Best Heat Tolerant Flowers

A big waste of time is blindly buying flowers to grow in your garden that will end up wilting in the heat.  Knowledge is important for a beginning gardener in your climate. Click here for an excellent article on this topic . . . it will prevent lots of disappointment after so much hard w...

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Flowering Perennials

Bursts of color all over the garden can be a spectacular and soothing sight. One of my favorite things to do is color-coordinate sections. Click here for an article on Flowering Perennials from Better Homes and Gardens.  Plan for continuous color by mixing perennials and annuals.  It...

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Christmas Cactus Care

It has been years since I have tried to successfully grow a Christmas Cactus. Back in my first days of growing houseplants when I first moved out on my own, I didn't bother to do my research.  I'd just buy a Christmas Cactus and eventually kill it.  I treated it the same as all of my...

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Crinum Lily

The drought tolerant and virtually maintenance free crinum lilies have been blooming like crazy, as shown in an older photo from our garden. We have them all over the yard and when they are in bloom, it is a color splash explosion during the warm months. The foliage of the variety of crinum lilies...

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Claude Monet's garden in Giverny

Photo from Claude Monet's garden in Giverny Courtesy of Maria Fleming via Fine Living Magazine Fruit trees don't have to stand alone!   I love the mass planting at the base of these fruit trees  . . . looks like impatiens to me, a plant that I have used extensively in my garden...

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Calissia fragrans . . . thriving in my Paradise

This is an older post from another blog  that I am currently restructuring. The calissia fragrans are still thriving, although the unusually cold winter knocked them down a bit this year. I'm currently propagating them from runners and cuttingsin containers and will start another "farm" in the...

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What's blooming in Paradise

They started in my dad's garden. As a child I remember the bright orange and red blooms against the colorful tropical crotons, thinking how beautiful the color combinations were.He taught me how to multiply plants, baby them and have them give back with their beauty. There was a lady on one of the...

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Kalanchoe blossfeldiana

Kalanchoe blossfeldiana is a durableflowering succulent that requires littlemaintenance and can be grown eitherindoors or outdoors.Their fleshy, dark shiny green leaves will reach 3 inches (7.7 cm) long by up to 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) wide with lobed edges.Floral colors range from the traditional red to...

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