I love large urns filled with lush tropical plants.
I have a large and ever-growing collection of tropical plants. During the colder months, they are carefully stored and maintained in special greenhouses. When the warm weather arrives, the plants are brought outdoors - some make the journey to my home in Maine, while others are placed in various locations here at Cantitoe Corners. Displaying potted plants outside this time of year not only adds visual interest to a space, but also boosts plant growth - providing them with more natural light, humidity, and fresh air.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
Once spring weather is consistently warm, all my tropical plants come outdoors. This is one of my favorites – the sago palm, Cycas revoluta. It is a popular houseplant known for its feathery foliage and ease of care. Here they are in my stable courtyard. They’re always arranged with enough distance between them so none of them touch.
Below the foliage of the sago palm is the bare section of trunk where leaves were once cut. The rough trunk becomes leafless as it ages.
Sago palm fronds are stiff, deep green, and feather‑like, growing symmetrically from the top of the plant.
In another area of the stable courtyard are my potted Australian tree ferns with their lacy feathery fronds and scale-covered trunks.
Grown for its striking foliage color and texture is the Bismarckia nobilis, or Bismarck Palm. This evergreen palm has broad, rounded, stiff, intensely steel-blue, fan-shaped fronds that can grow to four feet long and wide.
Here are the large leaves of a green colocasia. In contrast to Alocasia, the leaf tip of colocasia points downwards.
Another plant in my tropical collection is Bird of Paradise, Strelitzia nicolai – a species of evergreen tropical herbaceous plant with gray-green leaves that grow up to 18-inches long. The leaves are paddle shaped and split naturally to allow wind to pass through the foliage without uprooting the plant or damaging its roots.
Monstera is recognized by its large, glossy green leaves with natural splits and holes — a look that often gives it the name “Swiss Cheese Plant.”
I also bring out many of my agaves and depending on their size, display them on stone ledges around my home.
This potted succulent outside my carport is underplanted with Lysimachia, a low and fast growing ground cover that spreads and flows nicely over the pot edges.
I have several Norfolk Island Pine trees displayed around the farm. These are large, evergreen conifers with a symmetrical, pyramidal shape, straight trunks, and tiered branches arranged in whorls, with bright green soft, needle-like foliage. Mine are in excellent condition, but these trees cannot thrive in cold weather below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, so they are stored indoors in winter.
Norfolk pine fronds are soft, dark green, awl‑shaped leaves arranged in a tight, overlapping spiral that gives them a feathery, textured appearance.
Here is another Norfolk Island Pine tree displayed beside the carriage road leading to my home. It is underplanted with Dusty Miller, an ornamental plant known for its silvery, woolly foliage.
Here is a blue agave with its long, narrow, fleshy silvery-blue leaves. Do you know… tequila is distilled from the sap of blue agave?
In front of my Hay Barn are potted Phoenix roebelenii, the Pygmy Date Palm. This is a dwarf evergreen palm tree with a slender trunk topped with a crown of fine-textured, arching green fronds.
What makes the Pygmy Date Palm so attractive are the brown, textured trunks. These trunks can grow straight or crooked, depending on how the palm is placed as they tend to curve toward the light.
And under my pool pavilion this time of year – several very large staghorn ferns. The staghorn fern is an unusual and attractive epiphyte that thrives in the tropics. I adore staghorns and over the years have collected quite a few of these magnificent specimens.
Staghorn ferns get their name from the distinctive shape of their fertile fronds, which closely resemble the forked antlers of a male deer or elk.
The plant has basal or shield fronds which are broad and wrap around the plant’s roots to protect them and collect organic matter.
Staghorn ferns are low‑maintenance once established. These plants thrive in bright, indirect light, and benefits from high humidity – they love it here under my pavilion.
Outdoor summer chores continue at my farm with a good pruning of the shrubs around my pool.
Along the outside of the pool fence, I have a growing hedge of two striking, dark-leaved shrubs: Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Diabolo’ and Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple.’ I always enjoy incorporating unusual and interesting plants in my gardens, and these two varieties are especially beautiful, with their rich burgundy-black foliage and graceful forms. I first planted them in 2018, and they have thrived in this location ever since. This week, my resident tree expert, Pasang Sherpa, is giving them a substantial pruning to keep the plants healthy, well-shaped, and under control. Some of the shrubs had grown more two feet since spring, so they were certainly ready for a trim.
Here are a few photos, enjoy!
I wanted my pool area to look as natural as possible, where I could enjoy the gardens and panoramic views of the landscape with my family and friends.
A couple of years ago, I planted six Ginkgo biloba Goldspire™ Obelisk trees around the pool.
Mixed in are some potted plants. I always take out many of my tropical plants and display them in beautiful ornamental urns around the farm during summer.
At one end of the pool, I have these five antique staddle stones. Staddle stones were originally used in the 17th and 18th centuries as support bases for granaries, hayricks, and game larders.
And looking north, I kept the views clear, so I could see all the beautiful greenery in the distance.
All of it is surrounded by the necessary pool fence disguised by these tall hedges. The fence is between the hedges. The taller hedge in the back is planted columnar beech trees.
Here, one can see the four foot tall fence between the plantings.
The outer hedge is a combination of alternating Physocarpus and Cotinus shrubs. Here, Pasang shows the growth since these hedges were last pruned just a couple months ago.
Physocarpus and Cotinus are medium‑to‑fast‑growing shrubs that can easily add more than 24 inches in height per year once established.
Physocarpus is commonly called ninebark, and is an upright, spreading, somewhat coarse, deciduous, Missouri-native shrub which is closely related to the genus Spiraea. It boasts a deep green to burgundy foliage with ovate to rounded usually three to five lobed leaves that are dull green in summer changing to an undistinguished yellow in fall. Then its color veers toward bronzy red by the time the leaves fall in late November.
After the white flowers of the physocarpus bloom, what follows are these seed pods – a favorite food of small birds.
Also known as smoketree or smoke bush, Cotinus is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs. It’s a great choice for massing or for hedges. This variety has stunning dark red-purple foliage that turns scarlet in autumn.
Some leaves are already showing off their pretty color changes. The leaves are uniquely smooth and rounded.
In fact, the name “smoke bush” comes from this – the billowy hairs attached to the flower clusters which remain in place through the summer, turning a smoky pink to purplish-pink.
For this hedge, Pasang uses his Okatsune hand pruners. Pruning shears, hand pruners, or secateurs are a type of scissors used on plants. They are strong enough to prune hard branches of trees and shrubs, sometimes up to an inch thick. Everyone on the crew has a pair.
Pasang cuts off any dead or crisscrossing branches first. The rule of thumb when pruning is to cut the dead, diseased, damaged, non-productive, structurally unsound, or otherwise unwanted plant material.
Pruning means to lop or cut off any superfluous branches or shoots for better-shape and better growth. These look fuller every year – in part because of the regular pruning.
Pasang also cuts it to the height I requested, which for this hedge, is the same height as the fence itself.
Pasang prunes everything by hand, so it takes a while to trim all the way around the pool. area.
Here’s a look at one section of the newly pruned hedge – so straight all the way down. Pruning this side also allows more light to get to the growing beech hedge.
It doesn’t take long for the ground to fill with clippings. Always work on a tarp to collect the cuttings. This makes cleaning up fast and efficient. thanks Pasang.
Growing behind my vegetable greenhouse are rows of beautiful, colorful dahlias.
Dahlias begin blooming in abundance just as many other summer flowers are beginning to pass their peak, making them one of the garden’s great late-season performers. They continue to bloom right up until the first frost. I grow a variety of dahlias, ranging from petite blooms to enormous dinner-plate sized flowers, in an array of colors, shapes, and forms.
Here are some of the flowers blooming in the garden right now. Enjoy!
Dahlias grow more blooms when they get at least six to eight hours of direct sunlight per day. My dahlia garden gets great sun behind my vegetable greenhouse. And because this spot is behind this large structure, it is also protected from strong winds.
There are about 42 species of dahlia, with hybrids commonly grown as garden plants. A member of the Asteraceae family of dicotyledonous plants, some of its relatives include the sunflower, daisy, chrysanthemum, and zinnia.
Dahlias are named after 18th-century Swedish botanist Anders Dahl. He actually categorized dahlias as a vegetable because of their edible tubers. The tubers are said to taste like a mix between potatoes and radishes.
The genus Dahlia is native to the high plains of Mexico. Some species can be found in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica as well as parts of South America where it was introduced.
The array of flower colors, sizes, and shapes is astounding. Dahlias come in shades of pink, red, yellow, orange, white, shades of purple, and various combinations of these colors – every color but true blue.
Dahlia plant leaves grow opposite each other and are simple to pinnately compound with segments that are ovate to oblong to lanceolate in shape. The leaf margins may be lobed or dentate. Leaves may be green, reddish-purple, or purple-black depending on the variety.
Dahlias can also vary in height, leaf color, form, and shape. This is because dahlias are octoploids, meaning they have eight sets of homologous chromosomes, whereas most plants have only two.
Dahlias are classified according to flower shape and petal arrangement.
The stems of a dahlia plant are also unique. They are hollow, which is why the Aztecs originally called them “water canes.” These stems are green and quite thick.
There are other varieties bred for striking stem color which range from deep burgundy and mahogany to almost black.
As dahlias grow it’s important to provide tall, hollow, dahlia stems with good support to prevent them from flopping. My gardeners use support stakes and twine to keep my flowers upright.
The twine is tied to the stake making a gap in between two strands for the plants.
The majority of dahlia species do not produce scented flowers or cultivars, but they are brightly colored to attract pollinating insects.
They range from a charming single, daisy-like flower to the popular double varieties which can be two-inch-pompons to 12-inch dinner plate size.
This bloom is the size of one’s palm.
Dahlias are divided into 10 groups: single, anemone, collarette, waterlily, decorative, fall, pompon, cactus, semi-cactus, and miscellaneous.
This cactus variety is called ‘Park Princess’ with tightly rolled rich, vibrant pink petals. It is a prolific re-bloomer and an excellent cut flower.
Experiment with the blooms – dahlias look great arranged in different colors or as a bunch of the same variety. Harvesting flowers is good for the plants and encourages them to continue flowering month after month.
And when arranging, always strip off all the leaves that would be below the water line in the vase. This is true for all flower arrangements, not just dahlias. When leaves stay underwater, they decay and release bacteria that shorten the vase life of the flowers. And change the water daily so they look fresh and last longer.
With good sunlight, proper watering, and a little bit of luck, I’ll have gorgeous, colorful dahlias growing all the way until Halloween.
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