tropicanna gold

 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)

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!