Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius): Growing the Fragrant Leaf of Asian Cooking Pandanus amaryllifolius is a low-growing plant (under a metre) with long, narrow, blade-like leaves and woody aerial roots. It can be grown as a marginal plant in dams and ponds, used as a bedding plant in tropical landscaping, or even used to hold creek banks […]
Category Archives: Grow Guides
Practical growing guides for tropical plants, written from our propagation nursery on the Cassowary Coast. How to plant, feed, position and care for heliconias, gingers, aroids, palms and other wet tropics favourites — whether you’re gardening in Far North Queensland or pushing the tropical look further south.
Why Havana Cigars Are the Toughest, Most Useful Screening Plant in Mission Beach There’s a plant that looks like it belongs in a five-star resort garden, thrives on pure neglect, and does more jobs than almost anything else in a Wet Tropics garden. Meet Calathea lutea — better known as the Havana Cigar. If you’ve […]
Betel Nut Palm (Areca catechu) Care Guide The Betel Nut Palm, Areca catechu, is a classic tropical palm valued for its slender trunk, elegant crown and clean architectural form. It’s widely used in tropical and subtropical landscaping for its vertical lines, smooth grey trunk, and its knack for creating real height without overwhelming a garden […]
Medinilla magnifica Care Guide Medinilla magnifica, also known as the Philippine Orchid or Rose Grape, is one of the most spectacular tropical flowering plants available to Australian gardeners. With its large pink bracts, cascading flower clusters and glossy foliage, it’s a genuine standout feature plant for shaded tropical gardens, patios and indoor spaces alike. We […]
Tahitian Ginger Care Guide Common name: Tahitian Ginger Botanical group: Alpinia A clumping tropical with bold foliage and genuinely showy bracts, Tahitian Ginger is one of those rare plants that gets better every single year you grow it — bract balls grow larger and more dramatic as the clump matures, so a young plant is […]
Heliconia Troubleshooting Guide: Cassowary Coast, FNQ and SE Queensland Heliconias are hardy, rewarding plants, but they’ll show stress when conditions aren’t quite right. Most issues trace back to water, soil, light or seasonal change. This guide helps you quickly diagnose common problems and apply simple, region-appropriate fixes — whether you’re gardening on the Cassowary Coast, […]
Psittacorum Heliconias: Care, Cut Flowers and the Running Habit Explained Psittacorums are upright, small-growing heliconias native to South America, and among the most popular heliconias for cut flowers anywhere. Selective breeding and hybridisation have given us a huge range of colours, bract sizes and growth forms — they’re often called the parakeet flower or parrot […]
Wet Tropics Garden Design Creating Resilient, Layered, Wildlife‑Friendly Tropical Landscapes Designing a garden in the Wet Tropics is an opportunity to work with one of the most unique climates in Australia. High humidity, monsoonal rainfall, rich soils, and diverse microclimates create ideal conditions for lush, layered, rainforest‑inspired landscapes. A successful Wet Tropical garden embraces these […]
Growing and Caring for Beehive Gingers If you’re after a plant that looks genuinely unusual, works beautifully in a shaded garden, and forgives you if you forget about it for a week — beehive gingers are hard to beat. Their strange, cone-shaped flowers emerge right at ground level, like little honeycombs poking up through the […]
If you’re looking to add a little colour to your tropical garden, cordyline fruticosa cultivars are a great place to start. They come in a huge range of sizes and shapes — from large growing varieties like Negra and Pele’s Smoke, to small, compact minis like Amanda’s Blush and Firecracker. We carry one of the […]
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