Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender'

This gorgeous evergreen, quick-growing, herbaceous perennial is a definite favourite for this dry tropics gardener.  This fabulous showy compact plant belongs to the Lamiaceae or Mint family.  It's a beautiful hybrid of Plectranthus saccatus and Plectranthus hilliardiae, developed in South Africa, and well-suited to a hot, dry climate.

Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' loves to grow in a shaded to semi-shade location with a moist but well drained soil.  It will form a small, dense, rounded shrub, reaching around 1 metre in height if planted out in the garden.  I grow two Mona's as potted plants, and they only reach around half that height!

The foliage of this Plectranthus is so attractive.  It has dark green glossy leaves with a purple-coloured underside ... but it's the dainty little flowers that are simply stunning.  I absolutely love the frothy, frilly purple cloud that appears when it's in full bloom.  'Mona Lavender' produces spikes of lavender coloured flowers that are dashed with purple markings.  They look a bit like cute little mini-orchids!

The flowers usually appear in early Summer and last right through to late Autumn. The plant will die back a little during the Winter here, so it's a great idea to give it a good trim at the end of Autumn, after flowering.  This will help maintain a neat shape and encourage denser foliage.  Fertilise with a slow release fertiliser during early Spring and you will be rewarded with a fabulous display.

Out In The Twilight Zone .... The Great Bulb Experiment!

I've started a new project this year ... and I feel that I'm now another giant step closer to being a bit of a gardening lunatic!   


When I first joined the gardening website world there was one thing that just blew me away.  There are gardeners out there who go to (what I would consider) extraordinary lengths to grow plants not at all suited to their garden's particular location or climate.


When I found out about these gardeners, I honestly thought they were right out there ... in the Twilight Zone.  (Those of us of a certain age will know exactly what that means.  For those who don't ...   it's to do with an old TV Show all about weird stuff! ... and not about vampires or werewolves!)

Now I must admit, I have seen my father ... many, many years ago ... stuffing cotton wool balls between the petals of his roses just before he loaded them into the car to take to a Flower Show ... and as a child I thought he was slightly deranged, but it seems this was nothing compared to some!!!!! 
There are gardeners who plant tree ferns in areas that get inches of snow and lots and lots of frost.

These poor old tree ferns have to be radically trimmed, wear hats and get wrapped in plastic!!! 

These gardeners might also wrap up their plants in fleece or pack them in straw to protect them from the elements.

Their garden must surely look so strange at these times of the year with these freaky caterpillar-looking shapes all over the place!


There are gardeners who grow plants in greenhouses lined in bubble wrap and/or aluminium foil with heaters blazing away for hours on end.  Seeds are raised on heated trays in heated greenhouses ... such vast amounts of energy used just to get seeds to germinate.  I have to admit I was completely unaware that these things happened.

In my part of the world ... and now I'm speaking from my somewhat limited experience as a serious gardener ... most gardeners here grow plants that are fairly well suited to the climate, weather conditions and the type of soil.

Of course we don't get snow, hail or frost here ... although, included in the list of horrid conditions we do get, are the endless days of relentless sun-baking.  But I've never seen a gardener covering their plants with umbrellas or sloshing sunscreen all over them.

Although we do grow some plants in sunshade-covered greenhouses or in pots under patio roofs for protection, I don't consider that very strange ... I would however consider it very odd if we enclosed our greenhouses and added air-conditioning!!!  This would be the comparable action to heating greenhouses ... wouldn't it?


Our approach tends to be - choose plants that are suited to the conditions, prepare the garden bed, fertilize when needed and use pest treatment if necessary.  But aside from watering them and maybe having a general conversation with them, plants don't receive extraordinary, out-of-the-ordinary attention once they're in the ground or pot.   If they die ... oh well ... try something else better suited!  If they thrive ... fantastic ... and we'll water them and feed them to keep them going.

Well ... I've now been infected with the 'let's-try-something-completely-out-there' gardening disease! I completely blame fellow online gardeners and bloggers ... yes it's all your fault!   This year I purchased bulbs that are far more suited to the more temperate/cooler areas of our great country.  They were labelled in the catalogue as 'Hot Climate Bulbs' ... so I ridiculously decided to put MY money where THEIR mouth was!
I am pretty convinced that didn't really mean my particular hot part of Oz ... but muggins here waded in hook, line and sinker.

Yes ... your eyes are not deceiving you!  There's Jonquils ... for heaven sake!!!  Am I completely nuts?  This is the tropics ... with over 300 days of temps that hover around the 30 degrees C mark and humidity levels that are usually up around 80-90% .... hardly every drop below 60%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway ... my bulbs arrived on March 1st, which is the first day of our Autumn, and ... after a rather strange conversation with a person at the online nursery that sent these ... I promptly placed them in my downstairs fridge until our Winter had begun.  Yes ... occasionally I would open the fridge door and have a little chat ... well I had reached the depths of weirdness anyway by purchasing them in the first place, so it didn't seem that out of place!

Strangely, some of the bulbs began to sprout in the fridge by the beginning of June ... our first Winter month ... so I got them out and planted them up.  I had to read instructions about how to plant them ... having had absolutely no experience with these plants whatsoever!!!

This was June 6 ... instructions carefully laid out and a ruler for measuring depths!!!  You can see some of the bulbs that have sprouted sitting on the table.  Well ... nutso here crossed her fingers, toes and eyes (rather like my children when they were very young and naive) hoping all would be well ... and placed all the containers in the greenhouse, except for the container with the Jonquils.  That one went back into the fridge ... until the daytime temps. dropped even more.

OK ... so how has the experiment gone so far? ... I can hear you all asking!

WEEK 1:  we have lift-off!

WEEK 2:  still reaching for the sky!

WEEK 3:  everything's taken off!  Think the poor Hyacinths need staking however!

Now I know you're just as fascinated as I ... but I won't bore you with more collages of the week-by-week growth ... needless to say, I'm astounded that any of them took off, let alone all of them.

Ah ... but what about those Jonquils I hear you ask!  Well the container of Chincherinchees and Jonquils came out of the fridge about a week and a half ago and here they are ..... un-be-liev-able!! 

To top all this off ... before I went off on my visit to see my boys and grandchildren, another package of Asiatic bulbs arrived.  All I had time to do was to open the plastic bags and leave them on a shelf in my Greenhouse Garden.  This is what happened while I was away ...

Now, unfortunately I've had a visit to the hospital since I've been home and I'm still recovering, so these poor things are still out there on the shelf ... and still growing madly.  I desperately needs more pots!!!  I am truly, truly reaching the depths of complete gardening insanity.  Hubbie thinks I need help!

The Courtyard Garden - late Autumn, 2010. Another video diary to keep track of the progress.

Adding potted plants to my Courtyard Garden was a project I began at the beginning of last year.  I had grown very tired of the whole area ... it was drab and boring!  It was surrounded with garden beds full of green plants.  I craved other colours... and flowers!

This is a photo showing an early attempt at adding some colour ...

Whilst there are a few flowering shrubs ... mostly hibiscus shrubs with red blooms ... and a couple of flowering trees ... the blooms tend to be very, very high up!!!!!   My garden beds are certainly not flower-filled!  So, I decided to start a potted garden in my favourite garden space ... the garden that is the closest to our house and the space we spend a lot of time in.

Last year I added quite a few potted annuals and gradually started adding other great plants such as cordylines and coleus.  I was very pleased with the whole area by the end of winter and the beginning of spring.   Then came the summer ... and our 'wet' season.  Things did not go well.  I certainly learned a lot of valuable lessons ...
Pelargoniums don't like being wet.
Torenias don't like endless overcast days.
Nor do Aralias.
The hordes of grasshoppers that come with the rains love to eat Cordylines.
Calibrachoa hates both heat and humidity.  They're not all that keen about lots of heavy rain either.
There's some sort of pest that hovers in my garden and loves to wipe out any Verbena that comes close!!!

Well ... lessons learned ... and time to start anew.  So ... after a rather long period of rain and endless cloudy overcast days, I've finished potting up lots of new plants ready for another go! Now I can't wait for the blooms to appear!  The following videos are my record of the potted plants out in the courtyard at the end of Autumn.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3: