Ideas for: Dark red leaf trees/bushes, PacificNW (8b)
Chris G.
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
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The Logician LLC
5 years agoChris G.
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Lush Tropical Pacific NW Garden/Yard
Comments (41)Amongst the best palms for the PNW would be the Windmill Palm, Trachycarpus fortunei, which is the palm in the pool photo. Other species of this genus to look for would include the more refined leaf form of T. wagneriana or T. takil. A smaller growing fan palm that is also perfectly hardy is the Mediterranean Fan Palm, Chamaerops humilis. There is also a lovely silver leafed version, C. humilis var cerifera. You might also be interested to try growing one of the hardier feather palms, such as Butia capitata, the Pindo Palm. Other subtropical plants that are often used in PNW gardens for a tropical effect would include the various Phormium hybrids, Cordyline australis hybrids and cultivars, and Beschorneria yuccoides. The silvery foliage of Astelias, which much resemble Phormiums in habit, are also quite hardy for Seattle, and would include the larger growing Astelia chathamica 'Silver Spear', and others such as A. nervosa 'Red Gem' or similar. Fatsia japonica is always a reliable tropical looking foliage plant. Usually not quite hardy as year round perennials in all but the mildest PNW locations, but great as temperennials, the Abutilons of all colors are great filler plants. Bergenia was already mentioned, but this is a great foliage plant that also blooms in late winter, and is fully hardy, coming from Russia. Winter deciduous subtropicals such as the various Hedychiums are also great, such as H. gardnerianum, H. flavescens, H. greenei. Cautleya spicata is also quite nice, and is quite colorful with summer blooms of red and yellow, and will even bloom in a fair amount of shade. My favorite Canna varieties for tropical flair would have to include the very tall growing C. ehemannii, which can get 10 feet tall, and has smaller rose red pendant flowers that cleanly drop off when done blooming. If you want dramatic foliage that is the equal of a Gunnera, you might also consider planting the Rice Paper Plant, Tetrapanax papyriferus, but this will probably be killed back to the roots in winter in most PNW locations. Melianthus major is another great foliage plant, but will often be killed back to the roots outside USDA zone 9a conditions. As to Acanthus, you should also look for the attractive A. spinosus, which has distinctive looking leaves. Acanthus does perfectly well in full sun in more coastal locations that don't get the baking summer heat of interior Oregon, but in its native Mediterranean habitats it will also quite willingly grow in full sun locations as well. In dry summer locations, it will go summer deciduous, and come back into growth with fall rains. In irrigated gardens, the yellowing, heat damaged foliage can simply be pruned off, and it will often push new foliage immediately if watered and fertilized, or can be allowed to wait until it cools off and starts raining again....See MoreLigustrums: What are they good for?
Comments (18)I don't like Ligustrum myself. But the former owner planted 5 out on our street corner bed to block noise and view in/out from the intersection. They froze off terribly in February's Snowpocalypse, with all leaves "crispy critters". These are well-estsablished plants at 6'-7'. My husband doesn't want to take them out, so we pruned them back to 4' this morning. Just in the last couple days they are showing new leaves pushing through on the branches, but only down low on the plants. We'll seee how things fo. I just planted 5 Ligustrum sinense 'Sunshine" in a mass planting direct in the ground out at the point of that v-shaped bed, beside the Ligustrum vulgares. They are grouped behind 6 "recovering" Giant Liriopes with a newly emerged rose bush in the front/center of the mass planting. I have no idea what type/color of rose it is, as it has been one spindly sick twig for 5 years and after a tree removal, is loving the new-found light and air. I need some color there and am eager for the "Sunshine" Ligustrums to take off. Love their golden leaf color in the sunshine, their shape, and best of all, that they are non-invasive!...See MoreNeed tree ideas to start off a L/S redo in front yard. (SE PA 7a)
Comments (36)When trimming, keep in mind that this is a matched set of “bookends,” so they should be exact, mirror image duplicates of each other as much as possible. I would think of the trimming project as a challenge … as if you were involved in a manufacturing process making a machine project on a lathe or something along those lines. It would not be at all detrimental to use a tape measure to double check dimensions for matching throughout the process. I would rough out the shapes of both before fine tuning either. The place to begin is standing back well away from them trying to envision what they are to become. If the shrub needs to be moved a little left, right or forward, this is the time to notice it and account for the adjustments you’ll need to make in the cutting. It really barely matters where the plant roots are located. If you the shrub to be 4” to the right, “move” it there with the cutting process. It’s important to envision the finished product before cutting because there is a substantial part of them that won’t get any cutting at all. If you just charged up on them and started hacking away, there’s a good chance you’d cut some wrong parts off. Since the pair of shrubs are matched, the first cuts to make should determine the height. (To match the pair, follow a line on the siding of the house as a guide. Don’t measure from the ground.) Keep in mind that you do NOT want to cut at the place where you envision the limits of the finished product to be (the red line in picture.) There are three reasons for this. As soon as you finish cutting the plant it’s going to grow and if you cut it at the finished height, in a short time it will grow too large. The second reason is because, even though you tried hard to make it a perfect shape, it’s not going to end up as perfect as you’d hoped for. Later, when you need to trim and try to perfect it again, you will want to be cutting only in the newer, softer, easier-to-cut foliage, rather than in the hard, sticky, woody portion. If you don’t cut a little smaller in the first place, you’ll probably end up where the next cutting has to dip somewhere into the woody portion of the plant again. This is a royal pain. If you make the plant a little smaller to begin with, it gives you a “cushion” against having this happen. In general, I find that people have a strong resistance to cutting the plant smaller (the blue line in the picture.) But do yourself a favor and get over this. If you mistakenly cut this plant to a stub, in two years you’d barely remember your error because it would be pretty large again. In cutting it just 6” less than you want it to be, in two months you’ll barely remember or notice that you did that. The third reason you want to cut the plant a little smaller than the “finished product size” is because the more foliage you remove from the top portion of the plant, the greater it is that you expose the bottom portion (the part that is undercut and desperately needs to grow) to more light and an improved chance of quicker growth. Between the yellow line (which represents the ground plane) in the picture and the shrub, there is nothing at all to cut … until you get higher up to the blue line. At this cavity at the lower portion of the shrubs, all the foliage will be left untouched so it can continue to grow as quickly as possible. The goal is to keep the upper portions of the shrub trimmed so that it shades the lower portions the least as possible. Even if you want the shrubs to be larger than what I'm showing, for now you should trim them as I'm showing because you're in a corrective phase trying to regain the lost lower foliage. In your second-to-last picture, it shows how a subordinate, adjacent shrub has encroached on the Yew, which is clearly the more important shrub. The lesser shrub should be trimmed such that this doesn't happen....See MoreOrdered a Red Lime Tree on a whim. Anybody growing one?
Comments (179)The Red lime fruits ,I'd say, a couple of times per year here. It's like it has three stages of fruit on and flowering again. That red like in the picture above it'll be in the winter. The fruit doesn't lose quality, I'd say it gets better like Centennial kumquat. I see people harvest the fruits way early. The fruits have to change color from yellow green stripes to yellow orange like variegated Minneola. Then the fruits are ready to eat out of hand and they get a bit bigger in size too. What they say about the cold tolerance, they are talking about a mature tree in the ground. We grow young trees in containers, so we have to protect them. My Red lime suffered last year from root rot or something. The limbs started to die. I almost lost it. So it's to weak to have all the fruits. I left a few and they are not looking that pretty this year. The LM got it really bad even though I treated it with the neem oil. But, it's alive and trying to grow back. I don't have a Rangpur lime, so I can't compare....See Moregardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
5 years agoChris G.
5 years agoSeniorBalloon
5 years agoChris G.
5 years agoEmbothrium
5 years agolast modified: 5 years ago
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gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)