Lasiandra Tibouchina Peace Baby (Pleroma)

Peace Baby is one of the white flowered tibouchinas, now placed botanically in Pleroma, and it holds a compact, rounded, self branching habit rather than the leggy shape older varieties fall into. The leaves are the family giveaway: soft, velvety and marked with strong parallel veins. Flowers open through late summer and autumn, the window that makes this group useful, when little else at that size is doing much. It suits small feature planting, low screening and large pots near a doorway or a seating area.

Keeping the white flowers coming

It takes full sun to part shade and moderate water, and it grows at a moderate to fast rate in a warm, frost free garden. Acid, free draining soil is the requirement, improved with compost and kept mulched. Wind shelter matters because the wood is brittle, and a position out of hot afternoon sun keeps the white flowers clean rather than browning at the edges. Spent petals drop cleanly enough but they mark pale paving and clog pool skimmers, so choose the position with that in mind. It grows happily in a pot, which is how to run it in a cold or alkaline garden.

The failure mode is nutrition on the wrong soil. Yellowing between still green veins on the older leaves is the classic magnesium shortage in this genus, and it shows up quickly on alkaline or heavily limed ground beside a slab or a rendered wall. Epsom salts dissolved in water plus a feed will correct the colour, but the longer answer is to lower and hold the soil pH with compost, mulch and an acid formulated fertiliser.

The small white one

Beside Alstonville, Peace Baby is the plant for people without the space or the appetite for an annual hard prune. It stays rounded on its own, and the white flower sits quietly against green foliage where Alstonville's violet purple takes over the garden for a fortnight. For flower colour in full sun on dry, sharply drained ground, where no tibouchina will thrive, Bush Ballad kangaroo paw is the better answer. The white also does something the purple cannot: it reads at dusk and against dark foliage, where violet purple goes flat. Set beside the trees in this batch it is a shrub, and it is better replaced when it tires than nursed along for decades. More warm climate plants sit in tropical plants.

Light pruning through the season

Prune straight after the main flush, taking the whole plant back lightly to keep it tight and to build next season's flowering wood. Tip pruning through spring and early summer thickens it further, though stop once buds are forming or you will trim off the display. Remove any spindly inner growth at the same time. Feed in early spring and again after flowering with a fertiliser for acid loving plants, water it in, and keep a mulch ring around the base. Topping that up each spring with composted material helps hold the pH down. In pots, use a mix formulated for acid loving plants and repot before it becomes root bound.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 140mm up to 300mm, priced from $18.95 to $88.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to choosing a tree for a small backyard.