Author Archives: theshrubqueen

Another Bromeliad for South Florida – Aechmea blanchetiana

The Whole Plant

The Whole Plant

I found this on my doorstep earlier today and it is my birthday, so this was a great present. It is a Blanchetiana Bromeliad – another beauty from the rainforests of Brazil. The flower spike on this plant looks to be about 4 feet tall. These are fairly common on the Treasure Coast and they start blooming around Labor Day, I consider this a Fall color plant!

I know it seems weird thinking of a Rainforest plant as a Fall indicator, but, hey, they have fall in the tropics. The days shorten and things that are red and orange flower. Not much in the way of leaves changing color, but other things do.

The Flower

The Flower

The Flower is a funky thing that makes me think of crustaceans, King Crab legs or something like that. Now I just need to decide where to plant this…..

Fall Color in South Florida – Bolivian Sunflowers

The Sunflower Hedge

The Sunflower Hedge

I have been noticing these plants for the past few years and it always seems weird to me to associate Sunflowers with November. Gigantic Sunflower Shrubs, at that. I also assumed incorrectly they were some sort of Helianthus. Not the case, this is a Tithonia, Tithonia diversifolia – the Bolivian Sunflower. In another perversity of plant naming, the Bolivian Sunflower is native to Mexico and Central America. I am fairly certain Bolivia is in South America.The name Mexican Sunflower is already taken for a smaller perennial.

One of my neighbors has a hedge of Bolivian Sunflowers screening the yard. This Sunflower hedge is at least 12 tall and in full bloom right now. This plant grows Spring and Summer and blooms all Fall and Winter. It has just really started blooming in earnest and should continue for a couple of months. Another one of those kooky benefits of living in South Florida, Sunflowers all winter.

Since the possible 16′ tall shrub bears 6″ flowers profusely, I am imagining it can put out quite a few seeds and become a problem. I am not sure I would try a hedge, but maybe one or two to screen a view where the lawnmower will run over any nearby seedlings. One has to practice selective lawn mower placement of plants here if there is any question of overabundance. No frost means nothing ever dies. Or anything you want gone refuses to die.

Muhly Grass – Muhlenbergia capillaris or filipes

Muhly Grass

Muhly Grass

I planted Muhly Grass recently for its interesting pink mist fall flowers and reputation for indestructibility. The Grass started blooming nearly as soon as I planted it in September and has been slowly filling out with misty pink plumes. This is an interesting grass – it grows as far north as Massachusetts west to Kansas and south to Florida. A huge range, at least 5 USDA hardiness zones, apparently with a native habitat on the edges of marshes. I found in previous attempts that it is virtually impossible to grow in heavy clay soil. So, it should be really happy in my front yard atop a sand dune.

I am getting a feeling I might have to water it a bit. Plants that are designated drought tolerant with conditions usually are not as drought tolerant as you would like.

Another common name for this is Sweetgrass, supposedly when dried it has a sweet fragrance like hay. I haven’t noticed the smell, but I haven’t dried any either. I think I prefer the Sweetgrass name to Muhly Grass. Muhly sounds like beer or something. Muhly Ale?!

This grass is the source of material for basketry by the Seminole Indians in Florida and the famous Sweetgrass baskets of the Low Country of South Carolina. The Low Country basketry tradition was started by slaves from West Africa imported to the American South to work in the rice plantations in the 1800s. The tradition continues and to this day sweetgrass baskets are made and sold in the Low Country. The grass is sewn in ropes, then coiled to make a basket – a time consuming task that produces a beautiful basket.

According to the Seminole tribe website they started making sweetgrass baskets 60 years ago. Their baskets are based on grass from the Everglades, which is dried and constructed in a similar way to the Low Country baskets.

Given that I now possess a mass of Muhly I might try a basket. I suspect this is a lot harder than I think it is.. and my backyard has been blessed with an overabundance of Muscadines (a native grape) – the local wildlife population eats all the fruit, but I have such a large amount of grapevine I may take up basketweaving or wreathmaking..

Mother in Laws Tongue – Sansevieria

Mother In Laws Tongue Flower

Mother In Laws Tongue Flower

My mother in law didn’t have a a particularly sharp tongue. Well, maybe a little sharp. My Florida yard is blessed with an abundance of these plants. It still seems unreal to me to be nearly overrun by- well, houseplants.

The only way to describe the Mother In Law’s Tongue in my yard is a plethora. Or a Boatload. I am suspicious someone brought a houseplant from Michigan in 1964 and unleashed this unholy plant on my garden. The Florida gardening books consider this plant escaped and invasive.

I am certain I cannot rid my yard of this without total annihilation of everything so I have decided to live with it. I was surprised over the weekend to see that these plants flower. And are kind of pretty. On the flip side, this flower probably produces a quarter of a million seeds per stalk. I have ended up with at least 100 linear feet of edging of MILT about 5 feet deep. The only thing that keeps it in bounds is frequent mowing with the lawn mower.

The Mass of Mother In Law Tongues

The Mass of Mother In Law Tongues

If I step back and squint the plants have an interesting texture and a nice green color. An added bonus-extreme drought resistance. I just have to keep reminding myself of these good features.

More fun from the tropics…

Garden Paradise

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I think the ancient Persians were the original purveyors of the term paradise. It translates to something along the lines of walled enclosure. I agree that a walled enclosure can be a garden paradise, but I find my idea of garden paradise has changed over time.

My first garden was about 100 square feet behind an urban townhouse my husband and I had when we first married. My husband had bought the townhouse when he was single. The garden consisted of a 8 x 8 foot slab of concrete with a telephone pole in the middle and dirt around the sides; he used it as motorcycle parking. There were french doors that looked out on this not very scenic view.

I built a garage for the motorcycle incorporating the telephone pole, bricked the slab of concrete and put 2 tree form roses in big pots at the back of the space…paradise found. Unfortunately, the tree roses only looked beautiful maybe two months out of the year. But those two months were spectacular. This also cured my desire to grow roses for the most part. The townhouse was sold and we moved to the suburbs for space and quiet.

My next garden was more ambitious a – 1/3 acre suburban lot with a vegetable parterre, water garden, a waterfall and perennial beds. I enjoyed creating the garden, but, after 17 years, it was just too much work. The couple who bought the house were 10 or 15 years younger, had 5 kids were excited about the garden and planned to add a pizza oven.  Paradise found and lost again..

The Vegetable Parterre

The Vegetable Parterre

The Vegetable Parterre was another one of those things that looked great two months out of the year – but had the added bonus of providing vegetables and herbs. Eventually the parterre disappeared and it was mostly a kitchen garden with herbs.

The Fish Pond

The Fish Pond

I enjoyed the fish pond for a number of years, but it leaked, and leaked and I fixed it and fixed it…this cured me of water features, in the ground anyway.

My current garden paradise is a work in progress. My goal is more hardscape, more perennials and less maintenance. Still working on it…

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Winter Containers for South Florida

Here comes the Work Shop

Here comes the Work Shop

My husband likes to work with his hands, when we moved to South Florida there wasn’t enough room in our house for a workshop so we had one craned it. The picture is the shop being lifted over the house..I’ll get to the containers in a minute.

The shop ends up looking a bit like a trailer but with some landscaping and a porch it fits in. These sheds are fairly common in South Florida, I have never seen them before – they are even built and attached to the ground to resist hurricanes.

The whole adventure left me feeling a bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Maybe in reverse.

After all this, my husband who has clearly been living with me too long decided he wanted some flower pots (containers if you are a landscape professional) on his shop porch. I put some containers together with the usual suspects last year sometime – yes, the annuals last that long here. It seems crazy to me as well. They last so long you get tired of them. When I lived further north I always did the containers twice a year, changed the colors with the seasons and enjoyed the variety.

Imagine my surprise when the old summer reliables, Bronzeleaf Begonias, rolled over and died in the summer heat. Time to revise thinking to plants that live in say, the Sahara. Pentas and Lantanas. I had gotten bored with Lantanas in Atlanta and really still am, they just smell funny. If I want fragrance, that is so not it.

The Lantana and Pentas were pooping out so I was trolling around in our yard to see what I could find to replace the spent annuals. One of the fun things about living in Florida is you never know what you might find growing in the yard. Boston Fern grows wild in the side yard so I dug a start of that and then found some Purple Wandering Jew (Zebrina), a Burgundy Bromeliad and an unknown groundcover Bromeliad (from a garage sale) that needed to be divided  and added them to the ‘Florida Friendly’ (this is a Florida Extension Service sort of approved plant) chartreuse Sedum that was already in the pots. As an aside, who ever heard of a sedum that does well in partial shade – this does. Whatever it is.

Groundcover Bromeliad and Sedum

Groundcover Bromeliad and Sedum

Voila, a purple and chartreuse themed container garden. The Bromeliads seem to be perennial in containers – the big Burgundy one was divided from a container I have had on my front porch for a year or so – I started with one and now there are three in there. You just never know what you will find growing outside…

Newly planted containers

Newly planted containers

 

Fall Color in South Florida?

 

Golden Raintree

Golden Raintree

Fall color…in South Florida. This is a seek and ye shall find situation. I have found some signs of the Autumn season here in the tropical Zone 10A hinterlands. The Golden Raintrees started blooming in late September which kind of freaks me out as I associate these trees strongly with Summer. The above pictured Fall color is actually seed pods – which are kind of cool and are fall color as far as I am concerned.

This is a Koelreuteria bipinnata, some call it a Chinese Flame Tree, some call it K. elegans. People in Florida seem to think this tree will grow as far north as Zone 7, this is not true. I am guessing maybe Zone 8. It’s friend Koelreuteria paniculata grows further north (to Zone 5 – I seem to remember these while in Chicago) and has brown much less attractive seed pods. Both are sort of weedy, rambling trees, but the flowers and pods make it worth having. I think well drained soil is key with these trees; my mother killed these trying to grow them on what she referred to as “road bed” yellow, impenetrable clay.

I planted some Muhly grass, for its pink clouds of flowers blowing in the wind during Fall. Mine are just starting to bloom and I am hopeful they don’t reseed everywhere and overrun me..always a concern in a no frost environment. More touches of Fall include the Pennisetums, which are in full bloom here as well, but apparently Miscanthus doesn’t grow this far south.

Muhly Grass

Muhly Grass

I thought Miscanthus grew everywhere! Oh, well. I have Bromeliads..

Rainbow Eucalyptus – Eucalyptus deglupta

Rainbow Eucalyptus

Rainbow Eucalyptus

This is my husband’s favorite tree; possibly the only tree he ever really focused on. The ornamental, exfoliating bark is the main feature of this tree. Native to the Phillipines and surrounding islands, it is sometimes called the Mindanao Gum tree. The tree provides most of the pulpwood for paper and is grown on plantations in the Phillipines.

We first ran across this tree and its spectacular bark on the road to Hana in Maui, Hawaii. Intrigued by the tree, I researched it and was interested to find that it can be grown in South Florida. The tree is not tolerant of frost and our average low is 40 degrees. It is sited in a protected area, but is getting pretty tall.

Bark

Bark

And grow it does. I bought this tree in November 2012 at a plant sale in West Palm Beach at Mounts Botanical Garden. It was run over with a Riding lawn mower shortly after being planted and smashed flat. This resulted in two scrapes down the entire length of the trunk. Eschewing arboricultural reason, I decided to try and save the tree rather than buy another one. I went to Home Depot and bought a tree staking kit, cleaned its wounds, took out the damaged bark and wrapped the trunk with tree wrap and staked  the tree until it healed. A few months later the bark had calloused and the tree was off to the races.

Currently, nearly two years later and overwhelmingly robust I would estimate the tree is 30 feet tall. It doubled in size in one year (it was 5-6 feet tall when I bought it!) and has grown 18 feet in the past year. Now I am a little afraid.

The bark is currently not showing any purple or blue, but I believe it will. The new growth is red and it flowers in summer, not terribly exciting flowers, little white panicles – fortunately, no fruit thus far. The bark is the star of the show.

Regional sustainability

Cabbage Palm

There is a lot to read about sustainability these days, is it possible it is a local phenomena? It has to be. Given that the idea of sustainability is to save time, money and materials by using what is available locally – you have to find out what is around.

The LEED Initiative made popular by US Green Building Council (changing the way we think about building, they say) considers that any plant material grown within 500 miles of where you are building is locally sourced. I have to disagree with that 500 miles from where I am a greenhouse would be required to grow what grows outside here. I have learned a great number of new plants that I had never seen when I lived 500 miles north.

Florida may be different; but everywhere is different. Sunset Books made a great attempt to zonify America and came up with 36 named zones with added special zones for extreme climates?! The USDA seems to have 15 Zones. Who is right? Probably nobody.

So, I thought about what I can get here that is totally local and sustainable. Well, lots of things and these materials make my garden unique to my locale.

I can get great paving material from within 20 miles of my house, this is 3/8″ graded shell. Larger shell called white washed shell is available for more decorative uses.

 

Shell for surface of driveway

Shell for driveways, walkways, etc.

There is a place within walking distance of my house that makes stepping stones with shell in them:

Shell & Concrete Stepping Stone For Path to mailbox

Shell & Concrete Stepping Stones

Possibly a peculiarity of the area I live in; there are plant sales like garage sales almost every weekend. I rarely pay more than $5.00 for anything and talk about locally sourced. The downside to this is very few people know exactly what it is they are selling – its a Green Bromeliad. On the other hand, it is always a surprise when one of these treasures bloom. One of the joys of gardening.

The Mysterious Green Bromeliad

The Mysterious Green Bromeliad

Here is my latest purchase, a nice Chartruesy Green Bromeliad that supposedly takes full sun. That is the full extent of my knowledge, I can’t wait to see what it does. Gardening teaches patience.

Not Summer is almost here

Fall, Not Summer

Fall, Not Summer

Snowbird season is fast approaching; the first cold front of the year has not made it this far south. (Snowbirds are people who leave their northern homes to spend the winter in the gentler Florida climate) It seems October 15 is the typical cool down date. Snowbird season is fall everywhere else. I used to hate fall because I knew winter followed and the leaf color was rarely spectacular enough to make me happy about it. South Florida is pretty well-known for its lack of seasons. That said, I have come to think that there are actually two seasons here, Summer and Not Summer.

My Girl, at the beach in Summer

My Girl, at the beach in Summer

Summer is defined by the potential for development of Hurricanes, rain and general tropical sogginess. It is considered an emergency if your air conditioning breaks. People are nervous about the weather. On the other hand, I have read that summer in Florida is a great secret not to be shared. That is also true.  The crowds thin, it doesn’t take very long to get a sandwich at the deli and you can take your dogs to the beach after dinner for a walk.

The Flamboyant Tree

The Flamboyant Tree

For a gardener Summer features some of our gaudiest flowers, Ponciana trees sport sprays of bright red orchids to announce the season. Brightly colored Hibiscus burst out as do the Crinums and Copperpod trees. Frangipani and the Big Bromeliads flower spikes give us a taste of the Rainforest.

Crotons for Winter Color

Crotons for Winter Color

Not Summer has its advantages as well. The first being, of course, you are not in New Jersey. Go to any liquor store in late October and you can feel the party in the air. People asking “Does Grandma have any Vodka?, well, let’s get some anyway.” Getting a sandwich at the deli now means that you must wait behind what appears to be most of the cast from the Sopranos before you can eat.

Not Summer is the gardening season here. Walk into any Garden Center and the plants displayed look like late Spring most everywhere else. But it is Halloween, kind of spooky. I planted my summer vegetable garden Christmas week last year. We had fabulous tomatoes until the Summer Solstice. Deeply meaningful if you are a hater of frozen precipitation and faux winter tomatoes, as I am.

Our Not Summer Garden features, of all things, Winter Starburst, a magnificent plant. Then, we have “good snowbird” plants. Some are year round  reliable shrubs; Firebush, Hibiscus, and Jatropha.  Trees include Tabebuia and the Silk Floss Tree (beautiful, but weird, covered in pink flowers in December or so and covered in humongous sticker thorn things on the trunk – I have mixed feelings about this tree)

Summer or Not Summer; the plant life here in South Florida is outstanding. If you are looking for Winter you are in the wrong place.