tropicanna black

Inspired by the blooms on my Tropicanna cannas, I set out to create a container garden that would satisfy my cravings for the warm, rich, saturated colors of fall. I'm linking my post to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for October. Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is a cool idea by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. On the 15th of every month, people around the globe share what's blooming in their garden.

Here's the combo I came up with: dark foliage contrasted by hot, bright colors. Back in May, using some birthday money, I got this Tropicanna Black canna from Bristol's Garden Center in Victor, NY. The canna did well in the ground, but last month I moved it to this container. It survived the transplant well, I'm happy to say. I found the linear-leaved croton (lower right) in the "houseplants" department at Home Depot. The ornamental peppers I found in the floral department of my local supermarket - Wegmans.

Tropicanna Black canna (top), ornamental peppers (lower left) and croton (lower right)

My Flower Carpet roses are still blooming their heads off, and the petals have hung in there despite all the pelting rain…

Flower Carpet roses. Coral (left) and Amber (right)

 And here are the little 'Thumbelina' zinnias planted this spring by my 4-year-old daughter. They came in a "Veggie Tales" seed packet she picked out herself:

Only a few blooms left on my threadleaf coreopsis, so the ones remaining really pop out at you!

Well, that's about it - hope to hit the 99-cent clearance shelf of perennials this weekend and get some fall planting in!

Yay for Tropicanna Black! This summer, the widely celebrated, purplish-black leaved canna from Tesselaar Plants took top honors at the United Kingdom's largest plant trade show – the Horticultural Trade Association’s National Plant Show. The honor – the Silver Award for Herbaceous Perennials – went to John Woods Nurseries (of Suffolk County, England – one of Tesselaar’s UK growers). 

Also at the show (below), John Woods presented another Tesselaar plant – the Black Tulip magnolia – as a gift to England's Queen Elizabeth!

Congratulations to John  Woods Nurseries and to Tesselaar Plants!

 Congratulations!

Four winners have been in announced in a Tropicanna cannas giveaway held this month as part of posts by Amy Stewart and Genevieve Schmidt of the wildly popular Garden Rant and North Coast Gardening blogs, respectively.

North Coast Gardening's Genevieve Schmidt (left) and Garden Rant's Amy Stewart (right) pretending to be Tropicanna cannas in the video accompanying their blog posts about the tropical, colorfully foliaged plant.

The winners, drawn at random, are: Michelle Derviss, Roberta Perez, Pat Leuchtman and Nicky of the 'Dirt and Martinis' blog (she didn’t want her last name listed). All these women were very excited to receive their Tropicanna canna rhizomes, and some of the ones in warmer areas have already planted them in pots.

Tropicanna Gold cannas (top) in a container with torenia 'Viva Catalina Blue' (lower left) and heuchera 'Velvet Night' (bottom right).

“I’ve created a subtropical, Balinese-inspired garden in which the Tesselaar cannas are going to be very happy,” says Michelle, a Novato, California gardener and author of the 'Garden Porn' blog. In her blog comment, Michelle even suggested a great, tropical plant combination that's perfect for container gardens or beds: Tropicanna Gold with a brilliant red foliage plant such as phormium or red banana. “Throw in some big-leafed coleus, some alocasias and a few succulents," she added, "and ya all will have a knockout vignette.”

Speaking of knockout vignettes, check out  these pics of Michelle’s home and "Pina Colada Garden," just 20 minutes north of the Golden Gate bridge.

The original Tropicanna cannas (top) in a container with zinnias (lower left) and lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea' (lower right).

“Thank you so much for the beautiful Tropicannas!,” says Roberta, of Monterey Park, California, who mentioned in her blog comment that her Tropicannas were so gorgeous, some jerk up and stole them on her! “I already have some pots with their names on them!" she says. "I will take photos when they are up!”

 Cool!

Nicky, of 'Dirt and Martinis,' hopes to blog about the Tropicannas and their progress on her site. “I grow in an area that gets hammered with snow in the winter,” she says. “So, I'll take great pleasure bringing these beauties indoors when it gets too cold for them.”

Tropicanna Black cannas in a container with salvia farinacea (left) and dichondra 'Silver Falls.'

Pat Leuchtman, a Charlemont, Massachusetts gardener who authors the Commonweeder blog, hasn't ever grown cannas before, “but I’m ready for Tropicanna drama.”

And with winter hanging on by its icy claws in the Northeast, who there wouldn't?

Again – congratulations, ladies! Enjoy your Tropicannas! And don't forget to send pics!

Tropicanna cannas

Tesselaar Plants and the wildly popular Garden Rant and North Coast Gardening blogs will be hosting a Tropicanna^® cannas contest soon – possibly starting next week! The contest will last a week with an announcement of the winners the following week.

The final contest idea is still being formulated, but we know Garden Rant’s Amy Stewart and North Coast Gardening’s Genevieve Schmidt plan to post a video and photos of them planting the tropical, psychedelically foliaged Tropicanna cannas along with some shots of the plants fully grown.  We look forward to the contest and anticipate Amy and Genevieve will have many good things to say about this red-hot garden plant!

Stay tuned for the contest details, but I can tell you that the winners will receive a Tropicanna variety pack. 

If you want to prepare for the contest,  check out the video “How to Grow Tropicannas in Containers” (produced by Dave Epstein of Growing Wisdom) on the “Video Clips” section of Tesselaar’s web site. Or just view it for some garden design ideas and inspiration.

While you’re at it, below are some fabulous container garden combinations featuring the original Tropicanna cannas along with the newer Tropicanna Gold and Tropicanna Black (Black is now widely available to the market after being held back for a few years because of propagation issues).

In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted on when the contest runs!

Good luck to all!

Tropicanna canna (original) at top; zinnias at middle left; lysimachia 'Nummularia Aurea' at bottom

 Tropicanna Black (top); salvia farinacea (middle left), dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’ (bottom)

Tropicanna Gold (top), torenia ‘Catalina Viva Blue; (bottom left) and Heuchera ‘Velvet Night’ (bottom right)

Happy fall! 

So last week, I walk into my cousin's house to drop off a birthday present, and the place is all decorated for Halloween, top to bottom. A black witch-and-bats decal set drifted its way spookily up the stairway wall. Faux black ravens sat perched atop four wall sconces in the family room. The entryway's two console tables featured perfect little vignettes of a witch's cauldron (with lit, fluttering-fabric flame), scattered fall leaves, Gothic candlesticks and even a bottle of wine with a black-and-white spider-themed label (my cousin, of course, made it with her own custom label-maker).

So I drove to my house and went down in the basement, shuffling around for fall decorations. The pickings were slim – just two plug-in Halloween Jack-o-lanterns, designed for the seasonally-lazy like me. 

That's when it hit me – I could make my own – out of everyday, cheap or foraged materials. Here are some of the ideas I came up with. Feel free to steal a few and save yourself some time and cash:

 Foraged florals

For this autumn-themed floral arrangement, I just hit up some of my garden and forest favorites for flowers, leaves and berries. In this vase are my amber-colored Next Generation Flower Carpet^® roses, red sumac panicles, the rainbow-tinged leaves of ColorFlash^® astilbe, rose hips (the small orange berries – found 'em in the woods behind our housing development), Tropicanna^® canna and Tropicanna Black leaves and Festival^® Burgundy cordyline (the long, dark-red, strappy foliage used as an accent – see pic below).

The 'ol bowl o' fruit trick

Everyone has a bowl, right? And everyone needs to eat more fruit, right? And don't they always have a big honkin' bowl of fruit in the middle of those magazine shots of designer kitchens? Plus, the colors and organic, rounded shapes are always needed in great design. Plus, I have to admit, it's a lot easier to justify to myself (and my husband) that I didn't blow money on fancy decorations. I just wanted to buy my loving family some wholesome, healthy fruit (sniff)! (In the fall, it should be noted, try to go for fall colors and textures - the reds of apples and pomegranates, the rusts, oranges and yellows of mangoes, the purples of grapes and plums and the golds and browns of pears. I prefer no green, especially the lighter spring greens (although I've seen plenty of designers successfully pair them with purples and plums in fall. Plus, seasonal fruits and vegetables that are green like artichokes,grapes, apples and pears are, in fact, seasonally appropriate).

Mini pumpkins in the bookshelves

Here's an old decorator trick I picked up from my home-and-garden writer days. Just buy a few mini pumpkins in different colors (I bought a bag of them for $3 at a farm market!) and switch them in for other items in your bookshelves (or your mantel, or entertainment center, or console table, etc.) I wouldn't advise using the gourds shaped like swans or geese or whatever they're supposed to be. They just look kinda weird and fall over.

Pumpkin vignettes

After trying to put a pumpkin each in front of the brick-based lampposts flanking my driveway and just having them look … awkward, my husband suggested we simply set them in the now-pooped, kidney-shaped landscaping beds on our front lawn. I laughed at Hubby's humble little attempt to come up with something aesthetically pleasing. But I was hardly able to blurt out, "you're an engineer … you don't DO design!" before he came up with the prettiest little pumpkin vignettes in the whole wide world (one big, red, warty thing with a cluster of smaller pumpkins and gourds around it – $36 total, from our traditional day-at-the-pumpkin-patch with Maya, now 3). I might still use the plug-in-pumpkins on the porch for Halloween, but from now on, I will use this fall design scheme in my yard. And probably take all the credit for the idea.

Haute highway weeds

Even the humblest of roadside plants can look sophisticated when grouped en masse (used just by themselves; no mixed bouquets). At least that's the Euro-chic way to go about it. I found these reeds, with their plumy, silvery-grey seedheads, swaying in the sunshine on the wetland trails behind my sister's property. But I've also seen them growing on roadsides everywhere. (Note: I wish I'd brought garden gloves or thought to pull my sleeves over my hands when I picked these – I sliced my finger on either the thick, sharp leaves or broken shards of bent stem.) 

Well, that's all I've got for now. I think there's definitely something to be said for bringing some of the outdoors in. Try it for yourself this season – if nothing else, just to get outside and take a walk through nature!

Hey there! I just returned from the Garden Writers Association symposium 2010 (click on the link to read all about it at The Garden Buzz blog). It was held last week in Dallas, Texas and I've FINALLY gotten around to sharing all the great pics, videos and info I gathered there.

As representatives for Tesselaar Plants, my colleage Laurie Riedman and I of course immediately checked out the Tropicanna Black cannas on display at the Monrovia booth. (Tropicanna Black, the dark-leaved and dramatic, yet elusive, member of the wildly popular Tropicanna line of cannas, will be widely available to the public after being held back for a few years because of propagation issues).

Tropicanna Black cannas at Monrovia display at GWA symposium 2010

At the Monrovia display, next to a beautiful stand of Tropicanna Black with its tropical, purplish-black foliage and coral-red blooms with gold-speckled throats, we made this YouTube video with Nicholas Staddon (Monrovia's director of new plants). In the video, Staddon shows how this purplish-black color is the hip accent for gardens right now, making for beautiful contrasts against yellow-lime evergreens and enhancing the purple-blue colors of a nearby clematis and Monrovia's new Bountiful Blue™ blueberry (featuring unique, blue-green foliage that turns pinkish-lavender in the fall).

Tropicanna Black contrasting beautifully with yellow-lime foliage:

Monrovia's new Bountiful Blue blueberry (also great paired with Tropicanna Black):

Over Staddon's shoulder, incidentally, you can see another Tesselaar plant – Fairy Magnolia™ blush. This new michelia hybrid, with heavenly-scented, blushed-pink blooms that are a cross between a magnolia and camellia, is the first in a long-awaited series of Fairy Magnolias from Aussie breeder Mark Jury.

While we were at the Monrovia booth with our video camera out, we also grabbed poor Steve Bender (aka Southern Living's Grumpy Gardener, who was trying to make his way to the lunch tables) and asked him why container gardening remains such a hot trend. We had just shown him pots of Tropicanna Black and the 'Bountiful Blue' blueberries in containers. To see his response, check out this YouTube video.

Steve Bender (aka Southern Living's Grumpy Gardener) talks about containers in our video:

Speaking of Tropicanna Black and containers, we saw other cannas from the Tropicanna line (the original, with rainbow-striped foliage and tangerine blooms, and the gold-striped, gold-bloomed Tropicanna Gold). Later, on the symposium's field trip to the world-famous Dallas Arboretum, we got some great ideas for using these tropical beauties. In this YouTube video, for instance, Dallas Arboretum staff member Jenny Wegley shows a beautiful thriller-filler-spiller combination with Tropicanna Gold at top (as the thriller), multicolored ornamental peppers (as the filler) and black ipomoea, or sweet potato vine, (as the spiller). Gorgeous!

Tropicanna Gold cannas (at top, the "thriller"), ornamental peppers (in the middle, as the "filler") and black ipomoea, or sweet potato vine, (on the bottom, as the "spiller"):

More GWA 2010 info, pics and video to come! Stay tuned – I should have it up within a few days, at the most!

Well, here it finally is …. the second half of my report from the Independent Garden Center Expo 2010 in Chicago (there were so many new plants and products catching my eye that I had to split my post into two).

As you can see in this YouTube video, I learned a lot about Everest™ Carex (also called Japanese Sedge), which was on display at the booth sponsored by Ohio-based Willoway Nurseries.

Lovers of the popular Carex hachijoensis 'Evergold' with gold margins, will love this architectural, shade-brightening fountain with bright-white margins and low, softly mounding form. And, best of all, this Carex oshimensis makes a great "spiller" for any thriller-spiller-filler plant combination in a garden container, or those who follow the old-time rule of always adding white to any color combination.

Everest carex also makes for a low, softly mounding hedge around a perennial bed. As you can see in the video, Willoway used it in the front and backed it with a tall, reddish cordyline. Wow, what a combination! (Willoway also suggests using it with dark-colored foliage like heuchera (coral bells) and ipomea (sweet potato vine) or contrasting the long, linear leaves with big foliage (Tropicanna^® Black, a large, purple-black leaved canna – of course, also from Tesselaar – would be stunning).

Speaking of Tropicanna Black (below, in front of the gold-striped Tropicanna Gold), I just got word that it'll be widely available in 2011 (here's a video of me with a large stand of it at the Monrovia booth at the show).

I also learned about a great fall garden container combination, featuring the burgundy, glossy, strappy leaves of Festival™ Burgundy cordyline (below) with purple mums, purple fountain grass, hypercum berries and ornamental kale. In a short whiskey barrel container, I also saw Festival Burgundy cordyline nicely grouped with mums, fountain grass, stonecrop (all purple) and corkscrew rush and ornamental kale.

Other favorites at the show included this selection of handmade herbal candles by Herbal DeLights. Scents included Pineapple Mint, Bay Laurel, Tea Rose and Sandalwood. They also offer outdoor kitchen aroma candles (for your outdoor kitchen) that double as bug repellant. Very pretty – and pretty smelling!

And here's a stylish take on eco-friendly rainwater harvesting barrels, from Garantia:

Well, that's all for now. Look for these cool new plants and products at your favorite garden centers in 2011!

Does anyone out there just plant up the perfect container garden at the start of the season and then not have to change the plants or move things around? 'Cause I've never been able to pull this off.

Plants get too big, bugs destroy them or they simply stop blooming and are done for the season. And with a 3-year-old, heading out to the garden center for more plants – much less anything else – always turns into a major project. So many times, I simply have to make do – ripping out a bunch of scraggly, overgrown plants from one pot, for instance, and replacing them with a smaller plant stolen from another. 

Hence this evolution of containers on my deck. I potted all these up between the middle of May and the first week of June, and already they've all required some major change-ups.

The diva

This container has had more costume changes than Beyonce at an awards show. It all started in mid-May with the Festival™ Burgundy cordyline that came via mail-order and the pink geranium and white-flowered bacopa put in the cart by my 3-year-old during a trip to Home Depot). I hadn't had a chance, of course, to really head out to a garden center and leisurely look for great plant combinations).

But then, of course, I stumbled across the container gardening articles at FineGardening.com and suddenly my container's understated outfit would never do. So here's Pot Number 2, after I finally got a half-hour to go down the street to the Agway garden center to pick up lime-green ipomoea (sweet potato vine), purple ornamental kale and red, white and lime-green coleus:

I was, of course, very satisfied with my oh-so-fashionable selection – that is, until the nasturtium in the container next to it got all out of control and monster-like. So I went for one more wardrobe change, snagging the ipomoea from this pot to replace it. I don't care if they say every pot needs a thriller, a filler and a spiller – without my spiller, I think the container looks more neat and tidy.

Waaay over the rainbow

Similarly, here are the original, rainbow-striped, original Tropicanna^® cannas I originally potted up in the beginning of June, and some ornamental kale and nasturtium I picked up at that same trip to Agway. With my frustrated inner artist out to play, I then grabbed some of the white stones out of our landscaping pathway and set them on top of the soil, just to see if a white "canvas" of sorts would intensify the color.

Then the nasturtium turned all yellow and ratty (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my approach to watering is to wait for the rain). So I ripped it out and added some croton. Why? Because I can. I fell in love with psychedelically-colored tropical plants on my April trip to Maui (see my previous post), and I think I just wanted the craziest, loudest collection of colors I could get my hands on.

Encroaching kale

And here's the Tropicanna Gold and Tropicanna Black cannas I planted along with aeonium, the white-flowered bacopa I stole from the first container (above) and yet more ornamental kale and nasturtium from that Agway trip, just to fill up the holes. But the nasturtium also overtook that, so I ripped it out of there, too. You can't see the aeonium or the white bacopa, so I'll probably move that over to the pot of Flower Carpet^® roses where I had to remove one of Dad's traditional cannas that got turned into swiss cheese by Japanese beetles.

And that's the life of garden containers. Even though it's an unpredictable game of switcheroo, it's a game I'll play again and again. Besides the croton I bought for like, two bucks at Home Depot, it didn't realy cost me an additional penny. Plus, it's like rearranging furniture – it gives me a creative outlet and lets me express myself. In other words, my husband would say, it keeps me out of trouble.

So what about you? Do you engage in Container Switcheroo? Or do you have a great container recipe that stays tidy and colorful all season long? Post a comment and tell me about it!