I posted some photos of the landscape early in the spring time. I figure I would post a update on the garden. Most of the cannas are blooming and the bananas and enestes are looking good. We had 70 to 80 mile hour winds around 2 weeks ago it set some stuff back a bit. Hopefully the storms will stay away for the rest of the season so I can get some solid leaves on the bananas.
another pic further down the walk
pic looking out of the largest greenhouse
Brian, it looks great, really filled in.
Are you keeping your ensetes in the ground over the winter?
LOOKS GREAT!
Wow Brian :) Absolutely amazing. I gotta get down there some time to check it out. It looks to me like it would be worth the trip.
-Joe
It is the largest displays of tropical displays I know of in our state. The best part I believe is many of my plants are new and have not been on the market yet so you get to see plants fully grown of certain forms that maybe out a few years from now. I enjoy visits if interested just email me and set a time so I will be here. Their are 5 greenhouses to look through and everything from aquatics to regular landscape and shade plants. I deal manly with new hybrids tropicals and hardy tropical plants.
Slurp.... OMG! Let me wipe off my chin and my keyboard.. Brian!! I'm FLABERGASSED!! Is this your job or your home??? The nanners, cannas, brugs, caladiums, ee's....(I think it's heaven) I wanna see....
It is very hard to show the whole place but most beds are around 15 to 20 feet deep and are full with around 40 forms of Colocasia 9 forms of Alocasia around 12 varieties of bananas and ensetes and to many cannas to count. This is the nursery and were I live. The beds are made to as a tropical display as well as a way for me to propagate and breed with my plants. Most of these plants are the mother plants to most of my hybrids and the beds are at times places were I test out the look of my hybrids. Some forms I miss judge I have a few tall growing cannas up front and dwarfs in the back due to me not knowning what they will do exactly. But each year the display gets better and larger it seems.
Here is a pic of the parking lot out front by the road.
This display by the road is left out every winter. It consist of 15 well known varieties of cannas around 18 hardy forms of bananas and 7 varietes of hardy colocasias. All the plants are mulched and over wintered in the ground here.
Brian, are you keeping the ensetes in the ground over the winter?
No i have to dig them each year. I have tried over wintering a few smaller plants with no luck. I have heard they are a zone8 and higher but with mulch and a mild winter the few I tried did not make it.
I have heard zone 9 and higher, except one place that actually said zone 7, which I had a hard time believing, but I put one in the ground just to see this winter. When I saw how big yours were in the first pics that you posted over a month ago, I thought maybe there was some truth to the zone 7, that you had left yours out with a mild winter.....You are zone 7b also? I bet those are some big rootballs to dig out!
We are zone 6b
Here is a few new pics taken this afternoon.
If you look in this picture their was two large Col Illustrius growing around 6 feet tall. I had them stolen last week someone ripped them out of the ground now their seems to be a gap in the landscape.
Another view from off the hill top.
All I can say, is WOW an a DOUBLE WOW
Fantastic Brian!
BWilliams: Are you actually saying that there are some kind of varieties of Canna and Alocasia that can actually survive a Zone 6 winter?!?!
If so, spill the beans... I'd just LOVE to have some... They'd go well with my M. lasiocarpa, M. basjoos and my hardy palm trees....
I have left out cannas for years the main thing is to mulch and to know what to mulch with. Hard wood mulch and chopped up leaves are good insulators cyperus mulch and straw are bad at insulating. You need something that will decompose during the winter months and produce heat. I would believe all cannas are zone7 but if you mulch you can produce a zone 7. As for colocasias I have over wintered the following with 6 inches of mulch.
Coloasia yellow splash 2 years
Colocasia big Dipper 4 years
Colocasia pink china 9 years with and without mulch
Colocasia Gigantea 4 years with and without mulch
Colocasia new species possible illustrius hybrid 2 years
Bananas
Basjoo 8 years
Itinerans 3 years dies to the ground returned in all places but slow
Sikkimensis 2 years have killed a few in the process
Velutina 4 years strong grower.
You can achieve the look I have in my garden in a zone6 if you have good soil and mulch in the fall. My mothers yars is 99% hardy tropicals. Everything stays out from bananas elephant ears gingers amaryllis pineapple lilys and more.
Oh my gosh, this is beautiful.
Every year it gets more involved. I wish I had your talent as to where and when to plant everything. I ended up with caster bean plants that over power everything. I love the leaves but they are hugh, taller than my bananas.
You do inspire me to try until I get it right.
Thanks for the pictures.
Linda
Good gracious! How lucky to work AND live there.... seems like paradise to me! Is it just a "testing" facility or do you sell also? If I'm ever down that way, I'm for sure looking you up!
Its both I am a collector just trying to make a living doing something I love. I am one to take things to far in all the things I do ( my Highschool teachers can vouch for that). I first started collecting plants when I was around 14 years old and it was more for my turtle ponds than for the plants manly aquatics. Once I got into the larger tropicals and aroids I had to get everyone that I saw it took years to tack certain forms down. After I had just about everything possible. It seemed like with many things I collected I would get tried and move on to something else. Then I started talking to some older breeders about hybridizing plants. It caught my interest that I could make something totally new that no one else had ever seen name it and grow it out. So after a few years I started producing my own hybrids. After this its as far as your imagination and your breeding skills can get you. I am looking foward to breeding the largest and most color cannas as well as the largest and most colorful Alocasias and Colocasias. It is a slow road but it is a lot of fun and extremely interesting to me.
Here is a pic of the hybrid canna field. Something about walking out their and waiting for one to bloom seeing if its good enough then moving it up to the landscape to see if its worth naming. Not many jobs were you get to do that.
What a Haven!
I was going to ask about plant thieves but you already answered........errrrrrrrr!
Thanks for the info on hardiness too.
Our single basjoo did great over-wintering and is now 5 stalks over 9' tall.
The Itinerans and China I got from you goes in the ground this weekend.
Had to wait until I got a space cleared out.
Will that allow enough time to root before Winter?
Ric
Hmmm... Looks like I'll have to try out those Colocasia Pink China and Giganteas...
I'm personally trying out the following in my S. PA woodland garden:
M. basjoo (4 plants), Rhapidophyllum hystrix (4 plants), Trachycarpus takil (2 plants), Sabal minor 'Mc Curtain' (2 plants), Cordyline australis (6 plants), Yucca recurvifolia (1 BIG plant), Poncirus trifoliata (2 plants), Amorphophallus konjac (3 plants) Rhodea japonica (3 plants), Chlorophytum major (1 plant), and Aspidistra elaitor (2 plants).
I'll add the two colocasias to the list as soon as I get them.
I'd love to compare notes on how our plants do over the winter....
My garden is rather surreal, since it's located in a recovering wood-lot, there is no indication from the outside that it's any different than any other wood lot in southern PA (well, aside from the 3-gallon needle palm located beside the entrance to the lower path into the woods), but once you get inside, you'll find 12 different varieties of bamboos and the aforementioned hardy tropicals as well as a number of unusual and uncommon natives (common prickly ash, pawpaws, etc), and in a fairly open, lightly shaded area along the stream from the pond, a my Yucca bed, which has two adam's needles, and the Y. recurvifolia. The anchor points for my hardy tropicals is my 9-year old grove of Phyllostachys aureosulcata, and a large clump of Arundo donax in a mowed clearing in the middle, which give help add to the overall tropical impression.
Of course, the bonus is that the bamboo and the hardy palms are also among the few evergreen plants in the woods, which adds winter interest to the garden.... along with my American hollies and Oregon Grape Hollies.
What a paradise! I'm never good at arranging everything. It is just so beautiful!
