Very nice! I am so envious.

Oh Angela!!

How wonderful to see your beautifully done pictorial of your gorgeous gardens and your lovely home! You would make us all want to move to Fla if we hadn't already endured 4 days of suffocating heat and humidity up North this past weekend...

In a few years your yard will be just a glorious blaze of color and then what will you do? Will a consummate landscape gardener such as yourself be satisfied until every blade of grass is turned into a garden?

Were those President Johnsons from me as I know I had some but can't remember who i sent the to! All your seedlings look great!

Donna

Looks 'BEAUTIFUL'........I'm curious as to what some of the other things are that you have planted in your front bed under the tree. Again it looks 'GREAT'

Cindy

WOW!! I am redoing the backyard beds this summer so that I can plant directly in the ground. Know that it will produce better results than growing in pots. Can't wait to see your photos from the end of this summer!

I went to a Caladium workshop and field trial (grading) last weekend, and of course came home and ordered 30 jumbo bulbs! (Expanding my plant comfort zone)
K

Thanks for the enthusiastic compliments!

Yes, Donna, the President Johnson's are yours. I also had good luck with your ebay #2, Charisma and I even got 2 of the exotica x mocca to grow! You are right about the heat+humidity! I was questioning my sanity a bit when I was out planting seedlings when it was 85 degrees and 100% humidity - lol. And that was at 9am. The heat index for later that day was 107! I think I'm about maxed out on how much garden I can tend - so I think the remaining grass is safe=) At least for now...

Cindy, thanks for your interest in the other plants. Starting at the back and moving forward, the red leaves are cannas, the lily pad looking things are Farfugium japonicum 'Giganteum' (Giant Leopard Plant), the spiky green ones are Iris Neomarica caerulea 'Regina' (giant brazilian iris), the bright red leaves are caladiums, and all of the rosette shaped plants in front are different types of bromeliads. And the blue blooms on the left are agapanthus. And there are several types of crinums in there that are hard to spot now. But they will grow in big in a year or two. The bright green vase like plants in the area that is underplanted with the hippeastrum seedlings is also a type of bromeliad. Moving from the north, the plants here all seem so exotic - very fun to landscape with! But amazingly, many of them are very easy care and low effort.

Ooh, have fun Kristy! I bet your caladium bulbs will be fabulous. They are great plants! Very showing and easy to grow here.

Hi Angela,

Wow, very lovely pictures of a beautiful well-kept place. I especially love the last one with all the caladiums, banana (or cannas?) and pineapple (?), great composition as a gardener/photographer. I'm curious about the soil mixture to germinate your seedlings in the ground. You seem to have the bark mix there. Did you have potting soil or coco coir in there too?

My

Thanks so much for sharing. My SESE went out today. Being a newbie to florida gardening I'm learning so much from so many here and for that I am so greatful! Hoping my shaded area will look half as nice once I can get it growing.

Cindy

Thank you My. The picture has cannas rather than bananas, and bromeliads that are not pineapples but are in the same plant family. As for soil, my native soil is essentially all sand. So drainage is excellent, but there are almost no nutrients. To prepare the beds, I did it on a large scale. We brought in 4 yards of compost, and topped each bed with 3-4 inches of compost (thank you hubby for the manual labor!). Here in FL, the weeds grow like mad if you just leave exposed rich compost. So I put down Pine Bark Fines on top of that 2-4 inches thick. I think we brought in 8 yards of that - we did these new beds as well as refreshing older beds. The pine is a great weed suppressant, and eventually breaks down in to a soil enriching component. The hippeastrum seeds won't germinate in the bark itself, nor would they be able to come up easily through 2-4 inches of bark on top the soil. So I scooped the bark back to bare compost in the spots where I wanted to sow my seeds. The thin layer of bark that has floated down off the ridges on top of the seeds was actually pushed there by rainfall. But doesn't seem that such a thin covering is causing the seeds difficulty. So I think that as long as your garden soil holds moisture, you should be able to germinate seeds in it just fine, with no amendments needed.

Cindy - I'll be on the lookout for your envelope.