Colorful, elegant, refined, dramatic, sophisticated, and playful: garden designers gather these sorts of accolades and more for their summer annuals displays.  But they don’t “own” the patents on beauty.  Making a beautiful and effective groupings of annuals is entirely within reach of even humble ol’ you and me.

Let’s look at three basic “tricks” used by even the most intuitive of professional garden designers, and then illustrate them with some container plantings now on display in Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Sun Patio in the new Inspiration Gardens.  When we’re done, I think we’ll choose our summer flowers with brighter, keener eyes.

“One” is to follow the color wheel, and choose a palette for flower and leaf.

Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Violet; that’s the color wheel.  Easy.  Now, “Google” a color wheel.  Colors run in the R.O.Y.G.B.V. sequence around the wheel.  What’s directly across from, say, red?  Green…and that makes complementary dyad with red.  Starting with red, what other two colors are equidistant around the wheel?  Yellow and blue…and they’re a complementary triad with red.

Any dyad or triad selected from the color wheel like this is a guaranteed match!

Be careful with a few things.  If in doubt, don’t mix “saturated,” or intense, colors with pastels.  For instance, a pastel pink impatiens with bright yellow marigold is a color clash.  Also, if in doubt, don’t mix warm and cool colors.  Warm (towards the sun) and cool (towards the moonlight) can work together, but avoid them until we are sure of our "eyes."

Use white flowers to frame or “dot” your color palette; white often adds informal cheer, and dilutes color intensity.  Use black/dark foliage to frame color palette; black adds drama/elegance and strengthens color intensity.

“Two” is to consider plant structure and form, and choose harmonious suite of shape and texture.

Use leaf variety to accentuate our color choices, and to help give our containers gesture and flow.  Whaaat?  Look at the accompanying pix.  Dark, broad leaves inflame the greens and the reds; ultra-violet leaves rise dramatically like midnight  flames.  That is gesture and flow.  If all leaves in a container are similar size/shape, they look "busy."

“Three” is to remember plant needs, and to choose plants that grow well together.

This is easy with annuals.  Most annuals like full sun and plenty of water.  Pelagoniums (geraniums), verbenas and marigolds are a few dry-land rule-breakers that come to mind.  For instance, pelargoniums develop yellow leaves if heavily watered alongside canna.  And—ahem—as we can see in the pic, I broke this rule on the Sun Patio!

Color acts on us physically, biologically, and psychologically. Complexity!  Harmonious interaction of texture and form have been debated surely since the days of Lascaux Cave Painting, and the discussion is still lively today.  That’s right, our One-Two-Three design rules are a beginning…without end.

And please visit our Sun Patio to see some well-designed summer annuals plantings.  Colorful or dramatic, or both?  I do know they set the garden afire!

Posted by Mark Bir

P.S.: I’ll make this a continuing series…if you show interest.  Hey, lemme know.

On the occasion of the Garden’s 80th anniversary year, here’s the first in a series of short videos we’re featuring on The Garden Variety this summer based on a new Around the Garden in 80 Minutes self-guided tour that you can download for yourself on our website.

While there are always a plethora of beautiful flowers booming in the Costa Rica biome, I would like to share five particularly interesting ones in bloom right now that are worth seeing.

1. Shell flower- Tigridia pavonia

These fascinating flowers grow from corms, which are like small bulbs, and belong to the iris family, Iridaceae. The flowers are approximately four inches wide and come in pink, white, yellow and red. Each flower lasts less than one day, opening in the morning and starting to wither away around five o’clock in the evening. Click here to see some of the other colors.

2. Brazilian Plume Flower – Justicia carnea

This flower is also called flamingo flower because the individual flowers are said to resemble flamingos. These shrubs bloom heavily in the spring and continue to rebloom periodically through the summer. It is in the family Acanthaceae which includes many highly ornamental tropical flowers.

3. Giant potato vine – Solanum wendlandii

I planted this vine last summer at the base of a tree and it quickly grew 20 feet or so to the top and started to hang down over the sides back down to the ground. It started blooming a couple months ago and has been blooming profusely ever since with clusters of large two inch blooms. The vine is covered in hook-like thorns which help it to cling to its host. It is in the same genus as the tomato, potato and eggplant and also the deadly nightshades.

4. Coral aphelandra- Aphelandra sinclairiana

Here’s another unusual flower from the Acanthaceae family. This flowering shrub really stands out with its hot pink blooms and emerging orange colored bracts.

5. Heliconia- Heliconia mathiasiae

This heliconia has long-lasting red colored bracts with yellow flowers that turn to dark blue fruits. They bloom on top of long slender shoots reaching eight feet tall or more.  They are often confused with bird-of-paradise, Sterlitzia, which are from South Africa. The honeycreepers, violaceous euphonias and bananaquits will all visit the bract cups for a drink of water and take nectar from the flowers.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

           With delicate-looking flowers that sparkle in the sun as if they were formed by tiny crystals, Cattleya skinneri, or guaria morada, as it is known in Costa Rica, has a beauty that can’t quite be captured in a photograph, but rather, must be experienced in person. Thanks to a grant from the Mid-America Orchid Congress, we have been able to expand our collection of these beautiful orchids and display them in the Costa Rican exhibit for everyone to see.  

            Cattleya skinneri orchids start to come into bloom in mid March and often last until mid May. They are sometimes referred to as the Easter orchid, because they are a popular decoration during Easter holidays.  In Costa Rica, these orchids are so popular in homes and gardens that at one point they were over collected and became scarce in the wild. These orchids have since been reintroduced into the wild, and populations are stabilizing.

           Cattleya skinneri comes in a few naturally occurring flower colors. Most have pinkish to purple color but there is also a less common pure white form, Cattleya skinneri var. alba, and a white flowered form with a pinkish purple throat. We are lucky enough to now have all three of these color forms in our collection.  

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

Violaceus euphonia looking for nectar in the avocado tree (Persea americana)

     This time of year, there are a few trees in the Costa Rican exhibit that like to drop some or all of their leaves. It can be kind of embarrassing- and messy- to have trees in a tropical glasshouse without any leaves, but it is completely normal. Many tropical trees lose many, if not all, their leaves for a short period this time of year before putting out a new set of leaves.

    Also, not all of them are completely naked because this is also the time many trees, like the avocado tree on the left, start to flower. It makes perfect sense that trees would flower when there are fewer leaves in the way. Having no leaves when in flower greatly increases the visibility of the blooms so they can be easily seen by pollinators. The nectar feeding birds and butterflies have certainly noticed that the avocados are in bloom and have been spending a lot of time in these trees. I can already see the avocado fruits starting to form.

     In Costa Rica, December to March is known as the "dry season," and this is when many deciduous and semi-deciduous trees and plants lose their leaves (the rest of the year is known as the "green season" or "rainy season"). The sparse canopy in the dry season can reveal plants and blooms that may have been hidden during the green season and can make it easier to spot animals. The rainforest canopies are also painted with color from the showy blooms of trees like the two Tabebuia species pictured below.  Tabebuias are dry season deciduous trees that bloom while completely leafless shortly before leafing out.

Tabebuia impetiginosa	Tabebuia aurea

Posted by Nate Tschaenn 

People expect beautiful flowers to smell good. The truth is, the primary role of fragrance in flowers is to attract pollinators. This is as true of orchids as it is of any other family of plants. Some of these pollinators (flies, for example) prefer very strange odors. Others don’t even have much sense of smell (birds), relying instead on visual cues to zero in on a flower. In addition, many of the artifical orchid hybrids have had the fragrance bred right out of them in the quest for ever larger more colorful blooms.

The upshot of this is that people are sometimes disappointed and even surprised by what does or doesn’t emanate from a gorgeous orchid blossom. "Catnip" and "socks" might be the verdict when someone gets a whiff of certain Oncidiums. "Nothing" might be the baffled response after a deep sniff at a stunning purple Phalaenopsis.

There is certainly no reason to stop sniffing, however. A vast number of orchids still exude the sweet, spicy fragrances that people can’t get enough of.

Cattleya, Rhyncostylis, Zygopetalum, many of the Oncidium genus, certain Cymbidiums and Miltassias - the names sound like something out of Roman military history, but the aromas are as fresh and delightful as a stroll through the Garden of Eden.

Funny footnote: If you look into the center of almost any orchid flower, you will see a small light-colored structure called the column. The column always looks to me like a human nose! It’s a silly coincidence, but it makes me laugh whenever I notice it.

"What frightful trouble you have taken about Vanilla; you really must not take an atom more; for the orchids are more play than real work"    

-Charles Darwin in letter to colleague William Hooker   

  As I am preparing for this year’s Orchid Mania exhibit  opening February 27, I wanted to share some history of one very interesting and perhaps most economically important orchid species, Vanilla planifolia. The vanilla orchid is peculiar because it grows like a vine. The fermented seedpods are the source of the flavoring vanillin.

        Vanilla and chocolate have a long history together and have been together long before the invention of ice cream.  One of the earliest record of the use of the vanilla bean dates back as far early 1400’s when vanilla beans along with cacao seeds, from which chocolate is derived, were part of tributes paid by the Totonacs and other Central American tribes to the Aztecs. The Aztecs, Mayans, and other Central American natives used vanilla almost exclusively to flavor and perfume a popular beverage prepared from cacao seeds. 

      In the early 1500’s, vanilla, along with its chocolate beverage, was introduced in Europe and became popular among the wealthy. It wasn’t until 1602 that Hugh Morgan, pharmacist to Queen Elizabeth I, suggested that vanilla could have other uses besides being a flavoring for chocolate. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, brought Vanilla to the U.S. from Paris along with a recipe for vanilla ice cream. His hand written recipe can be found in the Library of Congress.

          Many attempts were made to grow vanilla outside of Central America in the first three centuries after its discovery, but the orchids never bore fruit. In 1838, Charles Morren discovered that only bees of the genus Eulaema pollinated the flowers, and they could not survive outside of Mexico. Three years later a suitable method of hand pollination was discovered that allowed vanilla production to spread across the globe. In 1858, vanillin was isolated opening the way for the creation of artificial vanilla.

 Posted by Nate Tschaenn

        I’m sure many a Clevelander is affected in some way by the lack of sunlight during the winter months. Even working in a glasshouse, I still miss the full effect of the summer sun .  This time of year the Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glasshouse is still dark for the first hour that I am at work every morning, and even on the few days that it is not completely overcast, the light intensity is still noticeably less than in summer. Looking around the Costa Rica biome in which I work, it is apparent that I am not the only one missing the summer sun.

 Even the warm, wet, tropical growing environment does not spare the Costa Rica biome from plant dormancy. Plants respond to the reduction in sunlight and slow down their growth or stop altogether. Some trees will lose many or all of their leaves for a couple of months. Some plants even disappear from exhibit all together this time of the year and return again in spring when conditions are more favorable. This is the case with Maranta arundinacea or arrowroot.

    Arrowroot is the first plant to go completely dormant and has been hiding underground waiting for spring for several weeks now. New growth will reemerge in spring from rhizomes and tubers produced during the growing season. The tubers resemble white carrots and can be made into arrowroot powder, which is used in cooking.

    Heliconias, calatheas, ginger (Costus), and a number of gesneriads also produce rhizomes. Although most of them don’t go completely dormant, there is a definite lack of growth and a number of yellowing leaves before new shoots begin to grow from the rhizomes in spring.

Arrowroot tubers	Diastema comiferum	Scaly rhizomes of dormant Diastema

          This time of year corresponds with the dry season in Costa Rica. The rainforests are not as green at this time of the year but the canopy opens up, the orchids are blooming and also more visible, and many of the trees will bloom during this time, some while they are completely leafless.  

            Even though there may not be as many leafy greens in the Costa Rican exhibit as during the summer,  it is still an excellent escape from the cold winter weather. Even while some plants go dormant others come into bloom this time of the year, particularly orchids. You certainly don’t want to miss OrchidMania in March or our amaryllis display going on now.

Here are a few pics of plants in bloom right now:

This sleepy mallow, Malvaviscus arboreus, gets its name from the flowers which never quite open all the way.	This blooming browmeliad is filling in for a dormant arrowroot.	One of my favorite gesneriads, this Kohleria spicata, produces long spikes of red flowers.
Oncidium ‘Twinkle’ – This extremely fragrant orchid can be found blooming throughout the exhibit this time of year.	Panama rose, Rondeletia leucophylla- This shrub is my favorite winter bloomer. Blooms heavily for months starting in late December.	Laelia anceps - The first of several laelia orchids to start blooming this season.

Posted by Nate Tschaenn

    At just under two years old,  this kapok tree, Ceiba pentandra, already stands an astonishing 15 feet and 6 inches in height.  I planted the tree myself in October, 2007 from a seed less than a half centimeter wide. It didn’t grow very much that first winter, but once spring came, it really took off and was taller than me by the end of the year. The following spring it produced a few flowers. Can you imagine growing a tree to flowering size in one year?  Eventually, it grew so tall that I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to get it through the doors of the exhibit if I waited any longer to plant it. 

     The kapok tree is not just a extremely fast-growing, large tree. It’s like the king of the rainforest trees and is the tallest tree in the Amazon rainforest. It towers above other rainforest trees, growing above the canopy into the emergent layer and reaching heights over 200 feet. Because of its size and immense buttress roots, the kapok was considered a sacred tree by many indigenous people of tropical America. The ancient Mayans believed that the kapok held up the heavens with its branches and that its roots extended into the underworld.  A lone kapok tree can often be found standing where all other trees have been cut down because of these beliefs.

     Our kapok tree is planted on the left side of the path, near the entrance just before the leaf-cutter ant log.  I predict the incredible growth spurt will continue next year, now that the tree is planted. Unfortunately, it will never get near its full height with a glass ceiling that is 60 feet high, a mere quarter of its potential maximum height!

Posted by Nate Tschaenn