society prunes grevilleas each year by about a third to make them branch and stay bushy.

Propagation. In the wild it regenerates from its lignotuber and from seed, by the Flora of Australia. The Australian Native Plants Society gives seed, cuttings and grafting as the ways grevilleas are grown, with cuttings or grafts used to keep a selection true.

The garden forms are what the trade uses. South Australia's Plant Selector lists 'Baby' and 'Red Ramble' as low, wide-spreading groundcovers for banks, rock gardens and roadside plantings, and says they suppress weeds and help hold soil. It puts the low 'Red wings' (growers list it as Red Wings) in borders, verges and parks, alone in front of a mixed planting or massed as a low barrier or informal hedge, and the taller, bushy 'Spriggs Form' as a filler or a plant to spill over rocks and retaining walls. It says 'Red wings', 'Baby' and 'Red Ramble' attract birds. The references read give no planting distance.

HortFlora calls the species highly variable, with many horticultural selections. It also notes that the plant once treated as its subspecies obtusifolia, now Grevillea obtusifolia, is sold as 'Gingin Gem'. The Flora of Australia separates the two: G. obtusifolia has every leaf undivided and broader, where this species usually has some leaves divided into lobes.

The table above shows the sizes growers list; the guide to nursery pot sizes explains the size ladder. Because the species is sold in forms that run from flat groundcovers to shrubs about a metre high, check which form a line names before matching it to a job; the guide to reading an availability list covers how. Under South Australia's Sewerage Act the Plant Selector records the species as provisionally in schedule 1, needing written approval before it is planted in a street and kept at least two metres from a sewer main or connection. Stock that crosses a state border moves under the state and territory biosecurity rules on moving plants and soil.

South Australia's Plant Selector warns on several of its forms that the plant can be a skin irritant, and the Australian Native Plants Society says the foliage of several grevilleas causes contact dermatitis in people who are sensitive to it.