Weekend surprises

New plants
Originally uploaded by sassycrafter

I bought these plants this weekend at the Kanapaha Garden Festival. Both should be evergreen here in North Florida and will provide the bones that keep the front bed interesting through all four seasons.

I was told that the purplish-grey ones are Dyckia 'Silver Dragon' and the yellowish-green ones are Yucca aloifolia 'Variegata'.

I thought that the yuccas would only get 3-4' tall, or at least that's what the gal who sold them to me said. I looked them up once I got home and realized that I'm in for more than I bargained for. These are supposed to reach up to 7' tall! Gulp.

Looks like I should reevaluate where I was planning to put them. Maybe I'll put just one in front and save the other two for the back yard. Of course, I could put all three in the front bed and just create a fortress look!

I also need to double-check the identification on the bromeliad. I looked in the Bromeliad Society International online cultivar database and couldn't find mention of 'Silver Dragon'.

Either way, I do love this brom. It has fabulous purple foliage covered with silvery scales, which makes it so interesting to look at. And isn't that orange flower spike luscious, especially in contrast with the purple? Oh yes, mine will be a colorful garden.

And funky, too. Check out the bench I also bought at the show. I'm calling it a funkified Adirondack chair.



I wasn't planning on buying a bench until later in the design process. In fact, I had dedicated all of my current budget to getting unique plants. But hey, sometimes life throws you unexpected surprises that are too perfect to pass up.

Heck, it even has built-in ledges for me to rest a beer on as I sit in the garden on warm summer evenings. The only thing missing is a built-in fan to keep me cool and push the mosquitoes away.

I may add a coat of colorful paint down the road, but that depends on how much color I get from the plant palette. A plain white bench might allow the plants to shine even brighter.

February--Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

(Apologies for the weird highlighted words. I accidentally deleted this post and had to recreate it from a cached Google version.)

February--Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

As part of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, here's a run-down of what's blooming in my garden right now. We've had a few hard freezes since my January post, so there isn't as much blooming now.

Initiated by May Dreams Gardens, countless bloggers now participate in Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. They simply create a post on their blog to showcase what's blooming in their gardens and then link it to the current GBBD post at May Dreams Gardens. No rules. No requirements. Just good garden fun.

Camellia

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My two camellia bushes are in the back corner of the yard so I have to remind myself to go check for blooms when the weather starts getting springlike. I headed out recently and lo and behold, the white camellia had started blooming. I brought a few blooms into the house so I could better enjoy them.

'Louis Phillippe' Rose

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My 'Louis Philippe' rose is still blooming its heart out, despite the recent freezes. You gotta love a tough yet beautiful old garden rose like this. 

Azalea

(click photo for larger image)

You may remember that my azaleas started blooming last month. The existing blooms got a bit burned byt he recent freezes. However, new blooms have opened and the plant is looking pretty good. 

Well, that's all that's blooming in my yard for now. The redbud trees are starting to pop around town, but I don't have one in my yard. Yet. I've been coveting the 'Forest Pansy' and 'Hearts of Gold' cultivars. I think I'll add one of these two within the next several years since I'm so ga-ga for them.

Other plants blooming around town include dogwood and Walter's viburnum. You can see photos of Walter's viburnum on Tom's latest blog post. 

Bonus images!

I took oodles of shots while I was down in Ft. Lauderdale and I can't resist posting a few more. Here are a few of the MANY bromeliads that we saw at Fairchild. You can see some more of the Aechmea blanchetiana in the first shot. And what a striking color combination with the purple Tradescantia pallida and the silver-colored palm!

I've read that Aechmea blanchetiana grows green in the shade and turns that brilliant yellow-orange when it's in full sun. I'd love to find some of these for my yard, but I worry they may be too tender for my area even if I covered them during cold spells. We'll see.

Many of the bromeliads around the garden (like this red one) were just plopped into a giant hunk of limerock--very classic Florida.

Bromeliads can survive like this because most of them don't rely on driving roots into the soil to take up water. Instead, they collect water in the natural cups that form where their leaves come together.

Fairchild also had tons of fabulous cycads, more than 200+ species according to the Fairchild Web site. I'm only posting one shot now, because the rest are still on the work camera.

And finally, I'm posting one shot of the plant with one of my favorite botanical names--Monstera deliciosa. Some people also call it Swiss cheese plant because of the naturally occurring holes in the leaves.

Again, this is another true tropical plant that probably wouldn't survive in Gainesville's chillier weather.

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens

A group of us from work are down in Ft. Lauderdale for the Tropical Plant Industry Exhibition. This afternoon we were able to head down to the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, so I'm posting a few of the MANY photos that we took.

The palm-like plant is indeed a palm, Iguanura wallichiana var. major, which is native to Malaysia. I was mesmerized by the way the light was filtering through the crinkly leaves.

The yellow and green pods are from one of the most amazing plants on this planet, at least as far as chocolate lovers are concerned. The roasted beans from the pods of Theobroma cacao are the source of chocolate. Need I say more?

I absolutely loved the bromeliad--Aechmea blanchetiana. I'd never seen a bromeliad with such amazing colored foliage. And the way the flowers contrasted with the foliage? Amazing. I'll have to do some research when I get back and see if this variety would be cold-hardy enough for Gainesville.

And finally, I posted a shot of some of the cool Chihuly glass that is scattered about the gardens. This particular installation was our favorite, in part for its simplicity and for the way the linear red forms stretched upward against a solid green backdrop. Very pretty.

That's all for now since we have a breakfast meeting at 7:30 a.m. I'll be sure to post more shots at a later date.