December garden in Orchidland

 

 

Its time for garden bloom day again, I haven’t participated in quite awhile due to recent travels and holiday gatherings with friends that have kept me occupied.

 

But, this morning was a clear and sunny day, a nice change from a cool rainy night seeing the Christmas parade in Kea’au town last evening.

 

 

After a month’s travel in Japan, I was greeted by large grass, junky castor bean plants and various weeds popping up in my new back yard garden bed almost full grown within a month’s timeframe.

 

The weeds below are already taller than my six foot height – things grow exceptionally quick here – especially the weeds that love the new garden beds below.

 

 

 

After clearing out one section of the garden, I can finally see the bones of the garden I planted the month before starting to appear again- its looking pretty good again.

 

In the jungle area behind, I was able to find a variety of my bromeliads hidden in the tall grasses. I only spotted them because of the bright yellow blooms from this beauty brom below peeking out through the thick grass.

 

 

The area around my water catchment tank is another area that needs to be weeded completely, here you see it crowded out with ferns, grasses and the ever present purple princess flower (no blooms in the photos)– tibouchina urvilleana – a real pest that reseeds everywhere.

 

 

 

The front yard is still in decent shape, even though I haven’t tended this part of the gardens in also because of the holidays. A beautiful spike from a group of bromeliads are at their third month of blooms now. My bright yellow croton adds more color and is one of my favorite yellows in garden.

 

 

 

Here’s a sweet bloom from one of my ti plants, they are pretty up close, but insignificant at a distance.

 

 

Not too many of my hibiscus flowers in bloom at this time of the year except for my stalwart yellow dazzler at my side gardens.

 

 

 

I think its time to start trimming the leggy impatiens, they are so easy to propagate here, especially this orange variety below.

 

 

This is the 3rd round of blooms from my white bauhinia orchid tree…yeah!

 

 

I have large swathes of pink flowers coming out from my medinilla magnifica, almost the size of miniature trees in my front yard.

 

 

More colorful impatiens, red ti and strobilanthes to add a full spectrum of color.

 

 

A last sweet bloom to great me this morning, one of my favorite purple hibiscus flowers.

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour, to visit other gardens around the world for bloom day, go visit

http://www.maydreamsgardens.com

The Hibiscus are Blooming

'Dragon's Eye' in bloom.


Well its always a colorful show with my hibiscus beauties here in Hawaii. After a rainy night, I get a profusion vivrant blooms bursting with color. I would love to show you my favorite hibiscus blooms, a beautiful collection of unusual and exciting hybrids.

This almost tree like shrub that was by the front doorway was moved to the side garden as a barrier shrub and it is finally developing its green foliage again after dropping all its leaves from being transplanted. Here are the first few blooms coming back again after the move.... I'm so happy its coming back again!

The front yard is looking really good and I have a few stunning hibiscus plants in bloom this morning. Here's another beautiful bloom coming from hybrid 'Mountain Air'.

My beautiful 'Yoda' sent out another bloom this morning, but this time it was a single instead of a double flower that it usually displays. Even so, its still spectacular!

One of my dependables 'Starfish Pie' shows off its bright orange/red burst of color along the front yard pathway.

I don't remember the name of this hibiscus  I purchased from a grower selling at our local farmers market, but its one of my regular year round bloomers. The white and red throat is quite attractive, don't you agree?

Here's a close up detail of this beauty below

Its strange that I'm starting to enjoy more pinks and shocking pinks all around my garden, which was a color I 'm not typically fond of. But in a tropical garden, this color works well especially with a hot pink hibiscus flower like this one in my front yard.

I'm always happy when I see these blooms when I walk around the garden every morning, its like visiting old friends.  I'm so glad to have dependable plants that add so much color to my tropical garden all the time. I guess thats one of the reason's why I love hibiscus plants, I think I need to add more to my collection, wouldn't you agree?

Side Garden Progress

I’ve been re-energized about doing my side garden which I have been using as a storage area and a buffer to my neighbors plain and boring front yard.

Its been a hectic month, but I have been making progress on the yard, clearing out the junk including the junk trees and shrubs and did I mention the various weeds, sleeping grass that just love to cut you to shreds?  Weeding is not my thing and they just come back stronger when you pull out the first batch.

But, I’ve been making progress and have started growing some good barrier plants along the beautiful rock wall dividing the properties.  I have planted apple bananas, big leafed vireyas, bamboo, ti, ginger and heliconias which will eventually fill in the spaces and block the views into the neighbors lot.

 

This is the first plant I planted along the new berm next to the rock wall. Acalypha Inferno Firestorm is beautiful, its our tropical substitute to Japanese Maples and has colorful variegated leaves. Here’s how it looks below when I planted it right next to the rock wall.

 

 

 

Here are a few more newly planted areas along the rock wall that hopefully will grow

large enough to create a separation from the neighbors driveway.

 

This section has a fig tree, a white orchid tree (bauhinia), gingers, ti and crotons and various cuttings that will eventually take root.

 

 

Now the next stage is to develop the ground surface area below the rock wall. This area has a lot of rocks but no soil, what to grow? I’m thinking about some simple groundcovers, any good ideas from anyone? I want to keep this area easy to take care of – there’s too many other high maintenance areas around in the front and back gardens.  I’m open to any suggestions if anyone wants to give me some ideas, please do!

 

 

Its so Embarrassing…..

Yes, we gardeners have dirty secrets hidden and not always willing to admit, but I’ll let you in on my secret if it will prompt me to really make changes and soon!





I must confess, I would have never mentioned this if not for the fact that I had a big Christmas party and it was obvious to all my guest that came early before night fall -  what a sorry view and state things had become. What is it you may ask? Well if you take a look beyond the Christmas decorations - the view directly into the side yard is completely horrendous and looking directly into my neighbors driveway.

Fortunately, most of the event was in the evening so it was hard to see beyond the dark windows, but take a look. Here is the view during the daytime from the dining room.





Ah, I’ve lived with this view for quite awhile and never done anything about it….shameful isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse with junk trees, huge piles of sleeping grass, intertwined weeds and tall cane grass and who knows what else in this pile of green.




Always making excuses and too busy to acknowledge this real eyesore, I just chalked it up as a storage area and staging place for my potted plants.

The problem is I had to walk this route almost every time I wanted to go to the back yard, making it a depressing experience.




But let me say, in the back of my mind, I’ve always wanted to make this side garden and the view from my dining room more lush, tropical and screened for privacy. I’m almost embarrassed to say I’ve never done anything to this eyesore until I finally decided to take out the Satellite dishes and opt for ones on the roof, leaving me an open area and exposing my neighbors dull front yard as my viewing area.

So now I’m ready to take in this challenge and start making changes and my potted plants below are ready to be planted into their new space.

Here are some of the choices below that will fill this huge 15 x 75 foot space.


I have some lovely potted palms including this red sealing wax palm -

Cyrtostachys renda

I’m really fond of Acalyphas, this one is called inferno firestorm. They are like japanese maples, but the tropical version that can be grown in humid environments. Don't these look like a maple to you?




I have some potted white bauhinias on this yard, hopefully I can yank them out from their pot bound roots at this junction.





Of course I do have a variety of variegated ti plants, this one has a beautiful flowered spike blooming at the moment.




Another favorite ginger plant, this alpinia called Vittata is used ornamentally for its foliage, the flowers are small and insignificant.




I have propagated a few more of these pink medinellas and I think they can make a nice tall screen from the neighbors driveway.





This very large yellow hibiscus is against the front door and is already hitting the eaves. I think its time to move this large guy if it isn’t too late already. Fortunately, I’m not afraid of making big moves like this.




I love this variegated green and white gardenia shrub, it has small but sweetly scented flowers.
Here is a close up of the leaves below,  pretty isn't it?





Another favorite plant is this red smoke bush tree - cotinus coggygria. They grow so well in this area and are very easy to propagate. This one is propagated into a one gallon container is ready to be planted in full sun!





So you can see, I do have some favorites that can cover the area, now how to start and what to tackle first.


Well that’s where I’m open to any and all suggestions on what would work in this large space. I’m open to hearing any suggestions from all my gardening friends and gardening wanna be’s…please help. How can I make this side garden shine – I do have some ideas but want to get more ideas from all my gardening friends

...come on now don’t be shy!

A Morning Walk Around My Garden

Its a cool and drizzly morning here in Orchidland as I take a morning walk around the garden. There’s alot flowers blooming for us today that I would like to share with you on our walk, come and take a look.
This is a relatively new addition to my garden, a pretty hibiscus called ‘Yoda’ that I purchased from the Bian sale, an island wide grower show and plant sale. The double flowered petals and dual toned colors drew me to this plant and said ‘ take me home now '’.




This is always a nice surprise when I keep getting these volunteer begonias popping up all over the garden, the polka dots on the leaves add such nice texture to this plant.




One of my more prolific hibiscus plants. I keep trimming the tops to make this more dense, but the tallest stem is now reaching a height of 15 feet and just does not want to be contained, scary isn’t it?




This white ginger is not as invasive as some of the other wild gingers which can overtake entire neighborhoods, it flowers constantly and the smells are really sweet and with perfumed ginger overtones.




Here’s another hibiscus in my front garden next to the house. It just refuses to be controlled, even though I trimmed it drastically less than a few weeks ago, most of the stems are reaching 8 foot heights, time for some even more severe chopping.







All my pink Medinilla Magnifica plants are starting to unfold their beautiful cascades of pink florets, I’m just waiting until each flower petals start to come out and really put on a show.




I love this bromeliad called, Aechmea blanchetiana, the inflorescense on this
bromeliad can last months and the foliage alone is this amazing chartreuse.




This beautiful Mandevilla Splendens ‘Red Riding Hood’ has these intense deep red flowers, its really stunning don’t you think?




You can’t imagine that entire back yards are filled with these small weeds we call princess flowers or Tibouchinas, even the larger Tibouchina urvilleana are such invasive weeds in our area, you pull one and dozens come back. At the higher elevations they are a deep purple color but in the lower areas they turn pink for some reason. The ones pictured here are the miniature Tibouchinas.





Here’s one of my favorite Hibiscus blooms coming out again this morning, I love that they constantly bloom for me. Following are a few other tropical blooms showing off their blooms on our walk this morning.




















I hope you enjoyed the walk around my garden this drizzly morning, all the plants are happy today!

To enjoy more views of other gardens around the world for bloom day, come and visit http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/