tropical foliage

 I just returned home from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Maui! My husband (with me, below, on a sunset cruise we took there) won the trip as part of some work performance award. Nice, huh?

Well, anyway, of course I had to whip out the camera and snap a pic of every tropical garden and plant I came across. And with such a colorful buffet of tropical foliage and fantastic flowers in front of me, it got me to thinking, "Why can't I have some of that in my Zone 6a garden?" OK, maybe I can't line a whole walkway with it, since it'll die over winter. But on the other hand, why not just put a few of these stunners in a container on the patio, or feature them as colorful, exotic specimen plants? After all, my home is my personal retreat … why can't I have some vacation there, too?

The best way to go about using tropicals in your garden or landscape, I've since learned, is to buy them for use as indoor houseplants during the cold season and then move the container to your landscape or patio in the summer (you can even bury the plant in the pot, to fake the look of an established tropical plant in your garden). And while you're at it, heck — bring all your houseplants outside for the summer for a tropical flair in your beds, borders and containers. Just make sure to look up each plant's particular requirements or ask a local garden center that sells tropicals for advice on how to grow these beauties inside and out in your area. Some tropicals, for instance, will survive in lower light levels indoors during the cold season (perhaps without blooms or as vivid colors, but will nonethless survive), but they need misting and higher temperatures to thrive. Conversely, when taken outdoors, tropicals that grow as understory plants in the rainforest might not be able to handle constant, direct sunlight. Still others are so heat-loving that the chill of cold water direct from the garden hose will make their leaves drop.

Also check out this WONDERFUL  St. Louis Dispatch article on using tropicals in your garden.

 So moving right along, here are some of my tropical plant pics from Maui — along with some ideas on how to use them in your landscape. If you live in a warmer climate and can grow these tropicals year round, take note of where, how and with what other plants the landscape designers have used them. If you're like me and live in a colder climate, you might have to resign yourself to using them as colorful, dramatic accents or treat them as annuals and ditch them at the end of the season.

First, here's some spiky, swordlike phormium (New Zealand flax) in purple-brown, complemented by a green spike of dracena and a ti plant's burgundy and pink tropical foliage. Of course, I think this container combo would look even more dramatic with Tesselaar's darker, glossier, burgundy-black Black Adder™ Phormium, with its elegantly nodding, pendulous tips. 

Another beautiful  tropical plant I saw a lot of was bromeliads. The top image here, of the purple-blue bloom atop lemon-lime, waxy foliage, is aechmea. Below that is a giant, yellowish-orange bromeliad nestled in a bed of tropical fern (I believe it's Phymatosorus grossus, or laua'e (maile-scented fern). Third down is a red-centered bromeliad accented by a green, wavy-leaved tropical fern. Below that is what I like to think of as the 'lollypop planter' of red, orange and yellow flowered bromeliads. Fifth down is that orange-yellow bromeliad as a tall, architectural backdrop for an otherwise common bed of impatiens. Below that you'll see the same bromeliad atop a purple-black groundcover (what a stunning contrast, especially with the companion planting of yellow-green bromeliads. Seventh down shows the view of a bromeliad from above, with its tell-tale pool of water in the center. The bottom shot shows how a mass planting of bromeliads, in different colors, makes a strong, tropical statement.

 Bromeliads, by the way, make some of the best houseplants on earth. For more information on growing bromeliads indoors and out, check out this great eHow article on bromeliad care.

Here's a raised bed with more aechmea, rainbow-leaved croton, and what looks to be either a variegated dracena or carex (could be Tesselaar's own Everest™) and one of my favorite new plants ever — tradescantia (the purple-pink spiky plant down in front). And below that is a close-up shot of the same plants backlit by the morning sun. Awesome!

Here are other images of croton … virtually unmatched in its brilliant colors and many leaf forms (this is one of those plants, however, that can't take chilly water. For more information, check out this great article on croton.

Or, of course, if it's rainbow-colored foliage you crave, and you're not sure how well croton will do in your yard, you can also plant Tesselaar's Tropicanna^® Canna (the bottom picture in this set shows it used along with coleus, Mexican sunflower and caladium in the winning design of Garden Gate magazine's 2009 "Container Challenge" design contest.)

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Well, that's all I could stuff in one post for now. But stay tuned for more tropical plant photos — and videos! — from my trip to Maui. In the meantime, if you want to see more pics from my trip (including the set where Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston and Dave Matthews were shooting their next movie!) check out my Flickr site.

Ever dreamed about vacationing in Australia? I know I have. Well here, at least, you can take a trip through its most beautiful site (aside from the 'roos, sand, sun, surf and Sydney Opera House, of course) – the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show. Spend a few minutes down under and enjoy some dramatic flowers and fantastic foliage with this guest post from Phillip Townshend, global operations director for Tesselaar Plants.

With the chocolate coma starting to fade and the Easter Break well and truly over, I thought it time to send a quick update on the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, which was held just prior to Easter from the 24^th through the 28^th of March. This internationally famous show, held for the past 15 years at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Garden (below), is still an explosion of color and design. It's also the biggest annual flower garden show in the Southern Hemisphere!

Highlighting the creativity and passion of Australia's top floral and landscape designers, the Melbourne show is the horticultural industry’s premier showcase for a stunning array of inspirational displays and environmentally friendly ideas. As always, highlights included the floral spectacular inside the Great Hall of Flowers, the Children's Garden with its animal petting zoo and numerous show gardens created by some of Australia's most lauded landscape designers (all of which left me wondering why I never see the design opportunities the professionals do when working in my own garden).

Particularly inspirational for me was the outdoor exhibition of garden sculptures (below) organized by the Association of Sculptors of Victoria. All sculptures are for sale and range in price from a few hundred dollars to several thousand. I really like the huge metal sculpture of a rose. The next time someone asks me how tough Flower Carpet^® roses are, I'm going to show them this picture!

Of course, we were at the show on business, too. And as always, Tesselaar was actively involved, hosting the media tent and celebrating our wildly popular new plant introduction, Fairy Magnolias (below) with cupcakes and pink bubbly.

One thing that really surprised all of us was the absolute interest in the new Fairy Magnolias. Everyone loved the versatility of the plant (suitable for specimens, hedging or espalier (see second image, below) and how floriferous it was, with a bud at every leaf axil.

In a nutshell, the main points that people liked were the flower, light fragrance, the fact that it was a flowering bush that could be used for hedging, the year-round lush green foliage and rapid growth.

And Tropicanna® Canna (which will soon appear in stores in the Northern Hemisphere) continues to wow garden designers, with its inclusion in many of the show's displays.

 Here I am with Tropicanna Black (its purple-black leaves soon to be topped by a coral bloom with bright-yellow edging) and Tropicanna Gold (its green, yellow and golden leaves soon to showcase a sunny, yellow-gold flower). And below that, you can see the original Tropicanna Canna that started it all in a garden setting, soon to show off its bright tangerine bloom.

Anyway, should you be planning a trip to Australia any time in the future, try to visit during the Melbourne International Flower & Garden show. It is truly a spectacular celebration of the Australian lifestyle and our great outdoors, with some of the world’s leading floral and landscape designers, all in the beautiful Carlton Gardens with great food and lots of family fun!

As those mailorder gardening catalogs start flooding in over the next few weeks, it’s easy to get caught up in the beauty shots of each new plant, all by itself.

What’s difficult, however, is visualing how to use these new introductions as part of drought-tolerant plant combinations that give you dramatic flowers, fantastic foliage AND a low-maintenance garden.

That’s where this series of posts comes in, on Tesselaar’s new plant introductions for 2010. I’ve hunted down some fantastic companion plants for each of them, along with a few design ideas in general, all with easy-care, as well as design ideas, for each new plant - all of them designed with easy-care gardening in mind.

Today, the focus is Ceanothus Tuxedo^® (far left image and lower right corner in collage, at right).

The first-ever black-leaved ceanothus, or California lilac, Tuxedo’s fall-blooming shrub’s lavender-blue flowers absolutely pop out at you from from their dark, dramatic backdrop of purplish-black foliage. The extremely drought-tolerant selection, which grows 8’ high by 6’ wide, is also able to handle a windy slope and well-behaved when it comes to pruning.

Drought-tolerant design idea

Here’s a drought-tolerant fall combo (left) suggested in an Oct. 13, 2009 post on the “Daily Dirt” blog (at http://ow.ly/uliN) by Pacific Coast Home & Garden, the premier garden, home décor and hardware store on the Central Coast. In the image above, in the top right corner, are the following plants, clockwise from the top right corner: ‘Helena’s Blush’, Flax Lily ‘Little Rev’, Correa ‘Wyn’s Wonder’ and Ceanothus Tuxedo.   

Perfect color companions

Amplify the black-and blue theme with other blue fall bloomers like Tesselaar’s Agapanthus Bluestorm™ or any of the 10 blue fall bloomers suggested by About.com garden guide Marie Iannotti. Or, create a complementary color scheme by pairing the lavender-blue Tuxedo blooms with yellow fall bloomers like helenium, beautifully featured by Monica Milla in her Sept. 19, 2008 post titled "Favorite Fall Bloomers" on her gardening blog, Full Bloom (at http://mlive.com/fullbloom).