Sadly Cupid`s Bow is somewhat out of fashion nowadays. That`s hard to understand for they are low-mainetance-plants with beautiful flowers in summer and autumn. It is a bit difficult to obtain one of the old hybrids. We were unlucky, too, for what we received under the name of `Ambroise Verschaffelt` ...

This bubble mint matches colour and scent to a perfect union. The flowers show a merry orange and the foliage is equaly merry mint-scented. Flowers and foliage are edible and make very good infusions. The plant comes from the southwest of the USA and grows on very dry soils. In the garden it prefers a sunny and sheltered spot with sharp ...

A rather hardy agava from Mexico and the neighbouring states of the USA. It produces a rosette with a diameter up to one meter and once in its lifetime a flower stalk that reaches up to three meters. It is used to gain ixtle fiber, that can be used for brushes and the like. It is a home ...

This is one of the few Agava that proof hardy in Central Europe if keep under moisture protection during winter. It forms bluish-grey rosettes that are quite compact, usualy not exceeding 30 cms diameter. The flowering stalk will appear after several years and reaches a hight of about half a meter. The plant dies after flowering, but produces seed and also ...

In Central Europe Japanese Laurel is often used as a tub plant and only in the milder parts it is planted into the garden. We certainly do not live in one of the milder regions, but our Japanese Laurels grow here for many years without any winter protection (probably we were lucky and got a very frost resistent clone). All we did was choosing a place in light shadow for them, that protects ...

Bulbine became more widely known as an attractive low-care houseplant during the last few years. Especially herb-enthusiasts regard Bulbine as a good alternative to Aloe vera. Bubline contains almost the same active ingredients as Aloe vera, but it is by far not that prickly. Besides Bulbine gives better crops since it grows much faster.

Bottlebrushes do come from Australia, where they live in a large number of varieties. In Europe mainly hybrids are sold, very rarely the species. We were looking for a tub plant that could be winterized without trouble in our unheated greenhouse and came across Callistemon rigidus. It show the typical ...

Here is a plant for all those who dislike botanical names. It got just one common name in English, and this name is taken from Maori: Purei. Much easier to remember than Carex secta - isn`t it? As the name indicates Purei comes from New Zealand. There it grows in swamps of the southern island...

`Hilo Beauty` is something unique among the Taros. It is a smaller variety and its foliage is always heavily mottled.

This is one of the varieties that is used as a vegetable in the tropics. The foliage is dark green or sometimes even black and it may exceed one meter length (in Europe it remains much smaller). The tubers are used to gain starch. If you intend to harvest it for food, you will need to...

In the USA this Taro is called `Imperial Taro`. It`s its size that makes it imperial, for it can reach up to 1.5 m height. The foliage is consequently also very large and quite attractively coloured (olive with purple hue).

Colocasias are tropical aroids. The best known of them is taro, an important vegetable in the tropics.  `Black Magic` grows to about a meter has violet-brownish leafs that resemble an elefants ear. If you want to see an elefant with its ears aglow, you may consider to plant...

`Fontanesii` got green foliage with red stalks. Sometimes the leafs got a light coppery hue. In the garden it can become quite large and in warm summers it reach more than two meters hight. If autumn is sunny, too, you may expect a typical aroid flower that is papaya-scented.

Toe Toe Grass is the New Zealand version of Pampas Grass. That`s no joke. The genus Cortaderia (= Pampas Grass) got a very strange distribution: the southern tip of South America, New Zealand and New Guinee. Once all these regions and Antarctica formed the supercontinent Gondwana. The Pampas...

All Ice Plants (there are about 100 species) come from Southafrica. Most are not hardy here. This one we received via the USA and it stood several severe winters here without damage. It is not the frost that endangers the plant, it is winter wetness it can`t stand. We keep it...

 This gum comes from the extreme southeast of Australia, from Victoria. It is a region where in higher altitudes frost during winter is possible and this fact makes plants from Victoria exspecially interesting for us. The Omeo Gum is probably the hardiest of its genus. American books on gardening regard it as a hardiness zone 6 tree (in Germany the region along the Rhine river is zone 6), for hardiness zone 5 (that`s ...

This one comes from Chile where it is to be found from the coast to up to the mountains. It forms a rosette of long slender leaves that turn scarlet red from the centre of the plant. In its home it grows both epiphytic on trees and lithophytic on rocks. Over the years it becomes a very large and showy plant.  

 Ginger that is used in the kitchen is a difficult to keep plant outside the tropics. Fortunately it got a number of relatives that are far less demanding. One of them is the Butterfly-Ginger. It is a perfect tub plant, satisfied with a sunny position on the patio. If given ample food you can expect ...

One generation back this was the typical plant of class rooms. It was a perfect example of vegetative propagation, for it develops hundreds of plantletts on its leaves, and most of all: it is robust, robust and robust. It survived scatterbrained plant-care duties as well as weeks of summer vacations without any watering at all ...

The Dawn Redwood was quite successfull in hiding from the botanists. It wasn`t a question of size, for in its home it grows as high as 40 meters. Relatives of this tree were well known to botanists, but only as 70 million years old fossiles from coal mines in Manchuria. It was generally accepted ...