Lantana

This is by far the easiest thing I've grown, which makes it one of my favorite plants.  I wanted to do a post on it because it's really just amazing to me.  This is a really great plant for anybody that needs something low maintenance.  

We moved into our house three years ago and decided to tackle the beds after being here for a year.  We had two beds out front, one in front of the porch and one beside the garage.  Since I'd never done any gardening before, I really just wanted one bed to focus on.  I decided to focus on the porch bed and to plant only Lantana in the bed beside the garage (I'd read that it was pretty low maintenance).  I bought 11 little plants for $2 each.  They did well the first year, but last year...  oh my gosh!  They grew so big, so fast with very little water.  They're drought tolerant which means you can skip watering a lot.  Seriously, I may have watered them three times the whole summer.  All you really need to do is prune them.  You'll need to do this several times because they grow fast!

Go here for more info on Lantana.

I'm in Zone 7 so this will come back each year.  We cut it down in the fall, leaving about 1 or 2 inches of the branches.  The year before last, we left them exposed and last year, we covered them with mulch.  They seem to be growing faster this year, but I'm not sure if it's because we mulched them or not.  They start sprouting in April, blooming in May and  they continue to bloom until the end of Sept/beginning of Oct.  We cut them back in Oct. 

I've been taking photos almost every week so I can show you just how fast they grow.

April 10th

If you look really close, you can see Dax at the door. Hi, Dax!

April 21st

April 30th                            

May 14th 

They're starting to flower.

  Pretty, huh?

May 26th

You can see that it's starting to take over the walkway.  Charles, where are you?

May 30th

More flowers popping out.

Close up of the flowers:

I think the variety that I have is called Fruit Punch.  I'm not 100% on this, but I think maybe the growth rate depends on the variety you have.  I have a red and orange variety that grows slower than the Fruit Punch and they're all in the same bed.  I also have some lavender colored at my mailbox that doesn't get very big at all.  A neighbor has solid yellow which also doesn't seem to get very big.