Here they came together again!

Since I received this Tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia) and the Needle flower    (Augusta rivalis) about two years ago, they have been growing into a tree and a big bush, respectively.  By no mistake, they always bloom at the same time in May.  This year they seem came a little earlier thanks to our mild winter. 

Tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia)

Tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia)

Tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia)

When it is not blooming, I enjoy the fragrant leaves all year long.  Every time I pass by, I just could not help to rub the leaves between my fingers, and smell the wonderful scent from the leaves.  Every time a visitor comes to my garden, I always offer them to take a leaf to smell.  I am glad most of them love it. Some of them want to have one as well.  Unfortunately, this is kind of plant you don't see in the nursery store.  I still have not found the way to propagate it, rooting cuttings, and growing from seeds both failed.  If anybody knows a way, please let me know.

This year is the first time the Needle flower bush set so MANY flowers, hundreds of them! Aren't those flower buds really look like "Needles"?

Needle flower (Augusta rivalis)

Needle flower (Augusta rivalis)

Needle flower (Augusta rivalis)

The good part of Need Flower is that it is easy to propagate via cuttings.  This has been making sharing among friends easy.

With Tropical Lilac, Needle flower, pink Angle Trumpet, and ground orchids blooming together in this flower bed, you can guess how I am loving this area these days!  This used to be a muddy area when we moved in three years ago.

Hope they can come back again and again for many years coming!

May Flowers

Just realized that I have not posted for quite a while, although my May garden has been growing by leaps and bounds. 

I have been working on a new raised bed in my garden, which will also be served partially as a vegetable bed.  Will show you some photos when it is more presentable.

For now, let me just show you some new flowers in the garden.

Tropical Liac (Cornutia grandifolia) lost majority of leaves during the cold weather in last December.  It grows so fast after the weather warmed up.  Now they are shooting their  lavendar colored flower spikes into the air again.

Just love the scent of this plant when walking by and brush against the leaves, or when hand-watering the leaves.

Since this plant is not seen in the nurseries, I have tried several times to start more of this plant from seeds, or cuttings to share with friends,but with no luck. I heard it should not be too difficult based on what I read from the Internet. So, I will keep trying.  Maybe I just did not do it in the right way.

I picked up this Salvia 'Black and Blue' at the clearance rack in last December after the cold front visited Florida.  The plant had bad frost bites.  Now it looks so happy in a full sun location of my garden.  I love any blue flowers in the garden, and the almost black sepals contrast the blue flowers so nicely.  Oh, wait a minute.  Is that a spiderweb?  Often when I intend to capture a spiderweb in the picture, it hardly comes out good.  It is either out of focus, or invisible in the photo.  Seems this spiderweb that I caught by accident in the photo  is my most successful shot!

Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'

 Another blue flower: Blue butterfly. It has such beautiful flower, does look like a blue butterfly.

Clerodendrum ugandenseCommon name: Blue Butterfly

This Penta plant was started from several cuttings from my friend's garden.  It now becomes my favorite Penta plant.

Yay, Medinilla started showing lots of flowers again after a dormant period!  Remember how I got it?  See the story behind this plant, read here.

Medinilla cumingii

Crape Jasmine in full blooming...

Love the combination of Crape Jasmine and the pink Ixora.

My friend gave me this bush daisy.  I love its airy leaves, and risen cheery yellow flowers.  The flowers come in waves, one flush after another with a short resting period in between.

Bush Daisy (Gamolepis chrysanthemoides)

Remember I mentioned that I only have one green branch left in my Hybrid Tea Rose 'Peace' in my Rose Update post?  That single green branch recently had one bud developed, and it is blooming now!

'Peace'

Look what I found in the garden!  A Calla Lily bloom!  Yes, you can tell I am excited.  My friend gave me a bunch of seedlings from her Calla lilies, which were originally bought from a big box store.  She said every year the leaves emerge in early spring, but never re-bloomed for her.  Last year, the leaves grow so nicely, but no flowers, and then leaves disappeared in the winter.  This spring the leaves grow again, and I did not expect much from them although the leaves alone are beautiful.   My friend called me a couple of weeks ago and told me that she saw one flower from her Calla lily, and sure enough, one week later, I saw one from mine!  Yes, it only has one flower, but better than nothing, and it is a good start!

Here is another surprise from garden. When I just started my garden almost two years ago, one of my coworkers gave me one bromeliad with dark purple leaves, and no name.  He only told me that the leave will burn if put in a sunny location.  So I kept it in a container located in a partial shade area.  For two years, it did nothing except shooting out of the pups.   It started looking messy, and working around it becomes a dangerous job since the edge of the leaves has saw blade like spikes.

I am that close to toss it away.  It seems knows what I am thinking, almost like all of sudden, two flower spikes shot out from the middle of leaves, and The flowers are orange-red color, and have wax like texture.  Anybody recognize this bromeliad?  I think for the time being, it will be a keeper.

What have been flowering in your May Garden?

My Favorites -- September 2010

I know I am very late for joining Susan and others to show my favorites of the month, but better late than never!  September is a month that I really don't want to miss to post my favorites. There are so many wonderful things are happening in the garden even this gardener has been hardly having time to take care of it recently.

When I just bought this cat whiskers (Orthosiphon stamenis), I did not expect this is such an easy grower by the look of the delicate flowers.  It grew so fast in our hot humid summer that I had to trim it to keep it in a good form.  The cuttings are so easy to root that I just stick those trimmed branches into the regular soil, and they just grow.  My friends will soon get this pass along from me.

Can you believe this plant was just a single plant in a one-gallon container three months ago?  This actually has been trimmed twice.

I have shown these ground orchids (Spathoglottis) for many times, and I think now they have reached their peak.  What a great performer!

I started this Plumeria rubra from the cutting early this year.  It has been growing leaves nicely, and finally it bloomed last week!  Are these flowers looking delicious?  This flower's Chinese common name is "鸡蛋花" (Egg Flower).  Hmmm, The white flower with the yellow center does look like the egg white and yolk!  Yummy! It also has the nice scent.

This Rose of Sharon (Althea, Hibiscus syriacus) was new in my garden.  Actually the pot contains two individual plants, one pink and one white.  When I bought it from one local nursery, the owner told me that I can twist both branches together, so when they grow bigger, I will have a nice bush with two colors of flowers.  The white one is much smaller, so I made its branches wrapped around the pink one.  Right now, only the pink one shows lots of flowers, the white only occasionally blooms.  Hopefully, next year, they can grow into a beautiful bush, or even better, a small tree. 

Love the effect that blue porterweed against the pink flowers too...

Orchids are always my favorites!  This Blue Fox Tail Orchid is blooming the second time of the year! 

This Dendrobium Orchid is a house warming gift from my friend last year.  I hung it on a palm tree.  It only gets the morning sun.  I only water it when no rain for a week, otherwise it just gets the regular rainfall.  I even stopped fertilizing it for months.  To my surprise, it now has six flower spikes on it!

Since I learned "Leave me alone" tip of growing orchids, I have gained more confidence.  I can see more orchids will find the home in my garden.  Here are two new orchid residents:

This Mexican Bush Sage (Salvia leucantha) was growing so big and it fell on the ground when I came back from China in July.  I trimmed it to one third of the length.  Now it came back better than ever.  The fresh flower is velvet and looks so dainty pretty!  I also found it is very easy to root the cuttings.  I think after it finishes the flowers for this round, I may take the whole plant out, and replace it with the young plants from the cuttings.  The flowers on the young plants just look so much better.

The tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia) is also reblooming this year.  Since I put it in the ground, it has taken off so fast.  Not only the flower is pretty, but also I am loving the scent of the leaves.  Every time I pass by this plant, I can not help myself to rub the leaves between my fingers and smell it!  Seems not many people have seen this plant before.  I was hoping it producing lots of seeds, so that someday I can share it with my friends in the real life and the blogger world.  But for some reason, I hardly see the seeds out of it.  The few seeds produced often drop off prematurely.  Several attempts to root the cuttings also failed.   I really need to find a good way to propagate it.  Wish me luck, and wish someday I can share it with you guys!

 Firespike (Odontonema strictum) was also started from the cuttings this year.  I may start more cuttings later.  If it can survive this winter, I may use it to replace some of privacy hedges in my garden.  The flowers are so bright, and I wish someday it can attract the hummingbirds to visit them.

The last but certainly not the least,  my favorite zinnia in the garden!  This actually came from one volunteer from last year.  Now this single plant has grown so big that I have to stake it to support the heavy flower heads! 

Please also stop by Susan's place to see her and others' favorites of this month. 

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I have been cutting my blog time recently due to my busy schedule.  I apologize that I have not visited your blogs and left comments as often as I wish.  I do hope I can find a little more time in the future. 

Cool Blue

I love blue in the garden. Especially in the hot summer days, blue keeps me cool...

I have some blue flowers blooming right now in the garden. 

Blue daze, Porterweed and Mealycup sage are the ones that almost flower the all year long, maybe only stopped for a couple of coldest months.  I can count on them to add the blue into my garden. 

Blue Daze (Evolvulus)

Porterweed (Stachytarpheta jamaicensis)

Mealycup sage (Salvia farinacea)

Every time I pass by this new Tropical Lilac, I just can not help touching its velvet leaves, and smell its wonderful scent. 

Troipical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia)

This year I moved some African Lilies from a deep shade area to a partial sun area.  The plants in the new spot are growing fine, but have not set the buds yet.  The following is the one that was left in the original spot, but got more morning sun than the ones I moved.  I hope next year I can get more of these beautiful flowers in my garden.

African Lily (Agapanthus africanus)

This plumbago has the true sky blue color, which is quite rare in the plant world.  Don't you love this beauty?  It is new to my garden. 

Plumbago auriculata

I planted blue and purple verbena intermingled in the front yard.  When they all bloom, it just looks so lovely.

Verbena

Hope you are all having a good summer sunday, and keeping cool...

Another Fragrant Plant in My Garden -- Tropical Lilac

This Tropical Lilac (Cornutia grandifolia) plant was one of the two free plants I got on Flamingo Gardens Member's Day.  The other free plant is Needle Flower (Augusta rivalis), which I wrote about in a previous post. 

**Free plants on Member's Day is one of the benefits offered to the members. The other major benefit is that members not only got the free admission to Flamingo Gardens, but also got the admission privileges to other gardens across North America that joins the American Horticultural Society’s Reciprocal Admissions Program. Miami Fairchild Botanical Garden is one of those gardens.** 

Botanical Name: Cornutia grandifolia
Common name: Troipical Lilac, African Lilac, Jamaican Lilac
Family: Verbenaceae

Tropical Lilac is a fast growing shrub or a small tree for partial sun/shade area.  I will train mine to a small tree to take less garden ground space as well as provide some shade to other plants underneath it.  Mine is still young, and is about 3 feet tall and still in the original container.  Have not decided where to put it in the ground...

It has fragrant velvet leaves. Some says the fragrance is kind of tobacco-like, and others say it is crisp breeze lilac scent (hence the common name?). The scent becomes stronger if you rub the leaves between the fingers, or when you brush against the leaves by walking by it. It is said that its scent is frequently used or imitated in all types merchandise, like chemical air fresheners, candles, scented oils, even the perfume and cologne.   Obviously, the fragrance is the major reason that I chose this plant among the 10 choices they gave to the members. 

It has tall stalks shooting out multiple lavender blue flowers.  The flowers themselves are not fragrant.  Before the small flowers open on the stalk, they look like small fuzzy balls. 

This is another plant that attracts butterflies, which is a big bonus feature for me! 

Do you happen to grow this plant in your garden as well?  Anything else that I need to know to better take care of it?  It has been in my garden for over a month now.  It had a couple of small flower stalks when I brought it home, and now it has about a dozen of those tall stalks in flowering.  So, I guess it likes my garden so far.