H. scheideana blooms every year for me here in Berkeley, and is certainly evergreen in a wind protected and dappled shade setting, with lots of fertilizer and water as long as it doesn't freeze. It truly is adapted to our cool winter weather, because it pushes both flowers and new foliage for me even when temps get down into the hight 30'sF. There are also several other more commonly available species that will also do as well outdoors as long as the foliage doesn't freeze. These include H. latispatha, H. spissa, H. bourgeana, H. aurantiaca, H. matthiasae. Some of these can be bought online from suppliers such as Aloha Tropicals, or Stokes Tropicals in Louisiana. There are a few other suppliers in Southern California, but they don't ship. For those here in the SF Bay Area, getting the H. scheideana thru Monterey Bay Nursery is probably the easiest solution. Don't count on any of them flowering if you can't get the plant through the winter without freezing, as we just don't get hot enough to get blooms on new growth in less than a year, like they can in south Florida. Anyone growing 30 kinds of Heliconia in California has quite a collection, but I am willing to bet that over half of those varieties need a lot of help to get through a wet/cold winter, and are even less likely to survive year round outdoors here in northern California. If you stick with the kinds from higher elevation cloudforests in Southern Mexico, you can have thriving blooming clumps. Check out the Palmetum at Lake Merritt in Oakland to see a large clump of H. scheideana in bloom now. I do have some friends growing them in Sunset zone 15 conditions rather than 16 or 17, but you risk losing them to frost and never seeing them bloom.

Made a huge bouquet of Lemon Spice this morning and found a lot of ants in one of the blooms. VV, was that you that had ants eating your First Crush? What did you do? The ants might eat my new green lacewing eggs also and I need them for the aphids! Khalid, yours is a timely post for me! I haven't seen mildew at all and this morning I see what appears to be mildew on the new plants that I bought from Home Depot. They are my first grafted ones and were so inexpensive that I couldn't resist. I'm also wondering if it could be some sort of fungicide oozing out of the leaves? I questioned one of the nurseries about that when some arrived looking that way last fall and they said that it was fungicide, which I wasn't thrilled about. I've had these for two weeks though and it just appeared. Might try some milk on them also! When I did it last year, I sprayed every few days but not sure what the proper protocol is.

Pls let me know if anyone has any kind of bamboo to share. Thank you!

We are in zone 9b, Riverside County, CA near Temecula and we have 4 blood oranges in the front yard. They are beautiful all year and would provide a screen, but our yard is huge, and they are far apart. On the side we have a Manila mango with amazing growth. Macadamias grow large and we have the Beaumont variety too, along with Bearss lime and a couple regular oranges and a couple lemons. One lemon is enough, but someone threw a seed down and a random lemon grew. Those lemons are tiny and I love them. They are culinary (not sweet) so every night I squeeze one over an avocado, and put it in a green salad with oil, salt and pepper for dinner. Lemon rinds and juice will freeze also. If you want height, get the standard size citrus. Anything fruiting will produce fruit, and at some point your neighbors won't want any more and you will say "STOP!" but they don't. :-) I LOVE fig trees but they go dormant in winter. Awesome shade in summer. Before you buy check the watering and fertilization requirements. Mangos LOVE water!