Bougainvillea, the flowering vine of vibrant magnificence! Do you know that the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville found this vivid plant, now referred to as the Bougainvillea, throughout his voyages in South America in 1768? Excerpt: One of many few vegetation making a splash at the moment of the yr is the attractive Bougainvillea cultivars! Many vibrant ones can be found as of late, from white to pale orange, vivid pinks and deep magentas. This weblog teaches us extra about rising these cheerful climbing Bougainvilleas, so vivid and daring.
Curiously, the brightly colored ‘petals’ will not be petals of the flower in any respect, however as an alternative are bracts that encompass the inconspicuous little white-tipped flower inside! These bracts are what attracted previous Louis to convey this plant again to Europe, and there at the moment are greater than 300 completely different colored varieties obtainable!
At Cape Contours Panorama Design, we regularly embrace them in our backyard designs, particularly helpful for screening a wall or making a splash of color by an inside window. They are surely so vivid and daring, and they’re massively well-liked as decorative vegetation. Nice in pots, too, with a easy V-shaped trellis for help. They’ll add splashes of color in areas with a whole lot of paving or not a lot different backyard curiosity. Due to their sharp thorns, they will also be used as safety hedges.
What sort of plant is the Bougainvillea?
The Bougainvillea is, in actual fact, a thorny climbing vine, and so ideally, it wants cables, a trellis or a pergola to scramble up. These woody vines hook themselves onto their very own branches to create further help. The Bougainvillea vine has sharp lengthy thorns, and it scrambles fairly rapidly. The highest of the vine can get fairly heavy if it has outgrown its help trellis. Actually, your Bougainvillea could be closely pruned again after the colorful bracts have all dropped.
The fallen bracts are stunning once they dry and switch paler colors. These paler-coloured bracts look completely beautiful if you add them to potpourri or use them as pure confetti at a marriage. In fact, you too can add them to your compost bin to make your individual compost.
Bougainvillaea ‘Magnifica’ is a reasonably pink with reliable, evergreen leaves
Is it troublesome to develop a Bougainvillea plant? Actually not! Rising Bougainvillea is comparatively straightforward, though they generally stubbornly refuse to flower when you get them dwelling from the nursery! Make sure you plant yours in free-draining soil and in full solar. Don’t overwater them! That is the important thing to serving to them flower. Overwatering causes a whole lot of bushy inexperienced leaf progress and little or no flowering of the bracts.
In addition they like crowded roots, and it’s been recommended that you simply go away them within the plant pots and easily make just a few holes within the sides and bottoms to permit the roots to develop by. This apparently additionally helps promote flowering. Fertiliser utilized each few weeks will promote wholesome progress. To maintain your Bougainvillea vine neat, you might need to prune it occasionally.
Lastly, bear in mind to look out for pests and illnesses. You should verify your Bougainvillea for aphids, scale, mealybugs and root rot.
Gorgeous variegated leaves of Bougainvillea Dauphine and its vivid crimson flowers
As soon as your Bougainvillea has stopped producing its cheerfully colored flowers, it’s time for pruning. Actually, pruning them again onerous after flowering will encourage new progress and flowering. Take away any suckers which have sprouted from the bottom of the plant throughout pruning to get rid of competitors for vitamins. You possibly can fertilise them in summer season similtaneously the remainder of the backyard, on a 6-weekly foundation.
Bougainvillea ‘Lilac Queen’ makes an incredible addition to a blue and purple color scheme.
There are a lot of gorgeous cultivars obtainable right here within the Cape at our retail and wholesale plant nurseries. What are a number of the Bougainvillea cultivars you will discover in South Africa? We’ve got listed just a few completely different ones beneath.
- ‘Bougainvillea ‘Brilliance’
- ‘Crimson Jewel’
- ‘Dauphine’
- ‘David Lemmer’
- ‘Golden McLean’
- ‘Lilac Queen’
- ‘Magnifica’
- ‘Crimson Glory’
- ‘Rubyana’
- ‘Temple Hearth’
- ‘Vera Blakeman’
This versatile plant, with its vibrant colors, is a summer season showstopper. Not solely is it an evergreen plant, however it is usually drought-tolerant. In case you are eager on saving water and you’re a water-wise gardener, that is undoubtedly essential plant.
HAPPY GARDENING!
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