Category Archives: Tropical gardening

New Years Day in My Garden

The turning of the year is a time for taking stock of what you have and looking forward to the future of what will be added to the garden. Here is what is currently in bloom in my garden.

This is an Aechmea Bromeliad and outstanding in its interesting flower. I have a feeling I am going to find out that is a bract or something.

Blanchetiana Bromeliad

Blanchetiana Bromeliad

This is an unnamed cultivar of Heliconia, I see it called Parrotflower in the trade. I have yet to see a parrot.

Sweet Begonias are new to me, Begonia odorata, I rarely catch the scent from this, but it has been blooming nearly nonstop since last spring.

Heliconia psittacorus

Heliconia psittacorus

Sweet Begonias

Sweet Begonias

Doesn’t everyone have a Purple Oxalis?

Purple Oxalis

Purple Oxalis

This may be my new favorite plant, a native groundcover used for controlling beach erosion, the Dune Sunflower was planted in the middle of summer in an unirrigated bed by the side of the road. I bought the plants on sale for $1.oo(US) each because they looked bad and the grower wanted to get rid of them. A couple of months later and a little TLC and these are madly blooming with little care. What’s not to like?

Dune Sunflower Helianthus debilis

Dune Sunflower
Helianthus debilis

The Tibouchina is another sporadic bloomer, love the purple though. The Shrimp Plants have been blooming nearly nonstop since last spring on my porch. I have unsuccessfully tried to root them.

The Glory of the Princess Flower

Tibouchina

Shrimp Plant Pachystachys lutea

Shrimp Plant
Pachystachys lutea

 

Some of these plants bloom nearly year round like the Ixora below, I call this the Azalea of South Florida because most people who garden have a few. A reliable plant that comes in several colors and sizes.

Dwarf Red Ixora Ixora taiwanensis
Dwarf Red Ixora
Ixora taiwanensis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I feel as if I have been making steady progress in the garden having started it almost three years ago. I have definitely learned a lot about tropical plant material, and am looking forward to learning more.

My next project is to divide the bromeliads as the cooler weather has them sending up pups:

Burgundy Aechmea Bromeliad

Burgundy Aechmea Bromeliad

Then replant my herb garden, I found Lemon Thyme here last week after a three year quest and am very happy.

Happy New Year and Happy Gardening.

Merry Kitschmas and Flapjack Plants

 

CAM00060-1If you are in search of kitschy Christmas decorations, South Florida should be your destination. Within walking distance of my house we have lighted Flamingo Santas, Santa on a surfboard full of presents crashing into a palm tree and my favorite, a full sized sled with Santa pulled by 8 Flamingos (pink, of course) Very festive and very kitschy.

I have to say I really love the Flamingos, having spent many years in the company of proper design professionals a few Kitschy Flamingos just make the holidays more enjoyable. The mascot for my Landscape Architecture class in college was the Pink Flamingo.

Tonight Santa arrives in my neighborhood in a convertible Mustang complete with Christmas lights and the stereo blaring Christmas carols, drives around and gives candy to the children in the neighborhood.

Blooming in the garden is another sort of kitschy plant, the Flapjack Plant. I had originally thought this was a variety of Jade Plant (Crassula, for botanical name lovers) The Flapjack Plant turns out to be a Kalanchoe thyrsiflora, hmmm, interesting. These are used as summer annuals further north,  but are perennial in South Florida. I had never seen one bloom, the flower spike makes the plant about four feet tall.

Flapjack Flowers

Flapjack Flowers

The foliage looks less like flapjacks as it gets bigger:

Flapjack Foliage

Flapjack Foliage

Kind of red and green in the spirit of Christmas?!

Happy Holidays, Merry Kitschmas, er, Christmas and Happy Gardening..

 

Pygmy Date Palm – Friend or Foe

Pygmy Date Palm Phoenix roebellini

Pygmy Date Palm
Phoenix roebellini

I had a Pygmy Date Palm installed last year in front of my house. This is a dwarf palm rarely exceeding 10 feet in height and it looks great in front of my bathroom window. I selected a triple trunk palm to accent the house and landscape because as the largest element in the foundation planting  it needed some mass.

These palms are native to Southeast Asia and are common in South Florida. They actually do bear dates, but a male and female plant is required. I am perfectly happy without dates. Dates have always reminded me of roaches and I just don’t like to eat them.

I let the palm grow for about a year before attempting to prune it. Pruning done right reveals a trunk that resembles neatly stacked rows of whole wheat crackers- I have heard these called Triscuit Trees. What is not mentioned is the enormous spines at the base of the palm fronds. The spines are up to two inches long. Somewhere in a jungle I think Pygmies used these for poison darts. Later in the week I was talking to a physician, these palms are well known to the medical community due to the thorns. Wounds from the thorns tend to fester and cause infection.

While getting into the holiday spirit I decided to wrap the trunks with miniature white lights. It would have been wise to drink some spirits and don opera length leather gloves before attempting this. As I was decorating I was skewered through the hand and the thorn hit a vein; I now have a 3 inch bruise on my hand that looks terrible. Then I got stabbed in the head and decided to stop for a moment and go in the house. It took a while to get the thorn out of my hand and the bleeding from my head wound staunched. Duly anointed with antibiotic ointment, I persevered and completed my light display, then waited for darkness.

Ahh, holiday magic.

CAM00410

Strange Fruits

Passionflower

Passionflower

Here it is almost December and I walked out into my backyard to find a Passionflower in full bloom and fruiting. Very nice and so typical of the landscape in South Florida. Just when you are wrapping your brain around the fact that the holidays are here and the temperature outside is around 80 degrees – there is a Passionflower.

I was wondering if this was a culinary Passionfruit and apparently it is not. This is called a May Pop in northern climes. My father in law was from Northern Ohio and one of his favorite childhood memories was stomping May Pops on the way home from school. Probably in May and not December.

Passionfruit comes from Passiflora edulis, which is native to South America. The North American version is Passiflora incarnata, the May Pop. There are an additional eight varieties native to North America, the culinary variety is tropical and may be grown in South Florida.

Ponciana Pods

Poinciana Pods

Here is some more interesting fruit. These are the dried pods of the Royal Poinciana tree, a member of the bean family. The pods are about two feet long and I enjoy spray painting them a metallic color and using them in Holiday decorations. I am truly getting in touch with my inner Martha Stewart.

The last bit of strange fruit I spotted at my local library. I have watched these trees bloom for the past couple of years, but had not noticed the fruit (it is strange that I did not notice this fruit)

Golden Shower Fruit

Golden Shower Fruit

My husband was snickering when I showed him this photo. It is pretty strange fruit, the whole thing is around 3 feet long and looks like someone has been making green sausages and hanging them on the tree. The tree is a Golden Shower (Cassia fistula) – in the spring and summer it has chains of yellow flowers that resemble Hawaiian leis hanging down from the branches. Beautiful and kind of peculiar. Like many things in South Florida.

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.

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

6-24-08 017

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…

CAM00134

 

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..