Bananas are a glorious tropical plant that can be grown indoors in a container or outdoors in summer as part of a tropical display. And since we’re just in time for Tropical Paradise, taking place here at the Garden between January 18 and February 23, I’m going to talk about growing these familiar plants at home. Their enormous, paddle-shaped leaves act as a focal centerpiece for any seasonal display, and planting one just might have you hearing steelpans in the distance.
While most bananas are tropical plants that need to be brought indoors during the winter months, other bananas are actually hardy in the New York area. They can be left in the ground to over-winter—dying back with the cold–only to come back in the spring, forming a progressively larger, more awe-inspiring clump each year. However, unless grown indoors, these plants will not bear fruit in our region. They need at least 12 months of warm weather to flower and produce those familiar edible (sometimes) bundles.
During the holiday season, to put me in a festive mood, I rely on amaryllis, or wreaths decorated with berried juniper, variegated ivy, and incense cedar. But the other day, while I was walking through the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory for a glimpse at the Holiday Train Show, I found a plant in the aquatic plants gallery that already looks like it is decked out for Christmas.
The sealing wax palm, Cyrtostachys renda, is frightfully festive, decked out in jewel tones of red and green! Indigenous to Malaysia and Sumatra, this palm grows in swampy habitats. It is a slow growing palm that reaches about 30 feet tall in nature, but only to about 10 to 15 feet under glass.
I was recently sent a number of questions from readers still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in their gardens. Many of the questions pertained to planting privacy screens that can withstand the perils of the sea. These protective plants are broken into primary dune plants; plants that commonly grow on the dunes closest to the ocean, and secondary dune plants; plants that grow on the backside of dunes and on dunes that are protected by primary dunes.
When planning a seaside garden, this privacy screen serves a secondary purpose in protecting more sensitive plants from wind and sea spray. Despite this protection, it is still important to choose your garden plants carefully, as they must be able to withstand sea spray, bright sunlight, periodic dessication, intermittent inundation, and poor soil nutrition. I discuss these considerations and give a list of good plants for these conditions here.
Evaluation is an important process in the garden. It teaches us to understand what grows well in specific sites and what struggles or fails; what combines well and what doesn’t; and it affirms our likes and dislikes between different species and varieties. That said, I always like to take a few minutes to reflect on the season’s best performers so I can add them to the expanding repertoire of stellar annuals for every gardening occasion.
One of my favorite annuals in the garden this year was the flowering tobacco Nicotiana mutabilis. This tender perennial (hardy in zone 8) flowers from June until first frost without slowing down or missing a beat, creating a colorful haze in the garden with dainty trumpet-shaped flowers that smother its wiry, 5-foot-long stems.
The specific epithet mutabilis means “changeable,” and it’s more than appropriate. The flowers on this flowering tobacco open white, morph into a pale pink, and finish dark pink, giving the impression that there are three different flower colors on the plant. The foliage has a tropical feel to it, adding to this gardening belle’s natural mystique. But can it possibly get any better? Of course! Nicotiana mutabilis is deer resistant, attracts hummingbirds, and is easy to seed around the garden.
Joyce H. Newman holds a Certificate in Horticulture from The New York Botanical Garden and has been a Tour Guide for over seven years. She is a blogger for Garden Variety News and the former editor of Consumer Reports GreenerChoices.org.
Fall foliage is beautiful, until it hits the ground and turns into work, right? Wrong! All those fallen leaves are actually horticultural gold, so this year, leave your rake in the shed and consider “shredding-in-place.”
Shredding-in-place is the practice of mulching with leaves and is often cited by organic gardeners as a “free” and easy way to add nutrients to the soil. Sonia Uyterhoeven, the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education explains: “In natural areas, leaving leaf litter to decay on its own is a healthy and natural way of composting.”
This fall many local towns, school districts, parks, and landscapers are saving money, energy, and the planet by leaving shredded leaves on the grass and in beds. Shredding and leaving the leaf litter on the ground saves money and manpower because there is no longer a need for leaf collection and removal.
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by … I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; …”
While John Masefield’s lyrical poem conjures the image of being at one with the open sea, one year after Hurricane Sandy many seaside inhabitants have developed a very different relationship with their neighbor.
Last year we looked at salt water remediation in the Storm Clean-Up 101 series, which included everything from tips on soil testing, to a comprehensive clean-up task list for gardeners. With a year behind us and the gardening season gone, coastal inhabitants may now have time to assess their gardens and evaluate their garden’s needs for restoration and remediation in the spring.
While aesthetics and maintenance are standard considerations in garden design, coastal gardens are also tasked with erosion control. Seascapes are continuously battered by winds and waves. Shifting sand on beaches and primary dunes are part of a natural process, but that doesn’t mean humans shouldn’t intervene in helping to stabilize these natural formations.
Back in October of 2011, I answered a question a follower asked us on Twitter: “How do I overwinter a mandevilla vine?” It was simple enough to come up with an explanation at the time, but little did I know I would be receiving so many additional questions after the fact. Over the last two years, a number of Plant Talk visitors have stopped in to leave their comments and requests, which I’ll answer here.
For those who are not familiar with it, the mandevilla (Mandevilla splendens) is a Brazilian native with glossy leaves and bright, trumpet-shaped flowers. It is normally grown as a vine but occasionally pruned into an upright shrub shape. A hybrid, Mandevilla x amabilis, forms a tall vine perfect for growing on a trellis. But because these plants are not hardy in our zone, they require some special care in the cooler months. You can read all about it in my original post. In the meantime, I’ll answer the more specific questions our visitors have posed in hopes of helping your mandevilla survive the coming winter.
If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, feel free to leave it in the comments below!
In the spirit of the season, I’ll be in the Perennial Garden this weekend giving a demonstration on how to make decorative arrangements with pumpkins and gourds. This demonstration is always a popular one, giving homeowners some fun, easy, and creative ideas on how to dress up their homes for the holidays.
The other day I was working opposite the Garden Cafe on our Seasonal Walk, the border that was designed by Dutch Designer Piet Oudolf. This border is characterized by an intermingling of permanent and ephemeral plants that drift through it, and my late season task was to deadhead the dahlias.
We have some stalwarts of the garden in this border, one of my favorites being the popular flower known as Dahlia ‘David Howard’. This dahlia was immortalized years ago in Christopher Lloyd’s borders at Great Dixter in Sussex, England, sporting dark black-purple foliage and bright apricot-orange flowers. The contrast between the foliage and flowers is stunning, while the flowers alone are quite showy with their large, 4-inch-wide, blousy double blooms. In our garden, the height of ‘David Howard’ ranges from 3 – 3.5 feet tall.
Giving ‘David Howard’ a run for his money is the stunning, blushing Dahlia ‘Bashful’. She is a prolific bloomer and grows from 30-36 inches. Her flowers remind me of a raspberry parfait. She has purplish petals that fade to mauve-lilac on the tips, each surrounding a buttery golden center. Delicious! On the morning that I went out to deadhead the dahlias, several bees were asleep on her flowers.
We all have good intentions. Recently I was perusing well-known quotes on ‘good intentions’ when I came across one that I liked from Jeffery Kluger, a senior writer at Time Magazine. It reads as follows: “There’s a deep-freeze of sorts for all good intentions—a place that you store your plans to make changes in your life when you know you’re not going to make them at all.”
This blog entry is about making good on ‘good intentions’ which may incidentally involve a deep freeze. Every year I plant at least four different types of basil. I do this partially for experimental purposes, though mostly because I love having fresh basil around in the summer. But how often do I actually use it?
That is where good intentions come in. Often basil from my garden or from the store lies around the kitchen before it is all used up. I am ridiculously frivolous and wasteful when it comes to basil. Try as I might, there is something about summer that just does it to me. I swear I will be more vigilant and still it blackens and wilts before my eyes.
What, then, can be done to excess basil to ensure that it is put it to good use throughout the year? When I buy or pick a large bundle of basil, the first thing I generally do is stick the long stems in a glass of water to keep it hydrated. I use it like a vase arrangement and place it on the corner of my kitchen counter at arm’s length from my cutting board.
Bananas are a glorious tropical plant that can be grown indoors in a container or outdoors in summer as part of a tropical display. And since we’re just in time for Tropical Paradise, taking place here at the Garden between January 18 and February 23, I’m going to talk about growing these familiar plants at home. Their enormous, paddle-shaped leaves act as a focal centerpiece for any seasonal display, and planting one just might have you hearing steelpans in the distance.
