The Shrub Queen – A Cross Cultural Experience
This is truly a cross cultural experience. The plants, while grown in South Florida, hail from both sides of our planet, Southeast Asia and Brazil. The terracotta man in the vase is an incense burner from Pier One that belonged to my brother in the late 1970’s. I am not sure exactly where he came from but the concept was Pre Columbian. I think.
The red and yellow swirling crab claws are the flower of a Blanchetiana Bromeliad, a native of the eastern side of Brazil. The plant itself is about four feet tall by six feet wide. It has been flowering for about six weeks, of course the flower is on the side I can’t really see unless I am turning the compost heap. So, I decided to cut it and enjoy it in the house as long as it lasted.
wild and crazy plants
These Bromeliads are relatively common in South Florida and I nearly wrecked my car the first time I saw one. Talk about wild and crazy plants, the foliage can be orange, red, green or yellow and it is big. Even though I had experience with Bromeliads I didn’t realize how big they grew. Another houseplant myth busted by Tropic Florida.
The foliage is a frond of a Lady Palm (Rhaphis excelsa). This palm is native to the Rainforest in Southeast Asia, an understory plant that enjoys shade and water. Relatively hardy, it will grown north to Orlando, and is a favorite of mine for interior use as a potted plant. I bought one a couple of years ago and it sat in the pot a little too long, so it is a bit lopsided and has finally recovered its healthy deep green color and need a little trim.
Here is a shot of my Rainforest Garden, where the Lady Palm lives.
Amelia Grant
A native of Atlanta, Georgia and extraordinarily well seasoned Landscape Architect/Designer/Writer. I began bouncing around South Florida in the late 1980’s selecting and buying plants for Shopping Mall Interiors I had designed.
Eventually my college roommate landed in Hobe Sound and I came to visit and fell in love with the Treasure Coast. My husband was on the verge of retiring from the practice of Architecture so we came down, bought a house near the Indian River and left the big city’s cold and the traffic far behind.
The blog began as an effort to fill what I considered a vacuum in good gardening information for the Treasure Coast. The Shrub Queen name is a nod to a long standing joke, my husband has called me this for years after one too many Architects asked me to “shrub something up”.
