Bougainvillea, the flowering vine of vibrant magnificence! Do you know that the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville found this vibrant plant, now known as the Bougainvillea, throughout his voyages in South America in 1768? Excerpt: One of many few crops making a splash right now of the yr is the gorgeous Bougainvillea cultivars! Many vibrant ones can be found lately, from white to pale orange, vibrant pinks and deep magentas. This weblog teaches us extra about rising these cheerful climbing Bougainvilleas, so vibrant and daring.
Curiously, the brightly colored ‘petals’ usually are not 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 These bracts are what attracted outdated Louis to convey this plant again to Europe, and there at the moment are greater than 300 totally different colored varieties accessible!
At Cape Contours Panorama Design, we regularly embody them in our backyard designs, particularly helpful for screening a wall or making a splash of color by way of an inside window. They are surely so vibrant and daring, and they’re massively well-liked as decorative crops. Nice in pots, too, with a easy V-shaped trellis for help. They’ll add splashes of color in areas with quite a 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 truth, 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 lengthy sharp 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 lovely after they dry and switch paler colors. These paler-coloured bracts look completely beautiful once you add them to potpourri or use them as pure confetti at a marriage.
After all, you can too add them to your compost bin to make your individual compost. We suggest that you simply contemplate making your individual compost. Aside from saving cash, there are quite a few different advantages linked to creating your individual compost. Fortunately for you, we now have written a weblog that explains methods to make compost at dwelling. Furthermore, we point out all the advantages of constructing compost as an alternative of shopping for it. Moreover, we additionally hyperlink to the Western Cape authorities’s web site, the place they clarify how Capetonians can get a free compost bin!
Bougainvillaea ‘Magnifica’ is a reasonably pink with reliable, evergreen leaves
Is it troublesome to develop a Bougainvillea plant? Definitely not! Rising Bougainvillea is comparatively simple, 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 quite a lot of bushy inexperienced leaf progress and little or no flowering of the bracts.
In addition they like crowded roots, and it’s been urged that you simply depart them within the plant pots and easily make just a few holes within the sides and bottoms to permit the roots to develop by way of. This apparently additionally helps promote flowering. Fertiliser utilized each few weeks will promote wholesome progress. To maintain your Bougainvillea vine neat, you may need to prune it infrequently.
Lastly, bear in mind to look out for pests and illnesses. It is advisable examine your Bougainvillea for aphids, scale, mealybugs and root rot.
Beautiful variegated leaves of Bougainvillea Dauphine and its vibrant pink flowers
As soon as your Bougainvillea has stopped producing its cheerfully colored flowers, it’s time for pruning. Actually, pruning them again arduous after flowering will encourage new progress and flowering. Take away any suckers which have sprouted from the bottom of the plant throughout pruning to eradicate 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 important addition to a blue and purple color scheme.
There are a lot of gorgeous cultivars accessible right here within the Cape at our retail and wholesale plant nurseries. What are a number of the Bougainvillea cultivars you could find in South Africa? We now have listed just a few totally different ones beneath.
- ‘Bougainvillea ‘Brilliance’
- ‘Crimson Jewel’
- ‘Dauphine’
- ‘David Lemmer’
- ‘Golden McLean’
- ‘Lilac Queen’
- ‘Magnifica’
- ‘Purple 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 additionally it is drought-tolerant. In case you are eager on saving water and you’re a water-wise gardener, that is undoubtedly vital plant.
HAPPY GARDENING!
Sources:
- Residence Guides
- E-Gardens
- Orams Nurseries
- Gardenia