A trio of oddities

I am a sucker for the unusual and shun many garden staples. In recent years I have yielded a little and we have a handful of roses in our garden but I am always on the lookout for the oddity. Sometimes things do not work out and the Ensete ventriculosus (a type of banana) which I attempted to grow about three years ago popped its clogs during its first winter.

Ensete ventriculosus was a failure with us

The Ensete, or Musa ensete to some botanists, IS hardy in  parts of the UK but needs more mollycoddling that I could give it (Note 1).


I have a trio of plants trained against a south-west facing wall and so far - touch wood - they seem happy. Nearest to the house is a Blue Wattle, Acacia dealbata. This Australian plant is not usually trained in this manner so how well it will thrive remains to be seen.

Acacia dealbata seems to be healthy and is putting on lots of growth.

Our garden at Stefen Hill, Daventry. 1 April, 2020

The neat pinnately compound leaves are pleasing in themselves and if we are also rewarded with the little yellow pom-pom flowers that will be a bonus.

We are hoping our Blue Wattle will have the blue foliage which

gives the plant its name

Eucryphia intermedia 'Rostrevor' is also a gamble.  It is a hybrid between Eucryphia glutinosa, from Chile, and the Australian E. lucida (Note 2. When in flower this member of the obscure Cunoniaceae family is a lovely sight, and now that we are into April we should be in the clear of frosts.

The foliage on our Eucryphia is looking very healthy

It looks nothing as yet but its creamy white flowers should be with us next autumn. In fact it flowered for us last autumn but I foolishly failed to save the picture.

Eucryphia 'Rostrevor' should flower for us in the autumn.

Precisely the same happened with the third of our trio, Clerodendron bungei: it also flowered for us last year but again I deleted the picture.

Clerodendron bungei flowered for us last year. Picture via Wikipedia

The plant has rather unpleasantly scented foliage but makes up for it with fragrant flowers.

We are currently living in difficult circumstances but there is much to look forward to: it is a matter of appreciating what we have or showing, to use that mildly irritating word, mildfulness.

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Notes

1. The banana of our supermarkets is the Cavendish Banana, named after William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, and is a highly complex group of superficially similar varieties and currently the subject of much research.


2. The fact that the Cunoniaceae Family occurs in both Chile and Australia may be down to the fact that these two land areas were once linked but were torn apart as a consequence of 'continental drift. However, the family also has outliers in Malaysia and South Africa.