Rainy Season

Curcuma alismatifolia 'Pink'
Rain is one of those treasured natural supplies providing nourishment to all living things that is unmatched by any other resource.

We try never to complain once the rains start on a regular basis in Florida as we are most grateful for them in summertime.

Afternoon thunderstorms or morning thunderstorms can blow through in short order or they can hang around for longer.

Day to day we hardly ever know for sure if they will come or how long they will last when they do. Heck. The weather forecasters hardly can predict accurately.

If the last many days is any indication that we've finally hit the rainy season with regularity then it is here.

Late. But it is here.

Miss Muffet Caladium
Beautiful, liquid irrigation from the heavens is keeping us well-watered each day. No need for supplements. No dragging hoses around to container plants and baby seedlings.

Too bad it doesn't cool us down as well. Still. It is a welcomed refresher for the garden and the gardener.

One of the certain indicators that moisture has fallen adequately is when the native Resurrection Fern 'Polypodium polypodioides' perks up.

The small ( 4"-12") leaved epiphyte is otherwise shriveled up with the appearance of brown, dying fronds clambering up the sides of live oak trees in this garden. (The ferns can also be found on other large trees such as cypresses.)

It is known for surviving very long periods of drought.

With adequate rainfall it immediately wakes up, turning green and resurrecting almost instantly.

It is one of my favorite natives. But don't look for it in garden centers as it can't be purchased (as far as I've ever known). It simply finds its own way to tree trunks by spores and decides just where it will make its happy home.

Celebrating Evergreens

With the long-lasting frosts and freezes of the first two weeks of January, when all was said and done, the garden made what seemed like a rapid overnight decline.

But reality reveals otherwise.

When reviewed in photographs, journaling each days' findings, it is quite evident the colorful foliage, so very depended upon at Hoe and Shovel for varying hues throughout the year, was slowly losing pigment more and more each day.

Until it appears the most prominent place the eye is drawn is assuredly to so many shades of brown.

Finding any continuum of prettiness is not as easy as it was just days before.

Sitting here at my home office desk with the windows open the outdoor breezes refresh the air indoors. The birds heartily sing their melodious tunes just outside and it dawned on me ... the greenest view is right in front of me. Looking out toward the front garden.

Taking the above photo through the screen I'm easily reminded how I've overused Liriope muscari 'Evergreen Giant' in my garden.

And I'm oh, so unashamed that I have.

Under the dappled light of the sprawling oak trees Liriope grows to three feet tall, blooms its pretty purple spikes in summer, and never wavers from its evergreen habit, remaining its deeply hued shade of green year after year. In this front location it serves as the double-sided edging to the pathway winding from the front driveway around to the backyard.

Coupled with my beloved evergreen natives, Serenoa repens Saw Palmetto, this peaceful scene is helping me forget how badly the garden looks just beyond.

Tropical Lushness

It occurred to me recently Hoe and Shovel hasn't been talking too much about anything except the back gardens and the side veggie garden. There are many more plantings to be seen so today I'll start with the north-side beds. The house faces West. There are two large curvy planting beds to the left of the driveway entry visible before walking around to the actual side garden(enclosed by a fence) where the veggie garden was planted in spring. Two beds formed by the growth of the oak trees creating "natural islands". The two islands are divided by a narrow oak leaf laden pathway.

Over the last few years I've concentrated on developing this shady area with colored foliage, varied textures and some shrubs mixed in with the native palmettos. Everything underplanted beneath the tall live oaks. It has evolved much to my gladness into a rather tropical looking part of the garden that is a pleasure to see as I drive into the garage, not to mention it is the main view on my route to the back gardens.

Looking across from the front walkway (above) over to the north-side gardens you can see the expanse of the Pagoda flower in the upper middle of the photo. There are several smaller Pagoda plants coming up behind and beside it all the way to the neighbor's property line about fifteen feet beyond the tall one you see.

The leaves on the Pagoda flower; Clerodendrum paniculatum are every bit as glorious as the shrub itself. They are very large and heart shaped; the most mature leaves span a good twelve to fourteen inches across at its widest point.

Large, leafy, lush foliage along with the wide expanse of space the perennial requires speaks of so many things tropical. The entire shrub stands 7 feet tall and almost as wide.

My neighbor gave me a small cutting of the Pagoda when neither of us knew its habits or its name. It's a good thing I stuck it in the ground by chance where there was plenty of room to grow. At first I confused this plant with Glory Bower ---another of the Clerodendrums. Glory Bower is known for its invasive habits of sending up suckers and being a nuisance wherever it starts. Pagoda isn't considered invasive but I can tell you it drops seeds and starts on its own with absolutely no encouragement from this gardener.
The flowers are tiny little funnels of bright orange-red clustered and graduating in tiers downward for the height of about one foot and when fully formed resemble a Japanese pagoda. The showy flowers begin in late spring and will last right through the fall and I make a habit of pruning them when they go to seed.

I don't mind the way the green poddy seeds look either so I leave them for a while just to enjoy this phase as well.

Above is a view of the two beds from the East looking West toward the street. The palmettos are naturally placed here and there throughout. I absolutely love them! What I've put in the ground around them is a variety of foundational plantings and then hundreds of caladiums for summer color.

The entire planting is bordered by variegated liriope and within its borders are penta, self-seeded impatiens sprinkled throughout, xanadu, red salvia, holly ferns, bromeliads, aloe, mexican petunia, begonia, blue ginger, azalea... and some more perennials layered deeply into the beds which are not visible in these photos.

This is a view from the street side looking directly East with the pathway visible. It is clear in the above photo how the Pagoda Flower stands sentinel where the grass meets the pathway at the curve.


Another of my favorite vignettes within this planting is another passalong tropical plant from the same neighbor (visible in the above photo). It is called a buddha plant. The large lily pad type leaves of the buddha (jatropha family)are delightfully tropical... lying lower, sitting at the feet of the pagoda flower.

Both of these plants have proven to add to my enthusiasm for this tropical, spacious area.

In a (typically) frost-free zone like mine, this native shrub of India will flower almost year-round and requires little attention. If you have plenty of space and the need for large leaves and profusely flowering perennials I encourage you to give this shrub a home in your zone 8-10 garden.

Anticipating the Berries

My first introduction to the unique shrub, American Beautyberry; Callicarpa americana happened last year when visiting one of our state parks . From that day forward I had my eyes peeled wishing to add this plant to my garden.

I still haven't run across it for sale in my city. But while visiting Sanibel-Captiva Islands in January we found plenty of them in a newly (to us) discovered garden center that specializes in native plants.

Here are (above) the two plants we transported from that vacation which found their home in the back garden. I am now affectionately referring to this as the woodlands section. It is the area at the farthest back 20 feet of our property. We could fairly say this area has evolved a great deal over the last year or so having added several new kinds of plants. Formerly only palmettos and large philodendrons were growing in the large space keeping company with the compost pile.

Having only seen American Beautyberry in the fall when its woody stems are laden with clusters of bright magenta berries, I was really curious to see what the shrub would look like in all of its stages of growth.

For the spring months it was spending its days getting bushier and taller sporting some large green foliage.

Then one day in late May excitement again as I noticed clusters of miniature buds beginning to appear.

Having read all the characteristics of this shrub at the time of planting, I knew to expect the arrival of some small flowers before the berries arrived. Even so I wasn't sure just how small or just what they would look like.

The tiny huddles of pale lilac blooms gracing the entire stem were simply delightful in the month of May.

Just recently there has been another stage in the process as you can see in photo to the right.

The lilac blooms have now given way to tightly packed green berries encircling the leaf axils along the length of each branch.

It's proven to be an attractive landscape addition with very little maintenance required. It is happy in the filtered sun of its shady location which lends to the feel of a natural garden and planted right next to some palmettos.

I am looking forward to the time when green pods turn to deep magenta in maturity. The berries will be food for wildlife with many varieties of birds feeding from it during the winter months.

Information below and photo (above) of mature berries by Floridata.com

American Beautyberry:

• Very adaptable, even to low fertility soils.
• Light: Broken shade is optimal.
• Moisture: Very drought tolerant. Requires well drained soil.
• Hardiness: USDA Zones 6-10.
• Propagation: Seeds and semi-hardwood cuttings. This shrub often volunteers within its range, sometimes with such vigor as to be regarded as a weed species.

florida natives

maybe because i'm a florida girl i am especially fond of saw palmettos. palmettos conjure up several feelings for me. they remind me of a time when florida wasn't as congested and the streets were not as wide; when there weren't as many restaurants and buildings and crowded neighborhoods. when we first found this house (23 years ago) even though i didn't know much about gardening i got pretty excited that we had substantial amounts of oak trees and at the base of them- palmettos.


i guess not everyone thinks of them as fondly. my former next door neighbors came from the north and they promptly removed all the palmettos from their landscape. i tried not to gasp out loud.

for me they serve as foundational plants - sort of the backdrop for all the other plants i've chosen to layer in front of them. as you can see by the photos i typically crowd other plant life right up next to them. in some areas it will be azaleas, sometimes it is bromeliads, in other areas it is caladiums or combinations of each of these.

Palmettos give me that feeling of both florida woods and the beachy tropical settings we all know and love who adore this beautiful state. i often cut the fronds for fresh arrangements to bring indoors. the bloom on them makes its own statement in a striking cut flower display.