The Bird of Paradise

Having grown up in Oxnard, California I am quite familiar with this plant. They grew like weeds in my mother's backyard when I was a kid. They grew like weeds in my mother's backyard when I wasn't a kid! Heck, I can even pronounce the botanical name which isn't always the easiest thing to do without tripping all over various consonants! Strelitzia reginae. These are without a doubt one of the most beautiful, interesting and unique plants one can grow in the landscape. They grow virtually throughout all of southern California. If you have a desire to have a tropical looking landscape it would simply be an incomplete landscape without this plant prominently and abundantly displayed.

Bird-of-paradise is sometimes called the crane flower and is a native of South Africa. It is closely related to the banana plant. The plant is herbaceous and gets its common names from the very unique flower it bears, which obviously looks like a brightly colored bird. The leaves are very leathery in appearance and grow on stiff leafstalks. The plant forms a somewhat dense 3 to 5-foot-tall clump that should be used as the focal point in the landscape. It can also be used 'en masse' but I don't particularly recommend this because it can tend to make the plant look ho-hum and ordinary. The plant is evergreen so year round interest and color are always present. The plant as I said is a must in any tropical landscape design and it is an excellent addition around swimming pools.

One thing that this plant can't do, and won't do, sadly, is grow in the High Desert region of southern California. This I know from first hand experience for years ago I tried planting transplants from my mother's back yard into my yard! Needless to say these plants died. OK, OK...I killed them! No need to be sad though. Plants do not have central nervous systems so it is unlikely they died a painful death! You see the winter temps here routinely drop well below freezing for months at a time. This type of freeze pattern is death for this plant and makes it is impossible to grow outdoors.

So needless to say I was a bit disheartened the other day when I stopped by our local Home Depot for some rose food and found this plant for sale in both 1 and 5 gallon sizes and readily available in a fair quantity to boot.

So what did I do?

Well, for one I informed the store manager about the situation, very politely of course. I then called the Home Depot corporate office and spoke to a wonderful young lady named Stacy (all young ladies named Stacy seem wonderful to me - and I'm not just saying that because my daughter is named Stacy). I let her know that I spoke with the store manager and let her know that a plant like this shouldn't be sold in our region. But this does bring up a valuable point. While I was looking at these plants a couple walked up and began discussing the plant. That's when I excused myself and let them know that they needn't waste their money on a plant that was just going to die in 8 months. Of course I shilled for my business at the same time! That's not the valuable point however (well it can be depending on your POV) but this is: Go to stores like Home Depot, Lowe's or for that matter even your local nursery with a specific purpose in mind for a plant and have plant information with you and readily available whenever possible. Avoid buying anything on impulse just because you like the way the plant looks without doing a modicum of research beforehand. Think of it this way. Great Dane's and Chihuahua's are both cute and small as puppies. Yet both have drastically different needs when full grown! This one simple tip will help tremendously in choosing plants that work well in your garden, serve the desired purpose and have the best chance of long term survival.