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Tuesday, June 1, 2010

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. 

















11 crafty peeps said:

  1. Wow! That's impressive! I planted pink Lantana at our old house, years ago, but I don't remember it growing soooo fast! I guess I had the "wrong" variety. It grows really good here in TX, too. I just might have to go get me some!

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  2. Um...are you KIDDING me? That is just remarkable! I had no idea about these! Great work;)

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  3. Wow - these are amazing! I am so writing down the name of this and using it in my yard. Thank you!!

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  4. Those are great. I'm in zone 6 so it probably won't come back but I still want to try some.
    They are lovely!

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  5. That same lantana used to grow wild behind my grandparents shed. We called it "bacon and eggs" down here.

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  6. Oh yeah, thanks for your comment. My GW gets donations from Target and Pottery Barn. Can you believe it?? I bought about 5 new PB frames for 1.99 each. They still had the original price stickers on them.
    I love goodwill.

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  7. I love lantana...we had some for the past 4 years but this winter finally did them in. we are zone 7 but the winter we had was more like a 3 or 4--HARSH! Anyway, it finally killed them (killed my mom's too and she's also in zone 7)and when I dug them out the roots were as big as my arm! they are really great growers. I had the yellow ones before and they get huge but stay low, the more colorful variety that you have tends to grow taller. I planted them off my front porch this spring and they are of course HUGE. I need to prune them, thanks for the reminder!

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  8. Pretty flowers! I have to get out and clean up my flower beds one of these days- soon!

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  9. We just moved and I was trying to decide what flowers I could plan that would grow quickly and look beautiful. I just found them thanks to this post! :)

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  10. that's amazing! Thanks for sharing..I have to share this to my mom. She loves to plant.

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  11. Lantana? Intersting...we have it all over the place in AZ and sometimes I just get sick of seeing but yours looks so full and beautiful...you've got me thinking. Maybe I should put some in our front yard too.

    It looks awesome! and it grew so quick.

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