Perfect time for buds to bloom

by Elizabeth Shaheen
This is a heavenly time of year. The garden is lush and things are popping up roses, as the saying goes.

We have been so fortunate in having early rain, which has not only washed all the garden performers beautifully clean, it has urged, along with the cooling of temperature, the seeds to awake from their dormant state and take up their role in the garden scene.

As I strolled through the garden this morning, I took note of what was in bloom.

The climber Tristellateia australasiae has performed for months on end and is a wall of clear yellow blooms, each one set off by scarlet stamens.

The bragging trumpets of the hybrid Hippeastrums are putting on a grand performance. These are those that I planted in October.

Those that have been in the garden for several years will bloom from late March into May.

Zephyranthes candida adds sparkle to the garden with its crystal white, up-turned trumpets.

The smaller form Zephyranthes rosea adds gentile edging to several areas of the garden, so closely growing that a deep, rose-pink swathes the outline of borders.

As for Zephyranthes grandiflora with its larger soft-pink trumpets, well, these fit in nicely between the shrubs to the fore of borders.

Zephyranthes citrina is eye-catching with its strong lemon trumpets. I have a peach form, which I suspect is a cross between citrina and rosea.

Jatropha integerrima fills a corner of a border. I have trained it as a standard and its widespread crown acts as a focal point. This beauty’s natural domicile is the West Indies and puts out bloom almost year-round.

The inch-wide flowers are a brilliant scarlet. Another form in the garden has china-pink flowers and yet another has rosy-red.

The charming, weeping stems of Podranea ricasoliana display loose clusters of five-lobed bugle-shaped pink flowers. Their hearts are white, rimmed with a stronger pink and rich-red veins travel deep into their throats.

Punctuating some borders planted in drifts or clumps are the blazing hues of Canna x generalis and Canna indica.

Canna ‘Striata’ has the most striking and surreal foliage, with dark red-purple stems and light green to yellow-green leaves. The sun passing through the foliage is indeed a magnificent sight.

Growing in shady areas, hugging the ground and forming neat edges, is Drimiopsis kirkii.

This bulbous plant has fleshy blue-green leaves, marbled in dark blotches, which are at their best when grown in shade. Those growing in full sun die-down in summer, but are now coming into their own again as the weather cools.

I wouldn’t be without the sensual perfume that wafts from the small white plumes of Buddleja paniculata. It takes centre stage in a border close to the house so as that I might easily reach for a stem to hold to my nose and inhale its exotic generosity. Buddleja davidii readily germinates from seed in autumn and blooms in its first season in March.

Lighting up several areas of the garden are the buttercup-yellow blooms of Turnera ulmifolia. This small herb self-sows at a drop of a hat.

The prickly shrub Barleria lupulina is another self-seeder and just as well, for the mother plants are short-lived. The open-mouthed, yellow-cream flowers are most attractive; as too are the red-veined, linear, dark green leaves.

I like the low growing cultivars of Lantana camara with their colours ranging from snow-white to rich to soft yellow to cream and salmon-pink to red to purple, with each flower-head reminiscent of a tiny posy.

What’s more, these small plants are busy much of the year brightening up borders and pots.

Clerodendrum splendens scales a date palm trunk with the aid of additional support, for it is not equipped with sticky pads, hooks nor tendrils to aid its ascent.

Radiant, salverform, scarlet flowers form in dense terminal panicles set against glossy, rich green leaves.

From afar, the bright pink to crimson trumpets of Adenium obesum can be seen.

Native to Arabia and East Africa, this is a perfect plant for our conditions provided that it is given plenty of sun and planted in a free-draining soil.

Propagated from cuttings, this plant will not form the obese, often twisted, trunk, which is dusty-grey-green in colour.

This only develops when the plant is propagated from seed.

Our garden enjoys several cultivars and hybrids of this succulent, ranging from white, mauve, pale pink, red striped white with yellow veins and ox-blood red.

These cultivars have been grafted onto the species.

Ixora rivals hibiscus as a garden shrub and it has won even greater favour with me this year, for it was one of the few plants in our garden that escaped the mealy bug infestation. Ixora javanica is a sizeable shrub bearing generous-sized, rounded clusters of red-orange or pure red flowers. A smaller form is Ixora coccinea, which arrives in shades of sizzling orange, reds, yellows, pinks and white. Dwarf varieties are available which are planted to the front of a border.

However, it is Ixora finlaysoniana that rewards us with a sensational perfume released from its milk-white flowers that are so tightly packed into a large-balled cluster.

On my recent visits to the local nurseries, I noted that Vinca major the ‘Greater periwinkle’, was only available from one nursery on Budaiya Road, near to the entrance of Jawads.

Most had hybrids of it, but these only last a season. It is not only an important medicinal herb, but also the flowers, arriving in purple, cerise, mauve, pink, salmon and white. Colour the garden throughout the year and it is an ideal plant for spilling its rounded form over pathways.

I can’t think who would be without it? Sadly, the nurseries said that it was so common that no-one wants it.

If things go on this way it will be scarce in Bahrain’s gardens and then everyone will want one and will then, hopefully, become in-vogue!

Well, there are many, many more plants in bloom as I write, but they will still be in bloom next week when I shall tell you about some of them.

Many of the plants mentioned today feature in my books Tropical Trees and Shrubs of Bahrain and Exotic Annuals & Perennials for Pots and Gardens in Bahrain.
Elizabeth Shaheen - GDN - 3 Dec, ‘06