Tropicals & Tender Perennials: What's Blooming Now..., 0 by Clare_CA

Clare_CA wrote:
Hi Patty, Thanks for the compliment. I really like my Stephanotis too. Yes, I stuck a piece in a glass jar of water, and it rooted in time. Your wood trellis on your patio sounds like a perfect place to put it, and it will be a few degrees warmer on your patio in the winter, and that may just be the shelter that it needs through your winter. If it is a covered patio or a semi-covered patio, then it will be protected from frost.

I do have a Mandevilla, and it is in the ground, and it is behind a bunch of other stuff so I don't see it much except when a pink flower pokes out here and there. It is pretty, but it took a long time to get going.

This past spring, I did some spring cleaning. I took out a whole row of Passifloras because they were starting to take over the whole area. I decided to get rid of anything which grew six feet a year and needed constant maintenance. I cut back and dug up six of them, including a P. amethystina hybrid that I grew from seed. I loved that one, and it was deliciously fragrant, but it was a massive grower and had the trunk of a tree, and it had to go. Passiflora helleri was also an aggressive grower, and it went too.

Passiflora belotti is one of my favorites for fragrance and was not aggressive/invasive, and Lady Margaret was well-behaved too, but that flower has no fragrance so I didn't keep it. I still have 'Lavender Lady' growing on a Bougainvillea, but that one is a huge grower too and has to be severely pruned fairly often. And I kept Passiflora platyloba for now, but it is another huge grower. Passiflora alata 'Ruby Glow' is out front, and it is an enormous grower also. I will have to cut that one back after it flowers this year.

I think most of my pictures of my passifloras are uploaded to PlantFiles if you have a chance to peruse those files. Here is a recent picture of Passiflora platyloba.