"Tropical" Plants

I love going to Hawaii, especially seeing the plants! I'm always trying to have a little "Aloha" spirit at my house. I've had the most fun creating what I refer to as my "Tropical" garden.
You'd be surprised some of the tropical plants we can grow here, but my garden is enveloping my patio on the north side of my house, and when we have cold winter weather the soil stays frozen there for weeks. This does not bode well for semi hardy plants like Bananas. Guess I'll have to start another "Tropical" garden in front of my house!
When I started planning my garden I decided to find a tree that would make a nice open canopy that had large leaves and could reach out over the patio. I went with Rhus typhina or Sumac.
In this picture it is showing it's early fall color. In the summer the foot long leaves are a lush light green. In the fall it is absolutely stunning, starting off with this burgundy green and evolving through dark red to bright orange as the season progresses. It loses it's leaves in the fall, which of course wouldn't happen in the tropics, but that's ok because I don't sit in the shade on my patio in the winter much anyway!

Another feature I like about this Sumac is the flowers and seeds. The flowers are tight spires about 8 inches tall with tiny light green and pale pink flowers packed together, attracting lots of bees. In late summer they become bright red, and hold on the tree through winter.

I planted this tree about 3 and a half years ago and it is now about 15 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet wide, providing the perfect canopy over my tropical garden. Sure it suckers all over the place, but they're easy to pull out and I like my tropical garden to be wild and unruly!

Sunflower Fields Forever

I love Sunflowers. I love just about everything about them - their huge cheery flowers, the big stalks they grow on, the birds they attract with their late summer bounty, and, best of all, you really only have to plant them once!

Last year I planted an entire side of my yard with Sunflowers and when fall came I just let them fall where they were. We had lots of Stellar's Jays eating the seeds right out of the flowers. Many of the seeds got covered with leaves and mulch through the winter.

This spring they started popping up all over the same area, so many that I had to thin them to about 12" apart so they would have enough space to develop into the big Sunflowers that I love so much.

We also had a happy accident, we tried out some new bird seed in a feeder in another part of the garden and look what happened!

I decided not to thin these Sunflowers and see what happened. It turned out really great, they bloomed much later than the others, not opening until the middle of September. It's November now and we still have some blooming! They aren't producing much in the way of seeds, but the 3 to 6 inch diameter flowers on 3 to 4 foot stalks have been perfect for my wife to use in flower arrangements around the house.

This little garden experiment required almost no work and will hopefully perpetuate itself next year. If not, I guess I'll have to use that birdseed again!