Brad's Tropical Paradise

Yes, you can grow cannas in the Phoenix, Arizona area. But they're really not a very good "landscape" plant. That is, just putting them out in the front yard and forgetting about them is a mistake. They will grow here, and flourish, but only with a few tricks. Before you plant cannas, be sure to prepare the planting area. Cannas are practically water plants, and they like deep, rich soil. I must have a million tons of potting soil here in the corner of The Tropical Paradise where the canna are, and I have mixed in almost as much coffee grounds (which I got free at Starbucks) over the years. Cannas grow very fast, which is good. But they need constant trimming to keep them at their best. Their tips tend to sunburn (even though it hasn't been particularly hot yet this year) and it's only the new growth that shows off the beautiful deep reddish-purple that I am looking for with the foliage (look behind the flower and you will see what I mean). The flowers onl...

A neat trick for giving some visual interest to an area that has yet to fill in with plants is to use rocks. In addition to the big, heavy, permanent rocks here at The Tropical Paradise, I am using river rocks. They look great around plants like these iris and can easily be moved out of the way when they grow. I have arranged them as if they were tumbling down a hill, the way that rocks would look if they were along a stream. Iris look as if they would grow well along the edge of a stream, so the illusion works. Naturally, as the plants fill in, I will move the rocks out of their way. In the meantime, I am liking the look of this, instead of staring at bare dirt and small plants.

I have now had this Kentia Palm for exactly a year now, and it's doing great. I have to admit to being a little skeptical about it, but  +Kevin Williams  convinced me. I've seen a lot of ratty-looking Kentia Palms indoors, but this one has always looked great. It looks like it has found a good home. Here is what I have been doing for it: • It gets a little morning sun. Just a little. This is Phoenix, Arizona, and putting a plant in the window where it will get a lot of hot sun is a mistake. This is the east-facing side of the house, and there is a patio cover, so the only direct sunlight it gets is very early in the morning. The rest of the day it gets a gentle amount, like you are seeing here at 4 pm in February. But it is a live plant, it won't live in the dark. • It gets about a pint of water every week. I have it on my Google calendar as a reminder. Just plain tap water, but sometimes I mix in some Miracle Gro (very little) and it has gotten Fish Fertilizer a co...

One of my readers in Modesto, California, sent me this photo of his sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) and was wondering what to do with it, as it had burst out of its pot. And if you're wondering if cycads can do well with neglect, well, they can. They have survived for millions of years on the planet without much help, and they do just fine. I've had a lot of cycads here at The Tropical Paradise, including sago palms, and the only ones that have died have been "killed with kindness", that is, over-watered. You can, and should, treat them practically like cactus. The only difference is that cycads do better in the desert with a little shade. If you have a plant that looks like this, the first thing that you will need to do is trim off most of the leaves. Leave only a few. In a dry climate like Modesto, you really don't have to worry about the roots rotting, but it's best to buy some ordinary rooting hormone at your local nursery and apply to the cut areas o...

It's February 23rd here at The Tropical Paradise in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) and the first freesia flower is starting to bloom. These are from bulbs from +Easy to Grow Bulbs, Inc.   that were planted three years ago, and they come back beautifully every year. The best place to plant freesia here in the desert is at the bottom of a slope, in full sun. It's important to keep them within easy reach so the spent blooms can be tended to regularly. Also, they are beautiful and fragrant, and you want to be able to walk up to them. These are not "background plants"! I call something like this a "walk-up-to-it" from a design point of view, so if you plant them way back in your garden, don't be surprised if people stomp through trying to walk up to them. Good garden design does not encourage people stomping through the garden - put them where they are easy for people to see, and smell the fragrance. Freesia will bloom throughout February and M...

The Phoenix, Arizona area is no place for a Foxtail Palm ( Wodyetia bifurcata ) . So when a friend of mine gave me this one several years ago, I accepted it (it would have rude not to) and then tried to give it away to all of my palm friends, none of whom accepted the offer. They knew that it's just too hot and dry here for this palm to thrive, and it needs a lot of space, as it does get tall. So I just left it in its original black plastic pot. But somehow, it seems to thrive. After trying to give it away for a couple of years, I decided to keep it. I kept it in its original pot and sunk that into another pot, the one you see here. It grows slowly, but consistently, and it likes the shade of the olive tree. I'm guessing that accidentally (as is true with all of my successes here at The Tropical Paradise), I have given it exactly what it needs. I read recently that these plants like to be potbound, and this one definitely is. I gave it some company recently of a nice litt...

I've been experimenting with aloes this season, and this one seems to be a success. It's called Blue Elf, and I got it at Home Depot. It's pretty common. I planted a lot of them, as I divided the offsets apart from a larger plant. These are sometimes called "pups" and a plant like this usually produces so many pups that it causes a lot of congestion. But they're easy to gently pull apart, and can be easily planted, which is what I did. And this one, on February 21st, is the sole survivor, and is even starting to bloom. So I'm trying to figure out what went right. As you can see, this plant looks as if it were growing out the "cracks" of the rocks at the base. Actually, I just pushed the rocks around it, just for looks. But apparently this isn't just garden design - this helps hold water around the base so that this plant can do well in the hot sun. How about that? So, if you want to follow my lead on this, plant on a slope, with regul...

Iris do well in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Also up to 3,000 feet (I've seen a lot of them in Prescott) in Arizona, anywhere in Southern California, and all of the desert cities of Arizona and California. If you live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, like I do, the best place to plant them is at the bottom of a hill, in full sun. I don't know that because I'm sort of expert, I know it because I have planted them all over here and the ones that do the best (like in the photo) are the ones that get the most water, and sunshine. I'm experimenting mostly. Iris are really just giant flowering grasses. They grow very fast and are best planted as bulbs (yeah, I know it's supposed to be called a rhizome, but who says "rhizome"?).  The leaves get almost two feet tall, and the blooms are even taller. It's best to plant them where the blooms can easily be attended to, as the blooms only last a few weeks before they start looking ratty. So this spot, at the botto...

I found this ZZ plant (its actual name is  Zamioculcas zamiifolia but everyone just calls them ZZ plants - for obvious reasons, I guess) at Lowe's yesterday. If you're a cycad collector, like I am, you will see that the leaves do have a resemblance to a zamia, hence the name, but this plant isn't a cycad. And from what I've read it's a tough indoor plant that likes to be neglected and does well in low light. This particular plant was really starting to outgrow its pot there at the store, so it was the best one to buy (the biggest one). In foliage plants, always buy the biggest one. In flowering plants, like annuals, not so much so. This ZZ plant cost me twelve dollars. I understand that they're slow growing, so it's best to buy the biggest one that you can. Anyway, I did my regular careful planting (or rather, potting). I'm used to putting plants in the ground! I really don't have too many indoor plants. I gave it a good amount of dry-releas...

It's February 15th and I am staking freesia as I see the buds appear. I've had freesia here at The Tropical Paradise for many seasons, and am still learning how to care for it. Actually, it's a lot of trouble - but it's worth it! When I first started seeing blooms on my freesia, many seasons ago, I was thrilled. Until I saw them tip over with their faces in the mud. That's because the flowers are much too heavy to be held up by the stalks. You can give the blame, or the credit, to the hybridizers who, over the years have developed such a large, and beautiful flower. And did I mention that they smell great, too? This year I was prepared. I have a bundle of thin bamboo sticks (from my local dollar store) in the garage, and as I see a bud form, I set a stake and tie a bit of ordinary twine around it. The flower stalks get much taller, and send out offshoots, with even more flowers, so these bamboo stakes have their work cut out for them. And even before they st...

Before I put lighting in my garden, I visited some fancy resorts here in the Phoenix area. I wandered around The Phoenician especially, making note of how they used light to show off their tropical plants. Here at the Tropical Paradise, I use ordinary low-voltage Malibu lights, the kind you can get from Home Depot. They can be installed by someone like me, no need for an electrical expert, and like everything else in the garden, I experiment and refine (which is a nice way of saying that when I get it wrong I try again). What I have discovered looks best is uplighting. If you have small palm trees, or cycads, like these, uplighting looks great. I also have a few "path lights" - although they really aren't along a path, they just give a nice soft circle of light. The spotlights are 20 watts and the path lights are 11. I have a small backyard and all of the lights run on two 100-watt transformers. In other words, I light up my whole backyard for the equivalent of t...

This past weekend I spent doing a "nursery crawl" with some serious plant experts in Tucson, Arizona. The places we visited had the coolest, tiniest, plants that you could imagine. And the "price per pound" for these miniatures was astronomical! I like miniatures (I mean, look at my dog!). And if you do, too, you know that display is everything. While I was looking around this weekend, I got some great ideas on how to display these plants. But for purposes of this blog post, I thought that it would be best to start with how NOT to display miniatures plants. So here it is: • Don't display them in little tiny separate pots. Putting them in little pots along the window sill is as tacky as having a shot glass collection. Uh, but your shot glass collection is fine, really. • Don't put them in some type of "novelty pot". You know the kind I mean, some of them have have little holes along the side. That sort of thing. Elaborate pots are as tacky a...

When I first started The Tropical Paradise, the first thing I did was to make a curb border. That is, a low, flat border along the edge of the garden. I thought it looked great, and I have seen a lot of it. But it wasn't much later that I discovered that I had made a terrible mistake. Having a curb border really speaks to the inner child in all of us. It's irresistible. You want to walk, like this kid is doing in the photo, balancing. I found that my friends, who really aren't kids anymore, were attracted to it like a magnet. Sometimes they would balance as they talked on their cell phones. But one misstep, and a foot comes down, hard, in the garden, on the plants. You could, of course, put up a stupid sign that tells people what to do. But if you need to do that, you have just created a poor design. But there is a solution, that works just as well and is more beautiful. Pointy rocks. Edging your garden with pointy rocks discourages balancing acts. And, in fact,...

Tiny plants, such as this variegated form of Haworthia attenuata (Wide Zebra), are like jewels. They are tiny, can be very expensive, and if not shown off correctly, they look terrible. But if you do the proper setting, they shine like the jewels that they are. I just picked up some tricks this weekend from visiting some nurseries in Tucson that sell these types of plants. Of course, you see them in the little plastic pots, but they also have them grouped together in containers, and staged for effect. Here are some of the tricks: • Put them in a large pot. Don't be tempted to put them in a lot of tiny, decorative pots. That's for people who can't do the composition. If you want to see how it's done, visit an upscale nursery. I have this one in a pot that about two feet tall. It isn't for the roots, which are shallow, it's so that it brings the plants to the perfect viewing level. Assuming the average viewer is between five and six feet tall, having it at ...

Iris do great here at The Tropical Paradise. So well in fact, that some years I get tired of tending to the blooms. And they multiply like crazy. In fact, a couple of years ago, I dug them all up and saved just a few bulbs (actually they're rhizomes if you wanna be fussy about it). I gave away a few to my neighbors but, unfortunately, most I just threw away. If you have had iris for a few seasons, they need subdividing. The main reason to do this is that iris bloom better when they aren't so crowded. And the other reason is to spread the beauty of this plant around to other places of your garden. This is how you do it: • Get a nice sharp hand spade, find a clump of leaves and push a clean cut right through the bulb. Then dig carefully all the way around the clump, lift it up and find another place for it. • Water. Iris like water, and they like standing with their feet wet. I have discovered a part of the garden where water tends to puddle, and that's where I am p...