Sunday, January 31, 2016

Nursery: ten years on

Florez Nursery November 2005
 It is always interesting to look back to see what you were growing ten years ago and have a "then and now moment". No more plants in green pots all replaced with basic black to start with and those daylilies/hemerocallis in the background I no longer grow, while the purple and yellow foliage plants are still on the production line. Red geraniums, bottom right, which I still love, have the 'treat them like an annual' approach as they do in the Northern Hemisphere and not for reasons of frost but for the difficulty of keeping rust and rot at bay during the summer.
In the centre of the picture is the succulent Glottiphyllum fragrans, 'tongue leaf' which I recall I could not sell for love or money. It is a spreading ground cover with big fleshy leaves and large yellow flowers. Maybe a bit gross in the eyes of many and I no longer even have a stock plant of it and it is rarely seen in the commercial nursery world. 
I still grow lots of the Crassula and Agave, seen here, but ten years on it is Hibiscus which have captured my attention and time.