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A trip down to Florida this past week brought to mind the 14 years we lived in Florida, basically in zone 10.
When I was working full time at my totally time consuming career of real estate investments, I did not have a Florida garden, but I did have Florida landscaping and it was only after we retired to Tennessee and spent 6 years building and running our Bed and Breakfast that we again retired and moved back to Florida and was able to have a Florida garden for awhile before we move to Kentucky.
In my Florida garden I was able to enjoy the varieties of the intensive blue of the lovely Plumbago which is an evergreen shrub. This plant will grow from zones 8 B to 11 and is a wonderful addition to your garden and should you get one of those weird Florida frosts and it gets killed off to the ground it will grow back the following year. This is a great drought resistant plant and if you prune it heavily it will reward you will more and more flowers each season since It produces its flowers on the current season's growth, so you can prune Plumbago in late winter and not worry about cutting off flower buds.
The other brilliant Florida plant that I had in my garden was the colorful Bougainvillea which is a native of South America and a nice perennial that is a thorny, woody, climbing vine that comes in a myriad of colors including pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white, or yellow. Some people call this the paper flower because the flowers are thin and papery.
They grow best in fertile soil and full sun blooming for about 4 to 6 weeks each season. The nice thing about this plant is that is drought resistant and should you over water it you will most likely kill it off. It has really hardened thorns and many people grow this plant along fences to ward off intruders.
Another addition to my Florida garden was the Bird of Paradise or the crane flower which is a native of south Africa and is closely related to the banana tree. I loved the blue petals and the orange sepals that bloom intermittenly at different times of the year and as long as we keep this plant healthy it rewarded us with 2 to 3 dozen spikes a year. This is also a great plant to put near a pond because the leaves do not drop off into your pond.
We also enjoyed Amaryllis in our garden since tulips do not grow in Florida at all. The Amaryllis is native of South America and is a lovely perennial plant.
New Guinea Impatients was another flower in our Florida garden. However, this is a plant that will start drooping when it either gets too little water or too much water.
The flowering plants mentioned above will give your Florida garden some breath taking color combinations. There are many other plants that you can add, but these are the ones I remember best from my Florida Garden.
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Author Bio Box: Arlene Wright Correll
 For more gardening or cooking information click http://www.learn-america.com/
To see Arlene’s Gardens and to read her gardening diaries and to take a walk through her pictorial garden or click on Arlene’s Books where you can download or buy her gardening & cook books, including her new book, “The ABC’s of Wine and Beer Making”. Remember to check out her artwork, especially of her fruits and vegetables. Arlene says, “All my royalties from the sale of my books go to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and I thank you for visiting my site.”
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