The roof garden now has three plants I’ve never grown before. I tried to pick plants that were tough sun-lovers that required almost no attention and not much water. While I don’t like to write about plants I don’t have any experience with, I thought this might be an opportunity to take you along for the ride as I try these out.
Lomandra longifolia ‘Breeze’
The first new plant is
Lomandra longifolia ‘Breeze,’ a dwarf mat rush. I’ve always liked spiky grass– or flax-like plants, and this stopped me with its dramatic long, narrow leaves. It’s listed as maturing to about 30 inches high and wide, though will likely be a tad smaller in a container. The plant is being marketed as a good plant for traffic medians. I’m hoping that will mean that it will require little care–though that may just be a marketing ploy to sell more plants. Another part of the sales pitch is that it should be extremely drought-tolerant once established. Looking around the web I found a listing for it that went on to say that potted versions of the plant will require regular water. Well, it ain’t gonna get lots of water up there on the roof, so we’ll see how well it’ll do. At least its new container is four times the size of the nursery pot and should dry out a lot slower.
Kalanchoe prolifera
New plant number two is
Kalanchoe prolifera, a succulent from Madagascar. It’s definitely an architectural plant that to me it looks a little like an overscaled, cartoon version of a bamboo, with its thick trunks and chunky leaves. The picture here shows the light green freckles on the trunk of the plant, making it a good plant to enjoy up close after you’ve oohed and ahed over its silhouette. Size could be a problem, with some listings saying that it can get to ten feet when it flowers in the winter. But then it dies back and starts all over again. Another experiment for sure.
I picked the final plant, Euphorbia cotinifolia, partly because I wanted something with interesting red foliage. Then when I saw the genus name I was thinking “slam dunk.” Great leafy foliage and extreme drought tolerance because euphorbias as among the camels of the plant world, right? Well, not so fast, because it turns out this is one of the euphorbias that actually likes fairly regularly water. Groan. It was a big plant and I wasn’t looking forward to taking it back to the nursery, let alone having to spend another half day trying to find something I liked only half as much.
Euphorbia cotinifolia closeup
Then, researching it some more, I read that it’s actually extremely drought tolerant after all, but that it will drop its leaves in response to drought. Okay, it’s worth a try, I thought. Experiment number three. Placed in the largest of the large containers it’d stand a chance of staying watered enough to hold on to its leaves during the warm part of the year. (It’s naturally deciduous during cold weather.)
So I’ve ended up with three very different looking plants. The lomandra should stay green and grassy year-round. The kalanchoe will shoot up to some impressive height, flower during the winter, and then die back to start all over. And the euphorbia should be a warm, reddish-purple presence much of the year, only to shed its leaves when the kalanchoe is getting ready to show off. It should make for an interesting, ever-changing show.
August 11 2008 05:17 am | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Euphorbia cotinifloia • Kalanchoe prolifera • Lomandra longifolia • potted plants
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Greg on 12 Aug 2008 at 8:31 pm #
Cool plant choices! That rush is sort of sweet looking! Looks great in that planter, too. Is that a gravel mulch? That should help retain some moisture, right?
The other two sound very interesting, as well. Until things are established, have you considered the idea of stationing a screen-covered bucket up there to collect any rainwater you might see, so you don’t have to tote as much up the stairs?
[ Lost in the Landscape ] » too late for sunset on 01 Dec 2008 at 5:16 am #
[…] I was up there I snapped this shot of the progress of the trio of new plants that I put up there in August, Euphorbia cotinifolia, Kalanchoe prolifera, and Lomandra longifolia. The euphorbia has survived […]