Farewell to my 1st summer garden on Long Island!

Wow that went fast! Tomorrow is the autumn equinox -the moment when the sun's rays shine equally on both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This weekend will be the first one that days are shorter than nights, and it won't be long before temperatures start to get cold too! 

It's a bitter-sweet time of year ... bitter cold on the way, but sweet blooms to enjoy. Actually, late summer and early fall are my favorite parts of the year to enjoy the garden. The tropical plants are at their fullest and the weather is gorgeous! 

This year the plants grew especially fast. Long Island saw its hottest August on record and much of the first half of September has been in the 80s. Although most of the island was hit hard by drought, my neighborhood was one of the lucky few that saw persistent pop-up storms. 

Here's how it all started! I was still living in South Carolina when I took this photo and had automatically timed sprinklers on to keep the plants watered while I was gone.

All the plants were as happy as can be! 

The KING of the summer was my Viente Cohol banana plant. I've tried growing the hardy musa basjoo bananas for many years and have never had impressive growth on them, but the tropical bananas shoot up like magic. It's against the south side of my house where it receives a ton of water and blazing hot sunshine. This particular variety is quick to produce fruit. I'm hoping to get a lot of banana fruit next year!

 

Angel trumpets aka Brugmansia are one of my favorite summer blooms. The fragrance is out of this world! The pink Brugmansia in the photo above was a $5 plant on clearance last March. It was just a pot with soil. The entire plant above the ground was dead so everything you see in the photo has grown since spring. An incredible feat! Literally from 0 feet to 8 feet tall in just a few months! 

This yellow potted Brugmansia started off much larger but is actually shorter than the pink brugmansia I planted in the ground.

In late summer, I started a raised garden bed. The fall crops were all destroyed by caterpillars sadly, but I did get a huge crop of tomatoes and eggplant! 

You'll usually find Philodendron gloriosum (left) & Philodendron cordatum (right) as a tiny expensive house plant, but they're anything but small when you set them outside! Philodendron cordatum is usually sold as a tiny trailing houseplant, but it's true form is quite large 

I grow many palm trees, but one of my favorites is Hydriastele Beguinii. It's having a bit of an awkward year, but next year it will look much nicer. The frond leaflets are fused together which is a really unique feature you don't see in most palms! 

I prefer foliage over flowers, but some tropical blooms are too iconic not to grow! Night-blooming cereus only blooms a few times a summer. Usually, I will get a flush of about 3-6 gigantic blooms all in one night once a month through the summer. The flowers open up after the sun sets and reach their peak around midnight. By dawn, they're gone! I'm not exaggerating. 

Speaking of beautiful blooms. My garden wouldn't be complete without Plumeria! Plumeria Melody has the nicest shape of all the plumerias I'm growing.

Plumeria divine is a must for northern gardeners. It's a frequent bloomer and stays nice and small! 

Oddly this plumeria divine doesn't have it's usual shape and flower form. I love it regardless! 

If you're looking even smaller, give Desert Rose a try. A ridiculously generous bloomer that is PERFECT for a sunny tabletop where most flowers would wilt. These love the heat and humidity and don't mind drying out from time to time.

As far as vines go, Allamanda does the trick! They take on a more shrubby habit than mandevilla and have larger flowers. I can't think of a more pure yellow flower for pots and planters. It blooms NONSTOP!

Thunbergia grandiflora is a gorgeous plant that I have been enjoying a lot. It's a late bloomer and not as prolific as Mandevilla. I love them for their uniqueness. Literally, no one else has them on Long Island. But if you're looking for bang for your buck, stick to Mandevilla! 

Of course a Long Island garden wouldn't be complete without hydrangeas. I don't make the rules!

I can't say no to a rose plant on end-of-the-year clearance either! 

Thanks for looking and happy Autumn!

Southern landscaping up north!

I left New York City back in February 2017, and I noticed over my 3 years in the south that southerners are obsessed with Hydrangeas. Hydrangeas are a little picky up north because they do prefer mild winters, but newer varieties like Endless Summer can bloom on new wood growth so it's not as important to have really mild winters, but it definitely helps.

When hydrangeas are happy, they're one of the most beautiful plants you can imagine growing. While they may not conjure up thoughts of the tropics, they're one of those plants that people in the tropics wish they could grow (Dombeya wallichii, is given the name "tropical hydrangea", but they're totally different!).

I needed something beautiful and bold to block a really ugly piece of equipment in my parent's backyard back home in New York. This little section of my yard is inspired by the gardens I've heard people dreaming down in the south. I threw a longleaf pine in the middle because they give such a beautiful woodland look. Their long needle length is so exotic. Longleaf pines are fully hardy in New York City,  but they will struggle in climates cooler than zone 7. These pines require a lot of summer heat to really do their best but are probably worth a try in mild winter climates even with cool summers. They take years to start trunking, but once they do, you'll notice giant leaps in growth early each summer, like mine is doing now. Definitely a conversation piece!