Category: heliconia

Su’s Neem Oil fixerupper .. !

Scale & mealy bug affected Citrus at Su’s
 

Get NEEM on your team …

Welcome to high summer and all its attendant pests and disease that can really spoil your gardening fun. I don’t often make product suggestions but Su Trathen has found Neem oil in her Balgowlah garden, to be an effective drench or foliar spray against  sap sucking insects and maybe even those pesky Stink Bugs, that can commandeer your best citrus in a few hot weeks.  Also effective against similar scaly attacks on orchids and especially patio pots like lush philodendron & spathiphyllum, susceptible to attack on dry foliage within overhanging eves or shade sails.

Clean citrus foliage within 9 days of application !

Its often the price we pay for a short summer holiday away, returning home to horrid plants looking a sticky mess.  Try Neem as a quick and easy way to restore them to good health !!  

 

Sub-tropical New Zealand

Heliconia bourgaeana, Russell Fransham's Matapouri Bay garden New Zealand
Heliconia bourgaeana, Russell Fransham’s Matapouri Bay garden New Zealand

Fellow Designer Russell Fransham at Matapouiri Bay, just north of Whangarei in New Zealand’s north island,

…where I found myself wandering around an impressive home garden of some 20 years or so. Interesting to see a few of the cool tollerant ginger family in heliconias like H. bourgaeana (shown beneath), H. subulata cv Thaysiana and H. tortuosa ‘Red Twist’ all flowering very well. I find the easy occurance of these in Russell’s garden very encouraging for us Australia’s east coast where minimum winter overnights would rarely descend beneath 7 or 8 degrees, against the Bay of Islands cooler 2 degrees and less.  

A nice smaller clumping palm in Dypsis baronii, (like a better version of Golden Cane Palm) combined well with bromeliads like Canistropsis billbergioides cv. Citron. and a lot of interesting tillandsia and vriesea aside from many spectacular flowering shrubs in Brugmansia hybrids & species like B. sanguinea.