Gold Coast Gardener

April 2, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Many times people complain that their landscapes simply lack enough color and here in the tropics where flowers abound there’s no reason you can’t have nearly everything in your landscape producing some type of showy flower if that’s the look that you want. Many flowering plants are seasonal and perform within a certain time frame while others bloom almost all year although they may have certain seasons where they have more flowers than others.

If you have a small landscape and don’t have a lot of room for big flowering plants, big flowering shrubs can be kept quite small or even enjoyed as container plants on a porch, pool area, or screen room. If you’re a seasonal person and are only here during certain times of the year, make sure that you select flowering plants that will be in bloom when you’re in town to enjoy them. For year round residents you can select plants that bloom all year if you wish or again you can stick with more seasonal bloomers, depending on your personal preferences.

For year round color it’s hard to beat showy favorites such as the hibiscus. Hibiscus blooms can vary in size from 2 to 12 inches in diameter and come in single or double flowered varieties. Plants grow as high as 15 or 18 feet, but are most often kept in the landscape less than 10 feet. Depending on the use intended they can be grown as single specimens, hedges, or trained into a small single trunk tree.

Another favorite is the ixora. Ixoras grow more slowly than some other flowering plants, but the trade off is you don’t have to do a lot of frequent pruning. Acid loving in nature ixoras do poorly too close to buildings, driveways, or sidewalks where soil conditions are often alkaline. If they’re planted in the right location though they will thrive and produce year round color and although the individual blooms are not large in size they generally are in large showy clusters. Common colors are reds, yellows and pinks with reds being the favorite color used.
In addition to the standard ixora there are dwarf types that have smaller sharply pointed leaves and smaller flower clusters. Dwarf ones are much more cold sensitive than regular ixora so if you’re far inland away from the coast you may want to choose the regular ixoras to minimize the risk of cold damage.

Oleanders are another favorite shrub for a long season of color throughout much of the year. Flower colors usually are red, various shades of pink, yellow, or white and individual blooms are about an inch to an inch and three-quarters in size. Oleanders grow rapidly and are sometimes used as small trees or for large hedges. Being salt tolerant they certainly are widely used toward the coastal areas where it’s hard to find many plants that can take the salt wind.

If you like fragrant shrubs, don’t forget about the many types of jasmine which can be used as single plants or small low growing hedges. Jasmines have white fragrant flowers in small clusters and bloom throughout much of the year. They also tolerate light shade fairly well and still continue to produce a lot of flowers.

The champion favorite flowering shrub is the rose, our national flower, and there are literally hundreds of kinds of roses with wide ranges of colors. Roses can be used as a cut flower for parties and other events or can be enjoyed out on the plant in the landscape. Climbing roses, shrub types or ones trained into single trunked trees are the common ways roses are used in the landscape. Roses will produce color continuously, but must be fertilized regularly, cut back several times a year to give more desirable shapes and occasionally treated for various insect or disease problems.

Some other favorites for showy color include the dwarf powder puff, which has one-inch red flowers throughout much of the year, shrimp plants which come in red, yellow, or gold and can range from 3 to 10 feet in height, thryallis which has clusters of small yellow flowers throughout most of the year, lantana, a low growing shrub or ground cover which has orange, purple, yellow, white, or multi color flowers and pentas, which has ixora like clusters of flowers in red, several shades of pink, white, or even blue.

If you check out any of your local retail nurseries or garden centers you can find a wide assortment of shrubs with showy flowers for your particular landscape use. Make sure that if you get a plant your unfamiliar with that you get specific care instructions so you keep it happy once you get it planted in the landscape.

For more information about plants with colorful flowers for use in area landscapes, contact the Palm Beach County Extension office. You can call them at 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.