Palm and Cycad Arboretum in Jacksonville

This is post #1 in a series all about cold hardy palms and cycads, as seen at the Florida State College of Jacksonville's palm arboretum.  There's a huge variety of specimens, ranging in hardiness from the ultra freeze proof windmill palm to the only slightly frost tolerant Alexandra Palm.  There are feather palms, clumping palms, fan palms, rare cycads, and even some bananas, white bird of paradise and bromeliads thrown in for the heck of it! 

Here's a medley of coontie cycad (in the foreground), queen sago, lady palm and the difficult to obtain spiny fiber palm.

When I attended this college, I was constantly staring at all the unusual shapes and forms at the arboretum, and its hard to say if my grades suffered or were improved by the diversion.  Now that I am fluent in the language of gardening, its especially rewarding to see all of the rare surprises they have in store, like the tightly packed unripe berries on the seashore palm. (following pic)

Critique
The Palm arboretum is fascinating for its informative collection, but from an aesthetic perspective I have to say it falls short of my expectations, not by any fault of the designers mind you.  The placement is perfect and the groupings of clustering smaller palms an sagos are great, but by consisting of palms exclusively the garden highlights the negative qualities of palms and cycads too.  Man cannot live on palms alone, for they cast little shade on a hot day, lack the softening qualities that dicots have, and visually get jumbled together without a backdrop of breezy dark green leaves.
I feel that palms are best used in the context of surrounding finer foliage to set off the architectural shapes, the way they would (usually) appear in nature.  Apart from Aechmea Distichantha bromeliads and parched looking turf, there is no groundcover to soothe the eye and make the architectural outlined of the palms "pop".  Throughout the arboretum there are no trees to add variety to the monotonous groupings, and accordingly there is no shade for the students to really utilize the space, except at the margins.

My humble recommendation is that FSCJ begins to install a modernist groundcover planting to complement the modern architecture of the main building.  To the left is an example of the Brazilian master landscape architect, Roberto Burle-Marx.  Take it or leave it, FSCJ South Campus, but your outstanding arts programs (I am an alumni) would be well represented by an homage to a great artist and architect.  I know of at least one person who would be willing to help with such a planting, and I'm sure that there are landscape architects who would be excited to give back to the community in a lasting way!

Cold Hardiness
The arboretum is an excellent educational tool to see what palms were able to handle a couple of record breaking winters.  Some palms sustained damage, and at least one is now dead.  The Foxtail Palm is definitely dead, and though the crownshaft on the Picabeen Palm is green, there are no green leaves.  As you'll see in the photos, most of the palms fared pretty well!  Here is a listing of the specimens.

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_and_Cycad_Arboretum
http://www.keywestherb.com/floridagarden/palms/fccj/index.htm

Stay tuned for the next post in this series, full of unusual cold hardy palms and helpful info!

Balcony Update (Pineapple Seedling!)

I just wanted to give a quick update on all the great happenings on my balcony!

First off, I'm very excited to say that I have officially germinated a pineapple seedling. Last year I bought a yummy pineapple that was apparently grown in Costa Rica, and found seeds along the edges of the pulp.  Most pineapples at the grocery store come from Hawaii and don't have seeds, since there are no hummingbirds to pollinate the flowers.  There are plenty of hummingbirds in Costa Rica though.
I hurriedly planted the seeds in a communal pot for epiphytic fruit, alongside my dragonfruit and rhipsalis seeds.  (rhipsalis berries are edible)  The dragonfruit sprouted in fall along with the rhipsalis, but I had just about given up on the pineapple seeds when I found a tiny rosette of stiff leaves the other day!  I didn't plant anything else in there, but after I double checked some photos online, I can say with certainty that it is a pineapple!  I know that planting slips is the easiest and quickest way to grow pineapples, but you don't understand!  I sprouted a bromeliad seed!  And pineapples are supposedly hard to grow from seed too, but it seems that all you have to do is wait a year or so.  Heres a blurry picture.

The pineapple seedling is the green speck out in the open.  Amazingly, it already has five leaves unfurled at that miniscule size.

You can see that my pink velvet banana seedlings are really taking off too!

I also decided to plant my pre-bonsai creeping fig in a carved out chunk of coquina limestone.  That way I can train it as a lithophyte, and make it cling to the rock as if its at the edge of existence.  Once I sculpt it into a gnarled tree form I can even plant it with some tiny orchids or bromeliads!  This will be one awesome centerpiece.

This is caterpillar grazed passionflower "lavender lady" that I got for a buck.  One day later and it was already starting to leaf out!  Although this variety only bears empty "maypop" fruits, I can still use it to pollinate my other passionflowers.  It will look pretty too.

This was labeled as "Thai ginger" but is actually alpinia galangal, the galangal of southeast Asian cuisine!  Its also one of the few gingers that actually blooms every year even if its been frozen back, so maybe I'll get flowers too!  This one's going alongside the culinary ginger and lemongrass in my courtyard garden.

Something else that's pretty cool but unphotographed is that my snake plant leaf cutting has finally sprouted too!  It won't have the yellow margins that its mother plant had, but I'm just excited that I managed to salvage a snake plant that got crown rot! 

Coming soon... Cold Hardy Palms at the Palm Arboretum!

Filled in a Little More of the Garden!

This little spot in my border has been left empty after this winter, after the blood banana and tree fern sadly bit the dust.  The little bush to the right of the birdbath is a gardenia and its handled the cold and waterlogged soil for the last couple of years, but its a compact variety.  I went to my local Ace Hardware nursery and they gave me a great deal on some "Mystery" Gardenias, marked down for their lankiness.  I even got a very affordable bottlebrush since it was scrawny and a bit rootbound.  I actually like the trunk's ancient form more anyways!

This is the same spot after its been filled.  What a difference!  I pruned out the smaller branches on the gardenias and just left several strong trunks in place, which will be tip pruned after they've been established.  I plan on employing the Japanese niwaki pruning technique (like bonsai but bigger) on most of my shrubs, but the gardenia are actually at a good enough size to start on.  I'll make individual canopies from the tips of each branch to give an illusion of depth and space. 
The bottlebrush will simply be trained to grow several contorted trunks by pruning and shaping with twine.  It isn't big enough to cut the leader yet, but I can slowly limb it up so that it focuses its energy on getting taller. 

Here's another before picture...

And after!

You'll notice that the bottlebrush is pretty close to the picabeen palm, and it was intentional!  I planted it there to help protect the cold tender palm and I'll also wrap the palm's trunk in winter.  My weeping bottlebrush is on the other side of the palm as well, so the palm's crown should be okay.

Because the soil is rather waterlogged, I sat the rootballs at only half their height and mounded up the soil around the roots.

I even raised up the soil to one side of the dead tree fern trunk and planted some bromeliads in leaf mould.  My hope is that they will eventually climb the bottlebrush.  Oh, and to the left you can see my turmeric and shampoo gingers popping up!  Just imagine seeing bright red Vriesea flowers and shampoo ginger cones in the same scene!  The more canopy I get in there, the more bromeliads I can get away with growing on the trunks.

I'm really excited because now I have another hardy evergreen tree to shade my rainforest garden and protect the plants from frost.  I guess I do need trees to emulate a rainforest after all...

McKee Botanical Gardens

Neoregelias crowning an old stump.

Last year I visited McKee botanical gardens in Vero Beach and now that I have a blog, I figured I'd share some photos, even if I had to scan them the old fashioned way from prints.
Personally, I preferred it to Fairchild in Miami, if only for the smaller scale and more abundant shade.  Even though Fairchild is a bit more expansive, at Mckee I was able to spend more time exploring since I wasn't baking in the South Florida sun!  There's a huge variety of plants, great landscape design, and even a gift shop worth checking out.  I even picked up some seeds there!

Aechmea Blanchetiana, orange form

Aechmea Blanchetiana, green form

A bed of Neoregelias

Billbergia Pyramidalis

A huge Pitcairnia species, unlabeled.  Pitcairnia are among the most primitive bromeliads.

My favorite Palm, Arenga Engleri or Dwarf Sugar Palm!  This guy's hardy in zone 9a and can be found at the FSCJ south campus in Jacksonville too.

A licuala palm, and wait... is that a dinosaur in the background?

Be sure to check McKee botanical gardens out for yourself!

Radicalis Palm, Dragonfruit, and Pink Banana Seedlings

Those of you who follow my blog may remember that I planted seeds of pink velvet bananas, radicalis palm, wild coffee, magnolia and coontie at different times in the last year.  Today I'll show you the progress I've made so far!  (Please pardon the bad cell phone pics...)

These are my pink velvet banana (musa velutina) seedlings that I got in a kit for kids at my local Winn Dixie!  I can see why the manufacturers found these kid appropriate, since they really were that easy to germinate.  And who in their right mind wouldn't want to grow their own bananas from seed?  My only complaint is that there's no warning on the label to inform people that their tasty bananas will also have tooth shattering seeds.  Pink velvet bananas are reportedly tasty, but those seeds are diamond hard!
I want to keep them containerized for their first year if possible.  Does anyone know if they can be grown in a brightly lit area with no direct sunlight?  I would like to keep them on my balcony until they're tough enough to withstand the dog and winter.

I started these dragonfruit seedlings last fall from a store bought fruit!  Now they're sprawling all over the place in search of light, and I'm worried that they'll need full sunlight.  I know they need it to fruit, but I would rather wait til they're bigger and dog resistant.  Thrown in with the dragonfruit are some rhipsalis seedlings, also epiphytic cacti!  I obtained those from berries on my plant, which are sweet and edible by the way.  They're so small you only see them as green specks in this photo. Since they're very shade tolerant, the dragonfruit growing over them shouldn't be a problem, even though they're ready to hang out of the pot!  My foot is seen under the chair for a size comparison.

The most exciting seeds to pop up this month are the Chamaedorea Radicalis seedlings, planted from red berries on my aerial trunked form.  I hand pollinated some of the flowers with the pollen of a neighboring chamaedorea microspadix, or hardy bamboo palm, so it would be pretty cool if I crossed the two.  Its been done before, but the cross combines the clumping habit of bamboo palm with the longer leaves of radicalis.
Even if they're just simply radicalis, that's still great!  Radicalis is simply the most tropical looking cold hardy palm you can get, and all pygmy date palms around here should be traded out in favor of these much hardier palms from the mountains of northern mexico.  See my Radicalis an Microspadix Plant Profile for more info.

I started this one from a fruit as well, and although its still pretty small I am impressed with its tight form even when grown in the shade.  This is an invasive exotic in zone 9b and up, so please choose one of the much tastier and better behaved varieties if you live further south.  This is a lot hardier than many of its brethren in the Eugenia genus, so I'm going to grow it on... unless I find a Cherry of the Rio Grande, another cold hardy relative with better fruit and less invasive tendencies.  Yes, the photo is a bit photoshopped to add drama.

Wild Coffee is a South Florida native, though I have seen it naturalized in coastal St. Johns and Flagler counties.  It is related to the true coffees, as well as gardenias, accounting for the rich and glossy foliage, which adds a tropical feel where a fine to medium textured plant is needed.  I also started these from seeds found in their fruit, and have included native coontie cycad seeds as well, which are putting out their third fronds now.  Both plants make a great understory planting in a native or tropical themed garden, but I might just keep them on the patio and enjoy their talents for looking great in the shade and... unreliable watering.  Here's a link to another post on this container planting!
Another interesting discovery I've made is that the magnolia seedling I thought I had is actually a cherimoya seedling!  You see, I have this unusual habit of throwing all my seeds together in pots instead of in individual trays.  That way I always have something going on in the container, the roots of germinated seeds help break the harder seed coats of other seeds, and the more prolific plants get the pests before the slower growing, more time intensive plants do. 
Anyways, I planted magnolia seedlings and cherimoya seeds (from a fruit) in the same container and now the mature leaves are definitely those of cherimoyas.  Hopefully I can keep it alive!  It will definitely be a container plant for now, since they aren't exactly cold hardy.  They don't like the hot and humid summers of south florida, so maybe by bringing it in from frosts it will be okay.

So what kind of unusual seeds have you guys been trying lately?

A Tropical Touch in a Native Garden

I'm lucky enough to have some woods behind my garden, so I thought I'd share some photos with you!  In a month or so I'm sure it will be flooded anyways, so I'm enjoying the ability to slip back there and check out the sights, like the bed of ferns in the photo above!
The dominant canopy consists of bald cypress, slash pine and sweet bay magnolia, while the secondary canopy is one of  yaupon and dahoon hollies, and red bay.  In the shrub layer I have mostly fetterbush, highlands blueberry, and saw palmetto, while the ground is covered with ferns and switchgrass.
Admittedly, I do have a couple of exotic tropicals thrown in for a touch of the rainforest, such as my cat palms, agapanthus, caladiums and bromeliads.

Isn't that caladium gorgeous in this setting?  The bulb inadvertently got thrown out with some lawn refuse about 5 years ago, and its been coming back every year despite annual flooding!  That's definitely not what any of my books would predict...

Below is a shot of a Billbergia bromeliad naturalized on a tree in the woods.  Yes they are that cold hardy!  Randomly placing epiphytes in the garden really does help to create the illusion of a rainforest, so I would recommend it to anyone who can get away with it.  Some other good ones for zone 9a are golden polypody, Japanese birdsnest fern, native tilladsias, staghorn ferns, resurrection fern and aechmea gamosepala.

Bloom day!

Lily of the Nile

Society Garlic

Neoregelia Spectabilis

Crape Myrtles

 Blood Lily

Bottlebrush

Butterfly Weed

Lily of the Nile, White

African Iris

I'm more of a foliage gardener anyways so I guess it shouldn't bother me too much that not much is in bloom right now, especially compared to all the other bloggers out there right now!  Right now I'm finding more excitement in my recently sprouted pink velvet banana seedlings and chaemadorea radicalis seedlings.  Next month I'll have more blooms though, I promise!

Snails, Katydids and Lizards!

I found this guy in my alocasias moving along from leaf to leaf at a much quicker pace than one would suspect for a mere snail!  When I picked him up, he stretched his neck out in every direction much like a fighting conch at the beach would.  This is a far cry from the round shelled snails that I would find as a kid in Germany!  Back there they would use a different method for controlling the populations of snails and slugs than the familiar salt trick; Germans would leave out stale beer and the snails and slugs would then get drunk and die of alcohol poisoning. 
I didn't see any reason to get rid of my snail though, since it didn't seem to be doing any damage.

These katydid nymphs actually are doing a lot of damage to my plants... these are the ones that killed the morning glories, butterfly weed and have been damaging my species cannas!  I'm refraining from killing them though, since they do have a place in my little ecosystem and will help feed my lizards, frogs and snakes.

Like this guy here, who was lounging on a leaf next to the snail!

My Garden in the Big Picture

This is my deeply personal post in which I say too much and ultimately apologize for not being more involved in the "blogosphere".  I'm sure every blogger does it after a while, so why not?
Lately I've been focusing on the big picture in my life, focusing on my portfolio and even deciding to finish my graphic design degree.  In order to do this I have had to take a position with more flexibility and less hours at my day job, which also translates to less money for plants and long drives to my parent's place where I garden.
I find it hard to focus on more than one thing, so its been difficult to balance a 45 hour job, freelance design, doing my laundry, and a blog on top of that.  As a kid I was the one who was too focused on the pretty butterfly landing on the soccer ball to even learn how to play the darn game, to give you an idea.
I love the show "Glee", but it seems like every episode Mr. Schuster comes up with another cheesy theme to tie the songs and plot together.  While I won't break out in song and dance, I find it appropriate to tie this post together with the theme "Big Picture".
I have been with the love of my life for over five years and we figured we might as well get married next year.  Eventually I'll get to share my excitement for life with the open mind and ears of our very own child.  Its definitely time for me to focus on the big picture and finish my degree so that I can have a fulfilling career and be able to support a family.  I'm not necessarily quitting or even taking a hiatus from blogging, I just consider you guys my friends by now and want you guys to know where I'm at these days, and why I've been laying kind of low lately.

Enough sappy crap, back to the garden stuff!  Although I love taking closeup shots, my favorite garden photos to look at are wide angled shots of the whole shebang... this way I can get inspiration for garden design, as well as see how other's gardens are doing.
Above is a panoramic shot of my garden right now, and that empty spot is where my variegated ginger got knocked back this winter.  I keep having to remind myself of how lush and full they'll be in time, but for the time being its just kind of an eyesore.  There's a good sized area where my groundcover of "evergreen giant" liriope was killed by my dog too, so I just have to look at it as a test of my patience.

Here's another more or less panoramic shot, and you can see the butterfly ginger reaching out over the creeping liriope in the back, doing much better than last year.  Finally, its getting too dense for the dog to destroy!

Up above I've got  a shot from the woods, with a mound of agapanthus in the foreground, my huge clump of alocasia "california" in the middle, and an assortment along the fence.  To the right is a rather harshly lit view along the fence thrown in for good measure.  I also want to note that the area around the birdbath is pretty empty for the time being, no thanks to the bananas that upped and died.  I'm considering an affordable bottlebrush behind the birdbath, which would also help protect the crown of the picabeen palm.  Besides, if I want to give the feeling of a rainforest, the more trees the better!
Now lets have a look at the courtyard garden...

Theres a lot to go over here!  The bottlebrush and pineapple guava have finally hit their stride, and will eventually help shade this sunny patio.  The lady palm and chamadoreas will take a while, but they'll also get taller someday, providing a little extra shade as well.  The bromeliads are all doing great, and producing pups to boot!

I really like the effect that the sunshine had on this photo.  The plant that stands out most is my bright orange neoregelia "tequila", but the most exciting ones to me at the moment are surrounding it.  To the right of the brom is a thriving clump of lemongrass, an essential component of a southeast Asian themed garden.  To the left and behind the bromeliad is a clump of edible ginger from the grocery store, and the stalks have a look more reminiscent of bamboo than other gingers.  This is of course, also really appropriate for an Asian garden.  Word to the wise; although edible ginger likes plenty of water, it suffers in the soggy soil that other gingers prefer.  Out of this photo and to the left is a huge alocasia macrorrhiza bulb, finally unfurling its first leaf... as well as sporting two suckers at the base!   Since this alocasia will be really architectural (huge), I've planted firecracker plants behind it so that their wispy foliage and tubular red flowers will form a nice contrast to the huge leaves.

Once again, Noel, African Aussie and Danger Garden... you won something so email me at "steve_asbell at yahoo.com"  (replace the "at" with @)