There is always something to do in a South Florida garden

My Fire Dragon bush needed a trim for the summer.  Sometime during the fall I will do a hard cut back.

Before

This corner of the garden is under the mango trees and it gets shade all day.  I am using the white tubes as planters for ferns.   I got a new fern for my collection an Autumn Fern.

I cleaned this shady area and replanted the African Spear plants in the back.  I am not sure what to plant here, I am thinking a combination of Caladium and other shade loving plants.

This week at the DragonFly Garden

The Gardenia bush is full of buds and new flowers

I purchased four Milk Weed plants at Home Depot for my back garden.  They all come with Monarch eggs, this morning all four plants were down to sticks.

I have Blue Porter flowers all over the back garden, they are invasive and spread easily.  The flowers are very popular with pollinators, specially bees and Zebra butterflies. 

Some bromeliad don't flower every year, getting two beautiful bright orange flowers side by side is rare.  

 

Dividing ground orchids

 The front of my garden was full of ground orchids, they were planted several years ago.  Ground orchids do very well in the front of the house, where the afternoon sun can be hard on any plant specially during the summer months.  The last couple of years the orchids were not blooming as much and looked a bit crowded.  I decided to take them all out and divide them,  I am not sure if this orchid can be divided,  we will see soon if it was a mistake. 

Before

Mixing lavender with pentas and a ti plant for the front door

This past year I eliminated several plants that were covering the old back garden fence.  I don't like looking at a 30 year old wooden fence, it needs to be cover with some greenery.  In this corner of the garden I had a very healthy bunch of heliconias but with time they have moved on to my neighbor's garden where he is enjoying them.  I replanted my Engels Trumpet in this area and moved a few potted plants to cover the fence.

This was my mother's favorite plant, she always called it "Malanga".  When she passed away two years ago I inherited twelve of this potted plants.  I could not leave them at the house when it was sold, so I took them all home.  I kept some and gave away the others to family and friends.  It turns out that the real name is Dieffenbachia plants and is also known as "Dumb Cane and "Mother-in-law's tongue.  This plant is also highly toxic.

I love my new Iris

The Orange Gaiger tree is flowering.  The combination of the orange flowers and the bright green leaves makes this flowering tree one of my favorites.

This is why I have so many bromeliads

The Dragonflies and Zebra butterflies are returning for their summer stay in garden.

This is the time of year when we South Florida gardener go to war against the dreaded Oxalis weeds.  This year, I decided to coexist with them in some parts of the garden.  The flowers are not that bad.

Spring at the DragonFly garden

Spring has arrived at the garden, the days are longer and the temperatures are rising a few degrees every day.  Our weather does not change much all year year-round, but the plants have an internal clock that is telling them is "show time".  In the last couple of weeks many plants in the garden are breaking out with beautiful blooms, like this Amaryllis.  

This is the second year that I get flowers from this plant and she is not done yet.  There are two more shoots coming up.   This plant came from my father's garden, she was sharing a container with a hibiscus and not doing very well.  I separated both plants and it made all the difference. This was so typical of the way my father garden, he  probably found the dead plant in someone's garbage can, took the  bulbs out and planted them in the first container he found in his garden.    

This has also been an excellent year for orchids and they all are flowering at the same time.   I don't have much luck with orchids in pots but this year is turning out to be a good year (maybe it has to do with Covid-19 and the amount of time that I'm spending in the garden). 

The bromeliads are keeping up with the flowering theme.  My favorite tinny bromeliad changed color from green to pink in a couple of days and shortly after the purple flowers come out. 

This past week was dedicated to the front garden, I took out this impatiens that were planted before Christmas.  I will try to get a couple of more months out of these flowers by putting them in containers under the shade of my back garden.

 

New makeover for the front garden

I decided to give my front garden a more traditional look and less of the organized chaos that I have in my back garden.  This will mean reducing the variety of plants and adding more color.  Is going to be a challenge, due to the sun exposure in my western expose home. 

I started this past January with this area under the powderpuff tree.  I added plants in containers to fill it up, but I was not happy with the way it looked.  This week I headed to my favorite local nursery and purchased a couple of Irises to compliment the ones already there.  I also got a Lily-of-the-Nile plant, a couple of Flax and Cardyline plants, plus some ferns from my back garden. 

I trimmed hard the Brazilian Red this past fall, and now it's showing the colors.  This plant is an aggressive grower and it needs to be prune a couple of times a year.  She will flower again in the summer.

The giant white Begonias are starting to show. 

Coleuses in the mix green jungle.

This little fellow almost ended up in the garbage can.  I'm glad, I notice him before I pulled out the bromeliad he was using as his home.

This is the trellis where I had my Rangoon Creeper.  I took it out last month, now I'am looking for a replacement vine.  What do you thinking of Bleeding Heart?

 

A day in the garden

Yesterday my wife and I decided to get out of the house and spend the afternoon in the garden, at Fairchild Tropical garden that is.  The weather was perfect for a stroll in the garden, this place never gets old for me, there is always something new to see. 

The rainforest section of the garden is one of my favorite.

A great place to put down a blanket on the grass and have a picnic.

The cannonball tree is one of my favorite, and one of the most unusual trees in the garden

A gorgeous bromeliad flower.

Several Egyptian Goose make the garden home.