Tag Archives: Amelia Grant

In a Vase on Monday – Foreign Affairs

All of the plants in the vase this week are, to me, foreign versions of common plants grown further north. The pink and white flowers are Desert Roses, from the deserts of Africa and the Arabian peninsula and a succulent to boot. White and green flowers are from a tropical Begonia that shoots up flowers about three feet tall and then we have the giant Dianthus. Tropical foreigners from my garden.

Desert Roses (Adenium obesum) are a mad thing. This is a red one frying on the pavement and finding its happy place. It doesn’t look much like a typical rose bush.

The Begonia in the arrangement is Lotusleaf. Definitely the biggest Begonia I have ever seen. It is a common roadside plant in Central America and pretty indestructible once established in my garden.

A closer view.

Draping over the edge of the vase, Desert Rose (Adenium obesum); green seed heads and white, frothy flowers are from Lotusleaf Begonia (Begonia nelumbifolia); pink flowers are Giant Dianthus; chartreuse leaves are a coleus of some sort, and the deep green foliage in back is from a Lady Palm (Rhapis excelsa). The vase is a thrift store find.

We are transitioning into warmer weather here with the weather guessers trumpeting dire warnings about a violent hurricane season. After a while I realized they really have no idea.I am still planting a few new things, tempting fate!

Here’s to enjoying spring and seeing a few new vases this Monday. Follow this link to visit Cathy and see the vases in the comments section.

Six on Saturday – Fruits and Flowers

My garden tour this morning revealed some progress in the fruit area and a few late season flowers. It has been a dry and sunny week that left me puzzling over how much to water the mangoes. If they are watered too much it affects the quality of the fruit and vice versa. A dilemma that rain solves. They have shed a few fruits, but this is normal. I went from about 50 fruit down to possibly 20, which is okay. It is a bit difficult to deal with 50!

Glenn Mango coming along. These flowered magnificently and then powdery mildew set in causing much of the fruit to drop. I expect to eat these in about a month, they flowered at the end of January.

Finally! A good crop of Rangpur limes coming along. These won’t be edible until December.

New to the garden – Australian Finger Limes. These won’t be ready for years! I need to read up on these to determine what to do with them. They look a bit like jalapenos when ripe and are relatively rare. The foliage is much smaller than conventional limes.

A surprise Snapdragon in my pot of basil. I did not have any snaps this year, so this is a reseed from last year. I love garden surprises like this.

The Lotusleaf Begonia (B. nelumbifolia) is flowering luxuriantly, despite getting very little water. These form large tubers and I suppose that is what sustains them.

The annual sighting of a Ruddy Daggerwing butterfly. These host on Strangler Figs, I have a huge tree beside my house and it seems odd I only see one every year.

That’s all from South Florida. I will be contemplating butterfly and mango dilemmas later. Until then, follow this link to Jim’s blog for Saturday morning garden tours around the world.

In a Vase on Monday – Chanel No. 4?

I decided to put together a small vase of spring flowers this week. The big surprise was the wonderful fragrance generated by a combination of four flowers I selected from the garden. Mmmm, I thought, I would wear this as perfume. This led me to a very ancient bottle of Chanel No. 5 my father gave me decades ago that lives on. My mother, in all her Greatest Generation glory, considered this her signature scent. It is a bit, sweet? for me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, though I did try to grow a Ylang Ylang tree in my garden, the main fragrance component of Chanel No. 5. The YY tree expired, but I don’t think this bottle of perfume has!

The purple flowers are Agastache, I have no idea what variety. These have a lemony scent and are doing quite well in a container. These are new to the garden. A few Genovese basil flowers and White Flame Salvia are adding their white flowers and herbal scents.

The Giant Dianthus in pinks adds a clove fragrance to the mix. It seems lemony, herbal, clove may be my signature scent! I love it. A few snips of purple and silver foliage from Inch Plant (Transcandentia zebrina) were added for color.

The blue glass container is an heirloom from a collection my in-laws had. I am not sure what it is. A giant shot glass?

Happy Spring Monday to all and thank you to Cathy for hosting IAVOM every week! Follow the link ramblinginthegarden to visit Cathy and see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – Hip, Heirloom Hippeastrum

I found my heirloom ‘Red Lion’ Hippeastrum in flower this week. Given their inevitable association with Christmas, I tried to make a modern, hip arrangement that did not reflect the holidays. These bulbs came from my father in law, Glenn, who had an incredibly intense in and out of the closet scheduling scheme for getting the bulbs to rebloom – after a few years of holiday flowers he would plant them in the garden. These have always lived outside here and are a rare bulb that hangs around in my garden. Glenn has been gone for almost twenty years, so I wonder how old these bulbs are?!

The Hipsters:

I love a little chartreuse and grey in the garden. This is an unnamed coleus in chartreuse and what I think is a Graptosedum succulent. I am hoping the coleus will root. If you look closely the cotton ball I stuffed into the bottom of the Hippeastrum stem is visible. I did this with the flower upside down and it burped when placed in the vase. I have read that filling the stem with water and putting a cotton ball in the end will make the flower last longer. The experiment is on!

Glenn’s Red Lion Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) – I am certain he would not know what a Hippeastrum is. The chartreuse umbels are flowers from culinary dill. I like to eat the foliage, but the seeds don’t really tempt me. The green foliage is a palm seedling of some sort. There is a nice herbal scent surrounding the vase. The container is a heavy crystal vase that was a gift.

I hope everyone is enjoying spring by now and I am looking forward to watching weird shadows with the solar eclipse on Monday afternoon. Thanks to Cathy for hosting IAVOM, to see more vases follow the link ramblinginthegarden and read the comments section.

Heliconias for South Florida

Looking to add some tropical vibe to your garden? Look no further than one of my favorite tropical plants, Heliconias. Heliconias come in many different varieties, two of the most common and easiest types to grow in South Florida’s Zone 10 are Parrot flowers and Lobster claw Heliconias.

Meet the Lobster claw Heliconia (Heliconia rostrata). Featuring large, shiny banana-like foliage and thick stems that support large hanging bracts of red and yellow flowers it is difficult to picture a more tropical plant. They originated in rainforests of South and Central America as understory plants. It is written that the flowers evolved to this shape to attract tropical hummingbirds to pollinate them. In my garden, the hummingbirds aren’t around at the same time as the flowers, so I am guessing this is a phenomena that happens much further south.

While some Lobster claw Heliconia can grow to 15 feet tall, these are usually more tropical types in an actual rainforest. The plants grown in Zone 10 are usually smaller and can be damaged with an extraordinarily cold snap.

Lobsterclaw Heliconia are easily grown in a partial shade setting with ample moisture. They like rich, well drained soil and benefit from compost in the planting hole and mulch. I grow them in my garden on the north side of the house under the edge of the roof. They are very happy and provide cut flowers in the summer.

This is a smaller Lobsterclaw Heliconia in my garden. I enjoy cutting these for smaller vases.

Here is a parrot for the garden. Heliconia psittacorum AKA the Parrot flower. I would characterize this as a tropical flowering perennial. They are leafy, grow about two feet tall, enjoy a moist, part shade environment and can spread like mad if happy. I have had these produce flowers almost every month of the year. I believe they slow down with extremes in weather (drought, heat, cold). Below is the “Lady Di” Parrot flower.

This is another long lasting cut flower. I have a few in a vase by my front door.

In a Vase on Monday – Sculptural Elements

This week my garden is sporting many different types of flowers, from classic cottage style to over the top tropical weirdness. I decided to simplify and cut a few Heliconias accented with the buds of a succulent. It is a bit calm in the face of the exuberance of spring.

March is proving to be its usual windy, showery self, so a quick garden tour and a few snips was a good thing this Sunday morning. I used one of my mother’s heirloom vases to set off the simple flower selection.

Heliconias are one of my favorite tropical flowers, last a week in a vase and are very easy to grow. These are Heliconia psittacorum “Lady Di” in red, and “Choconiana” in orange. They have a mind of their own and tend to grow and flower under shrubs, which is annoying if you want to see them or cut them.

This is a bit of Senecio barbertonicus, in bud. The flowers look like the promise of an aster that never quite makes it into a yellow daisy, followed by a pseudo dandelion. Pretty weird, but I do love the foliage and the fact these can be left laying around the garden for weeks and are unfazed as long as they are replanted.

That’s all from my garden this Monday, to see more vases visit Cathy’s blog and follow the links in the comments.

Happy Gardening!!

In a Vase on Monday – Sprung

Spring has definitely sprung in South Florida. I bought my self required Pink Dianthus last week and here it is springing out of this vase. This is a big green Dianthus I had never seen until last year. I was happy to find another one as they are short lived annuals at best and it will be gone by summer. These make great cut flowers and are currently residing in a pot with rosemary and thyme. I also have a pot of Bath’s Pink Dianthus that I bought mail order last year because I love the grey foliage. It has not flowered and I am wondering if that is why no one around here has ever heard of them. I do love a little Dianthus in spring.

A closer view:

The Dianthus! I am not sure what kind of Dianthus this is – the label on the pot says Dianthus. That is it. Looking around the internet it looks like Rockin Pink Magic Dianthus (Dianthus barbatus interspecific). I concur with the name, it is Rockin Pink Magic.

White Flame and Mystic Blue Salvias are still going strong and needed deadheading. I actually had to throw some flowers away. The never ending supply of invasive Asian Sword Ferns supplied some greenery to emphasize the sproing. The vase is a thrift store find I have enjoyed for years.

That’s all from South Florida. I will be on the lookout for more Dianthus flowers. Visit our intrepid hostess, Cathy’s blog by following this link to see more weekly flowers in a vase from around the world.

In a Vase on Monday – Gingerly into the Garden

I have been eyeing the Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) for at least a week, watching the buds get bigger and bigger and stubbornly not flowering. Finally, the temperature soared to 90F/32C on Saturday and evidently inspired the Shell Ginger to open up. The miniature heat wave also caused the gigantic Strangler Fig to drop its leaves, so I walked gingerly through the leaves (fall is really not a thing here and I have yet to figure out the circle of life on the leaf drop on this tree) and started to cut flowers. Then, the bottom dropped out and I was in a torrential rainfall. Likely a result of the cold front behind the heat wave. Gingers in hand, I proceeded gingerly back into the house, drenched and enjoying the fragrant bouquet.

These are such dramatic flowers, I think they are at their best simply arranged. These are in one of my old florist vases and as is with their own foliage. I trimmed a good deal of the foliage off to allow the flowers to shine. The flowers are lightly fragrant adding a subtle ginger scent to the foyer.

A close up-

The flowers always remind me of porcelain and they are quite thick. I think the trip into the garden was worthwhile. The rain cleared, the temperature dropped and it is a beautiful, blue sky day.

To see more vases, visit our hostess, Cathy at ramblinginthegarden and follow the links in the comments.

Six on Saturday – Chicken Gizzards?

My garden tour this Saturday morning revealed a few new things in the garden. I have been shopping online. It seems safe to say not everything that will grow here has been tried here. Famous last words. Spring brings new things to all gardens. To tour more gardens and see what’s springing elsewhere from many different places, follow this link to Jim’s blog and check out the comments.

One new thing is the Chicken Gizzard plant (Iresine herbstii) There are a few mysteries about this plant. First, why is it called Chicken Gizzard? Second, where to plant it? The pundits disagree on whether it will grow outside here and say full sun. Full sun in Ohio (the plant was grown there) is one thing, in South Florida it’s a whole different thing. A dilemma to be solved.

The miniature pineapples are flowering.

An example of how tough bromeliads are. I was clearing some bromeliads, cutting this pup off early this week, left it on top of the bucket, not feeling decisive about where to replant it, then forgot about it. It just kept on growing. This is a silvery purple brom with pink flowers. I may remember the name…

I hope this is a praying mantis and not an evil plague.

A Dracaena reflexa I am pruning to a multi trunk tree. It is at least 10 feet tall.

Mangoes are looking more like mangoes!

That is all from South Florida. Our crazy warm weather continues – it is forecast to be nearly 90F/32C here today. I am heading back out to plant that bromeliad pup before it gets too hot.

Happy Gardening.

In a Vase on Monday – Tropical Spring Roll

My spring roll is filled with different ingredients than one found in a Thai restaurant. A bromeliad leaf is wrapped around delicious contents from the garden. The names of some of the contents could be considered food – asparagus (fern), sage (salvia) – but I think we would be hard pressed to chew through the roll. It could possibly be considered high fiber/low carb for oh, say rodents or a passing iguana. My plan is to admire the flowers.

The ingredients:

My salvias are having a great year. Here they are again, Mystic Blue and White Flame. The pink flower is known as the tulip of the Treasure Coast. They don’t really remind me of tulips, but I get it. They are actually bromeliads, Billbergia pyramidalis. Green foliage is Asparagus fern and the wrapping leaf is from Blanchetiana Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana). I love the green/mahogany coloration of the Blanchetiana leaves in winter, they are chartreuse in summer.

The weather here has finally turned in favor of gardening. My tomatoes are ripening and spring is in the air. On the down side, the moles ate all the bulbs and tubers, making me realize I should stop wasting money on these lovelies. I also accidentally grew some rabbit tobacco I thought was Chinese Forget Me Nots, oh well. Rabbit tobacco is a weed and a rite of passage in my youth. Boys would smoke it pretending like it was cigarettes! I am told it was harsh, but I never tried it.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting this weekly meme. Follow this link to see more vases.