Foliage Follow Up: September 2017

Welcome to my Foliage Follow-up for September.  Foliage Follow-Up is hosted by Pam Penick of Digging.  Click here to join in the fun!

I'm pretty sure the neighbors think we're building a jungle in the backyard.  That clearly is the only explanation for these pictures.  Our Tropical Garden around the pool is built on foliage.  It's mainly Elephant Ears (alocasia and colecacia), Bananas, and Cannas.  We have a palm, a hardy tapioca, a papaya and a few other plants to add variety.

 

You can barely see my "Garden Helper".  Don't worry about her, she has her trusty water cup, so she'll be fine as she traipses through the backyard jungle.

 

We have bananas of all shapes and sizes.

Some are towering over the fence.  The neighbors must wonder what is going on behind it.

One is even fruiting, unfortunately, it's fruit is too seedy to be edible.  I'll have to keep an eye on it though so I can cut one open when they are ready and see what "too seedy" looks like. I don't really think of bananas as having inedible seeds, so I'm pretty curious to check that out.

Here are a few of the different Elephant Ears we currently have.  It's amazing how much variety there is in these plants.

Here are few of our wild card plants.  They add delightful variety and texture to the garden.  You can learn more about our Papaya here and here.  I can say it has that our Papaya has been fabulous and hopefully it will become a regular in a new section of the garden we're currently working on.

We also bought a Hardy Tapioca this year.  As you can see it's taller than our privacy fence.  It is supposed to die back to the ground this winter and should regrow next spring.  It's been another surprise.  We love how tall it's gotten in it's first year.  Plus with all of the broad leaves we have, it's nice to have something with a different feel.

 

We also have a Talipariti tiliaceum 'Albo-variegatus' or an Variegated Sea Hibiscus.  We moved it from our old house and have been wintering it over in the greenhouse each winter.  It's gotten too big this year, so we won't be able to move it in.  It's a zone 10a-11 plant.  We're definitely not even close to that, so this will be our last year for this Variegated Sea Hibiscus.  We enjoy it, so maybe a new one is in our future, or maybe we'll find something new to take it's place.

It's new foliage comes out a reddish bronze.  So pretty!

Thanks for visiting our Tropical Garden and my Foliage Follow Up.