I am joining SOS this week with my latest crop of unusual. Even in South Florida, April showers bring May flowers. Generally, they are not the same flowers everyone else grows, but I am happy. My cutting flowers are not quite ready for viewing, but their friends are. Visit our host, Jim at GardenRuminations to see more May happiness.
I do love these miniature pineapples. I have a few around the garden. The fruits are reportedly good for juicing. However, I cannot resist cutting them for flower arrangements or drying them for the holidays. And painting them gold!
Intense rain showers inspired the Rain Lilies!
Flaming Torch Bromeliads (Bilbergia pyramidalis) are appearing early this year.
The Purple Heliotrope is still hanging in there with the chartreuse Golden Dewdrop (Duranta erecta)
Mystic Blue Salvia is shining.
Turkeytangle Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) “lawn” is flourishing and providing food for butterflies. Note holes in leaves. Happy caterpillars.
That is my six for this Saturday. Happy Gardening!!
It’s time for my weekly garden tour. I noticed a lot of white in my garden and decided to focus on the different types of white flowers. I realized eventually and unintentionally I like to add white to offset all the high colors in my garden. I have a lot of color – reds, oranges and purples mostly and the white adds a cooling touch to all that color.
The White Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) is making another appearance as it is adding on layers of color as it continues opening.
The native salvia (Salvia coccinea) is showing off in white.
Another favorite native is Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa). These are lightly scented and make a good cut flower.
Miss Alice Bougainvillea is making a shy return to her former glory. She was knocked back by the cold.
White Geiger (Cordia boisserei) has been flowering for a couple of weeks. This is sometimes called Texas Olive as it is native there and produces odd, olive like fruit. The fruit is edible but oddly gelatinous and best left for wild life. My greyhound will eat it if left to his own devices.
White and pink Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) are budding and blooming.
That is all from South Florida this week. Gardeners here continue to do rain dances. I read it would take almost 2 feet of rain to break the drought here.
Saturday morning is prime time to tour my garden and take pictures to share with Jim at GardenRuminations and the rest of the international gardening gang. Follow the link to tour more gardens in the comments.
The White Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) is progressing, but not quite open. It surprises me how long the flowers take to get going. I have been watching this for three weeks.
I decided to try some different container plants. Verbena, Callibrachoa and an unknown succulent.
The flower of the unknown succulent. I hope it drops some seed right there!
The Pinot Noir Bromeliad (Aechmea ‘Pinot Noir’) is showing it’s true to its name. This will flower later this summer – I hope.
The miniature pineapples are bearing fruit.
We have been enjoying tomatoes and herbs from the garden.
That is all from South Florida this beautiful spring Saturday. I bought some Cinderella Fairytale Purslane cuttings I must pot up, so it is back outside. Has anyone had these? I bought them for the name as much as anything else. I wanted to try purslane and it supposedly makes it through the summer here.
I’m joining the SOS gang this week to share some recent happenings in my garden. Spring has truly sprung here and the pollen has been in full force, my sinuses cannot recall a thicker more long lasting coating of pollen. I think the February freeze inspired the oaks to flower. To travel the world via SOS – visit Jim at GardenRuminations
Artemis blasted off over my garden on its way to the moon. My husband was squealing in the back yard. It was quite a sight. We are a few hundred miles south of Cape Canaveral.
A totally different flight landed in the front garden. This is a Great White Egret easily four feet tall.
The Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘Alba’) have been very sweet this spring.
I have been picking tomatoes for a week or two. Here is a lesson in open pollination. I saved seed last year thinking I would get large yellow pear tomatoes. I got some! And some much larger pink campari style tomatoes and small red cherries. Fortunately, they are all delicious.
This is a bud on a White Bird of Paradise (Strelizia nicolai) This has been in the garden for 7 or 8 years, is at least 12 feet tall and this is the second flower! I keep going out to see if it opened yet.
Spring snow is starting on the Hawaiian Snowbush (Breynia disticha) The foliage gets a bit whiter and then goes back to green. This is a bit of a garden thugs and difficult to pull up.
That is my garden update. I’m wondering if this is the first garden rocket in SOS?
Greeting to the SOS crowd from South Florida. I am pleased to report my garden is bouncing back from the historic freeze in early February. There have been a few casualties. I lost two out of three mango trees and a specimen tree form Firebush (It looks terrible in black – I did not know plants could turn black!) Otherwise, the skies are blue, the birds are singing and the citrus trees are setting fruit!
Citrus trees are more cold hardy than I imagined. This is a Sugar Belle Mandarin orange I planted last fall. It is setting fruit – there is a tiny orange on the right side of the photo. I will probably remove most of these as the tree needs to put its energy into establishing itself. The flowers have a wonderful scent.
The Rangpur lime is also flowering. The orange seems to have a stronger scent.
I was very happy to see the Nemesis Papaya coming back from its roots.
I found a surprise in the front garden. It looks a lot like an Amaryllis, though I never planted any Amaryllis. All will be revealed soon. I hope it is a Butterfly Amaryllis!
I replaced some Salvia. These are Mystic Blue. A favorite.
New growth on my one surviving mango. You can see the dead foliage still hanging on around the edges. This is a Glenn Mango. Some of the older mangoes on my street are setting fruit. Fingers crossed.
Happy Spring, Everyone! Things are definitely looking up here.
Follow the link to visit Jim at GardenRuminations and see what else in going on this Saturday in the gardening world.
Hello all and Happy 2026! I haven’t joined SOS in a while as it seemed there wasn’t very much of interest going on in the garden. Winter gardening in South Florida brings what everyone else knows as summer vegetables and cool season herbs. This is also the time of year for dividing bromeliad pups and moving orchids around. So, I have been doing all of that.
Winter is the dry season, so it has not rained in weeks. I am fortunate to have a lot of bromeliads and they only need to have their cups filled about every 10 days. Amazingly resilient plants. High temperatures are running 78F / 25C, the humidity is low and skies are deep blue with a magnificent range of clouds. The migratory birds are passing through, so it is wonderful spending time outdoors.
Winter also provides tropical fruit. This is the first hermaphrodite flower on the Nemesis Papaya I planted a couple of months ago. I am hoping for some fruit this year. Papayas produce male, female and hermaphrodite flowers that are self pollinating. Nemesis is a selected variety for that and I think the name reflects its resistance to nematodes. We have bad nematodes in Florida.
Billbergia bromeliads flower in winter. I think these are Billbergia amoena. Above are the rather impressive buds, I cut one of the flowers, they last a week in a vase and open with tiny cobalt blue flowers are the tips that look like curling ribbon.
Here is some of the wildlife passing through. This is a juvenile Red Shouldered Hawk. Hopefully looking for invasive lizards.
I have been harvesting Rangpur limes. These may not look like limes, but they are ripe. They are a cross between lemons and mandarin oranges. A sour orange, really, and used in cooking and baking. They make a delicious key lime pie.
More bromeliads in flower. These are ‘Candy’ Porteas. I think they are named after Good and Plenty licorice candy.
I use these as cut flowers, here is a closer view.
I believe I am over six pictures, so I will stop. Visit our host, Jim, at this link GardenRuminations to see more SOS posts.
Saturday morning finds me in the garden taking pictures to share with the SOS gang that meets at Jim’s Blog Garden Ruminations on a weekly basis. Follow the link to tour other gardens.
I have been planting fruit trees this week. It is hard not to want to grow tropical fruit if you live in South Florida. My collection continues to grow.
Citrus fruit, especially oranges, has taken a beating from the Asian citrus psyllid. This insect carries the citrus greening disease. This disease basically makes the fruit inedible and then causes the tree to die, affecting the phloem.
I attended a lecture that included a new variety of mandarin orange, Sugar Belle and a protective device to keep the insects off the tree until it was six feet tall. This variety of citrus is resistant to the psyllid. Here is the tree just planted. I have not installed the cover yet.
I was directed to plant the tree directly in the sand, then water and fertilize the heck out of it. It took a while to get the tree hydrated, but it looks pretty good now so I am going to install the cover.
This is a Nemesis Papaya, the name sounds a bit scary. I think it is resistant to nematodes and that is the reason for the name. Papayas bear fruit quickly and the trees don’t last but a few years. I have had several and the fruit is worth it. It already has buds and it takes about four months to get fruit. I am hoping it will self pollinate. This is a hermaphrodite variety, most Papayas are male or female and it can be a trial to get the right two from seed.
Papaya buds. Fingers crossed.
A very nice surprise. The yellow dragonfruit actually set fruit! I have had this for years and many flowers but this is the first fruit. Fingers crossed again.
The Rangpur lime was plagued by lizards trying to suck the juice out of the fruit during our hot and very dry month of August. I had about 50 limes and am down to 10. Still hoping for pies in December.
This is a Red Jaboticaba, a nice little shrub from Brazil. These produce a grape like fruit on the trunk. I am not sure how long I have had this, but am still waiting for the fruit! These also are available in tree form and are quite a sight. Clusters of grapes attached to the trunk in swirling patterns. Brazilians make wine from this fruit.
That’s all from my garden this morning. Be advised I am shopping for late season mango trees..Kent or Keitt, any opinions?
I haven’t been sixing lately as August was a frying, hot and dry month and the garden was looking dismal. Things are looking up in September. For whatever reason, our late afternoon showers have returned, temperatures are moderating and the plants are much happier. I even went plant shopping!
One of my purchases, a Chinese Perfume Tree (Aglaia odorata). These are the flowers. I love the scent. The nursery did an excellent job of marketing, having the shrubs here and there so you wondered ‘what is that lovely fragrance’? It’s lemony and reminds me of Southern Magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora)
Here is the Chinese Perfume Tree. I planted it in a big terracotta pot as it seems they like some moisture. I am very hopeful this works and the shrub thrives. The soil in the garden is probably too well drained to sustain this plant.
New growth in the succulent containers. The Haworthias, now green, were brown through August. Grey plants are Graptosedums.
Rejuvenated Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) This reseeds freely in the garden to the point of needing to be thinned.
‘Little Harv’ Aechmea Bromeliad in full bloom.
A little fall color and masses of purple berries on the Beautyberry (Calliocarpa americana)
That’s all from my garden this week. Visit Jim’s blog GardenRuminations to see more SOS posts.
Saturday morning found me taking pictures in the garden yet again. I am joining in the SOS crowd flocking to Jim’s blog to share six items of interest from their gardens. Today I am featuring summer flowering bromeliads from my tropical oasis in South Florida.
This is a Aechmea Rubens flower with a White Peacock butterfly sipping the nectar. It has been a good year for this butterfly. I have swarms of White Peacocks for some reason. I want to share what I just read on Google. Groups of butterflies can be called swarms, kaleidoscopes, or rabbles.
Buds on a Aechmea ‘Little Harv’ bromeliad.
Another view of ‘Little Harv’. These get much taller and open, the stem is hot pink.
This is Aechmea bracteata in full bloom. These last a long time and eventually dry to a straw color.
Aechmea blanchetiana ‘Lemon’ shooting up flower spikes. These are three or four feet tall and will open up a bit. They remind me of crustaceans.
Aechmea miniata bromeliad flowers. These are my favorites. Easy to grow and nice, low foliage that is not sharp.
That’s all from sweltering South Florida. We are just out of the heat dome in the Eastern US thankfully. It is much warmer further north.
It seems I always find a few things I want to add to the garden – in July. Not a great time for shipping plants to South Florida. I managed to control myself (a little) and bought a few new plants shipped from nearby. July can be a good time to plant things due to copious rainfall.
My garden tour this morning revealed a few other new things in the garden – one has already been eaten! Please join other SOS bloggers and their six items of interest at Jim’s Blog (Garden Ruminations) for more summer fun.
The Yellow Dragonfruit is once again teasing me with a flower. These are pollinated by night flying bats and moths. At this point I am not sure I have any of those in the garden. Usually I get some flowers for a short (hours long) period and they fall off. I thought I would try the paint brush around the inside of the flower and then looked inside.
The flower was loaded with insects doing more than I could ever hope for with a paintbrush. I’ll know in a week or so if there will be fruit.
The homegrown pineapple (on the left) was harvested and devoured. These pineapples are usually much smaller than the grocery store varieties (on the right) I am not sure why because they are grown from the tops of grocery store pineapples? The fruit is sweeter and juicier than pineapples from the store. Delicious.
These are new to the garden. I bought the cuttings of Reed Orchid (Epiprenum radicans). These can be grown in the ground here and are used as a groundcover. This one has orange flowers that look like dendrobium clusters, but they come in many colors. I put it in a terracotta pot to keep the rabbits away. It should take and creep over the sides of the pot and fill in the bed.
Meet ‘Absolute Zero’ Crypanthus bromeliad. These are shade lovers and should have pink flowers. The common name is Earth Star. I intend to put these in the ground near the Epiprenums. After receiving the plant I realized the sun needs to go down in the sky a bit before I plant them. A little too much afternoon sun currently.
A locally grown coconut. I bought this to bake a pie, without thinking through the fact that power tools are probably needed to open it and it is the wrong kind for baking coconut. Green coconuts have coconut water and jelly. Brown coconuts have the grateable meat for pies. Sigh. Both involve screwdrivers and hammer prior to use. They can be sprouted and planted in the garden – but I am not sure which kind.
That’s all from South Florida. There is a heat advisory in effect for the next couple of days so all gardening has to be done before 9 am. I am done!
The Shrub Queen 