Going Tropical

This year I am craving to be surrounded by tropical plants, especially on my porch and the deck. Last week we visited our local nursery to talk to a landscaper about revamping our yard (will talk about that in detail next week). And there…I saw a jasmine. The sight of a jasmine plant never fails to bring up memories of back home, where every house has at least one of these. The white buds, fragrant flowers, leathery leaves, everything about this plant is pure nostalgia.  No, these are not easy grow and I have a history of killing my previous one (12 years ago) after which I had given up on them. However this time around I vowed to take extra special care and brought home a jasmine with me. 

I had big plans of buying plain terracotta pots and painting them for the porch until I saw this beauty at Home Goods. It was so pretty, in my favorite color, and was $12.99. I simply had to have it. There were two smaller versions, one for $9.99 and the other $7.99. I almost bought the smallest one. These ceramic planters are just decorative as they do not have a hole in the bottom. So I re-potted the jasmine into a larger pot and placed it into the planter.

With this gorgeous planter in the corner of the porch, the plain black planter on the side table (seen here) was looking so blah. So I headed to Home Goods to get the smallest version. By then the only thing left in the store was the medium size. Keeping with the interesting foliage theme, I decided to go with a fern for this one. Strangely enough all the big box stores carried only large ferns in hanging planters. Nothing else! And I ended up getting a red Gerbera daisy.

Here is a shot with both the planters in view.

Don’t you think the red Gerbera daisy goes really well with my pillows on the chairs? Happy accidents!

Out in the back, I posted about my water garden the other day and the elephant ears. Last month while checking out the seeds aisle at either Walmart or Home Depot (don’t remember) I saw these four o’clock seeds, again something that reminds me of home.

Some of it went into the same planter as the elephant ears (the bigger black one) and some into the smallest planter. I’ve saved some seeds…I don’t know what.

Oh, by the way the planter on the left, the only one showing some plant life, is the one that I moved from the side table on the porch to the back. No, those two dianthus’s aren’t dead. All my dianthus were hit by the low night temps 2 weeks ago. Those are slowly coming back to life.

Can’t help but share one more pic of the Gerbera daisy, you know….been experimenting with the DSLR. 🙂

Have been eyeing a bouganvilla too for the other side of the deck. Now need to convince B.

Out of all these the only plant that I hope will survive indoors in the winter is the jasmine. Do you guys have any tips?