Making Silver Spear Stand Out

Sometime ago I named our property 'Silver Spear' (after the mass plantings of Astelia - Silver Spear in our garden), I had envisioned doing more with the idea and in some spectacular fashion creating an identity, an overall theme that brought all my concepts together.

One of my ideas was to make a sign for the property.  Perhaps something that could be mounted to the front gate, or over the front porch (or both).  Something welcoming, rustic, homemade and fun, but not tacky.  This could involve some creative design and maybe a little help from some friends (with skills :-)

Another idea is to plant our narrow verge between the road and fence line along the front of the property with silver spear, or at least the verge on either side of the driveway to create a feature planting.  There are already a few plants under a tree up my the roadside and they are doing well.

My biggest concern is whether the mature plants would grow out over the roadside and create problems with visibility when exiting our driveway.  This is illustrated by our neighbours verge.  They have planted a variety of flax and other native plants and it has caused an issue with visibility for us as the plants have matured.

We have combatted this by having a mirror installed opposite our driveway, but we don't really need any further safety issues.  Perhaps lower planting nearer the driveway and then planting Silver Spear further down the hill would work better (currently where we have gorse and weeds sprouting up!)

I could also look at planting up some large pots with Silver Spear to place around the property, they are a great contrast plant and look striking against dark colours, like black, brown, red, burgundy and navy.  Pots are a big expense, so maybe this could be an option further down the track.

The existing plantings of Silver Spear could be further enhanced by planting darker / redder tones of plants around them to create contrast and interest (like below)

I have plans to start potting up the mass of smaller Silver Spear plants we have growing on the property.  A small plant in a garden centre will typically sell for about $14.95 each.   If I could sell a couple of hundred plants at half or even a third that price, It would go a long way towards paying for other plants, mulch and gravel for paths in the garden.