My Pond is FINALLY clean!

 I am so happy I can finally see my fish. What a difference! 

Last year

This year

I'm growing alphina ginger here again (overwintered beautifully in the house), some tillandsias mounted onto my Mendillina magnificarum, and my vanda orchid has a hanger this year! I feel like it's a little more fun than danginging it from a tree. Thanks for looking! 

I am really excited for my Musa Sikkimensis to fill out and I'm hoping my Spindle palm doesn't burn, so far it still looks good!

Moving hundreds of plants from South Carolina to New York!

Start spreading the news - I'm back in New York full-time! When I started this blog 10 years ago, I was just finishing high school and entering college. I went away to school (less than an hour away), so it was easy to keep up with my quirky garden hobby at my parents' house and share my ramblings on this page. You all have helped inspire me to keep gardening even when I moved south after college to start my career in Meteorology in Florida and later, South Carolina. I had a ton of fun gardening down there for 6 years (pics below!)

Florida 2019

Florida 2019

Florida 2019

South Carolina 2021

It was tough to go back and forth to New York to bring the tropical plants inside the house over the winter and cover up the outdoor palms. I still managed as you can see with all the blog posts after 2017. But now things are going to get a lot busier in the NY garden! This summer I started a new job as a meteorologist on Long Island. Now you'll be able to see two of my tropical yards, one on Long Island and one on Staten Island!

How to move with your plants

This was the trailer that carried all my plants. It was 10 feet wide and 20 feet long and PACKED with plants

Before I show you what I've been up to this summer in the garden, let me give you a little look back at the move. In South Carolina, I had a 4th-floor apartment and a balcony filled with hundreds of tropical plants. You can imagine it was tough bringing those plants down the stairs, in a trailer, and halfway across the east coast. Here are a few photos of what it looked like! 

Also, a heads up: certain plants cannot be moved between certain state lines to reduce the spread of diseases (like citrus for Florida). When I left Florida, I had a certificate from the Florida Department of Agriculture to go with my plants to prove they were pest free and that I wasn't carrying any plants illegally. 

A few years ago, I was able to get a moving company to bring my plants to my new place, but this go around none of the moving companies were willing to move plants on their trucks. This means the best option right now is to rent a truck and drive it yourself. Most truck rentals are not climate-controlled in the storage section, so you'll ideally want to drive your plants at night during the summer months and through above-freezing temperatures in the wintertime.

The plumeria were beginning to bloom so I had to protect them with paper towels and tape.

All the plants survived the move! And as you can see below they were a lot of plants! They made a mess though because nearly every single glass pot broke along the way. A leaf blower was a good investment!

New Plant Purchase! Tillandsia (sp?)

I love air plants. I've been fascinated with them since I was a kid and brought some from an airport growing out of a plastic shell (I still have that shell). I've been looking for a giant sized Tillandsia since I went to the Virgin Islands years ago and saw them growing all over the trees. I wouldn't have expected to find exactly what I was looking for in Manhattan!
It's home for the summer is on my largest Plumeria. I think it may be a T. utriculata but I'm not 100% sure. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me about bromeliads will come along!

The store had SO MANY cool things in it. It was a floral arrangement store with all tropical stuff. I was in heaven, they had so many unusual tropical foliage and flowers to use for arrangements. Helconia flowers, giant coconut palm, sago palm, and bismarkia fronds, TONS of different ginger flowers, an entire stem of bananas, flower included, sprouting coconut palms, I can go on and on about it but I'll show you a few pics instead!

A nice day in the city for sure today! 

Summer 2013 Summary

I've been working hard over the past few days to prepare everything for summer. In the front yard I am working on having more planting space than ever before. Last year I redid the bed in the side of my front yard by the driveway, this year I'm making a new planting bed right near the walkway that leads into my backyard.
The pool area in the backyard has been neglected so far, but I'm hoping to fill that area up with a lot of nice plants this weekend.
Here's a summary of last summer in my yard to inspire me to keep up the effort!