Flower of the Season - Autumn 2008

It is now late autumn in Australia and this beauty Tibouchina lepidota has been flowering for several months now. In the suburbs of Sydney, if you go for a drive or take the train, you will see this shrub in every second garden it is so popular. It is my Flower of the Season for 2008.

This plant is in my front garden and was only planted 18 months ago. I thought I lost it last winter due to some heavy frosts in the area had turned some of the stems black and it lost all its leaves. I was patient and waited til late spring to prune the dead stuff off. It is now almost a mitre tall and covered with flowers.

These plants originally came from Ecuador and Colombia, which are pretty steamy places. I don't think they get frosts there. Thats basically the only problem with these plants is lack of tolerance of frosts but if you can get them to live for a couple of years, you've won the battle to keep them thriving. All I do during the year is to give them a feed with all purpose slow release fertilizer in spring (after pruning of course) a deep watering once a week during the warmer months and try to protect from frost in the cooler months and thats it.

Regarding frosts, make sure you deeply mulch around the bush and could try one of the polymer sprays which are commercially available. In Australia there is a product by Yates called "Stressguard" this works a treat and have used for many years on a variety of plants.

Doug.