How to turn an ugly fence into a Perfume Fence. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.
Fragrant plants - plumerias and jasmines
🏡 How to turn an ugly fence into a Perfume Fence
🍖Your fence could smell better than your neighbor’s grill!
📌Got a plain or ugly fence? Just cover it up! We did just that and created a Perfume Fence.
📌First, we planted Hawaiian Plumeria trees along the fence line. Then we added vining jasmines to climb the wire fence and smother it in flowers. Each jasmine has its own fragrance - some sweet, some rich, some spicy - and together they make the whole fence smell incredible!
📌Soon the wire won’t even show - just a living wall of blossoms and perfume drifting through the garden.
Here are some of the best plants you can use to make your own fragrant fence:
Care for adeniums is simple once you understand what they like. Think of
them as half succulent, half tropical shrub. Keep their roots dry but never
bone-dry, give them sun, and feed them during the warm months. Do that, and they will reward you with fat trunks and nonstop flowers.
Soil and pot: Use a gritty, fast-draining Adenium Soilless Mix. Shallow wide pots work best — they let the caudex spread and show off its shape like a bonsai.
Watering: Water in the morning. Let the surface dry before watering again. Never let pots sit in saucers of
water.
Foliage: Keep leaves dry. Wet leaves invite rot and fungus.
Fertilizer: During active growth, feed with Sunshine Megaflor liquid fertilizer (flower booster); it promotes swollen trunk and sets flower
buds.
Light: Give them bright light year-round. Full sun in mild climates; filtered light if your summers are
scorching.
Winter rest: Cut water back when days shorten and let the plant rest. Dormancy is
normal.
Repotting trick: Each time you repot, lift the plant a bit so the crown roots peek above the soil. This encourages bigger
caudex.
Desert roses are made for containers, easy enough for a beginner but rewarding enough for a
collector.
Before eating ice cream, try this fruit from a house plant. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.
Swiss Cheese Plant - Monstera deliciosa
🍨 Before eating ice cream, try this fruit growing on a house plant!
🍨 Most people know Swiss Cheese Plant - Monstera deliciosa - for its big holey leaves, but here’s the wild part: this jungle climber also makes fruit. Real fruit. And it tastes like pineapple mixed with ice cream.
🍨 Have you tried Monstera fruit? Will you eat it again?
🍨 This plant grows in the rainforests of Mexico and Guatemala, where young seedlings crawl toward the shade until they find a tree to climb. Yes, they grow in the direction of the darkest area, not just merely away from light. Interesting, ah?
🍨 In time, it sends out a green, cone-like fruit nearly a foot long. It takes a while to ripen - about a year - and only when the scales start to lift can you peel them back and find the creamy pulp inside. Ice-cream sweet and tropical.
🍨 One catch though: never eat the fruit unripe. The pulp contains oxalic acid that is generally harmless but will burn your mouth. Best trick is to let it wrinkle a little, wrap it up, and wait until the scales loosen on their own. Then it's ready.
🍨 And for collectors? The Thai Constellation, with its cream-splashed leaves, is the crown jewel. Some specimens sell for thousands. Not bad for a "Swiss Cheese Plant"!
When plants cross into the Gothic: the Darker Bat Lily. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.
Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri)
When plants cross into the Gothic: the Darker Bat Lily
🖤 Here’s a striking look at the Black Bat Lily(Tacca chantrieri) - its dramatic dark bracts resembling bat wings, trailing whiskers, and tropical elegance all in one. If you met its cousin, the White Bat Head Lily(Tacca nivea) in earlier video, you'll notice the family resemblance - same dramatic whiskers and wing-like bracts, but this one leans fully into the dark side.
🖤 The Black Bat Flower isn’t just a bloom - it's a full performance. Giant black-maroon"wings" stretch out like a bat in flight, while long, drooping filaments dangle like eerie whiskers or jungle jewelry - some over a foot long!
🖤 Those weird, wild whiskers aren't just for show either. They're thought to mimic the look (and no, not the smell!) of decaying matter, luring in pollinators like flies. Creepy? Yes. Clever? Absolutely.
🖤 The Black Bat Flower blooms best when it feels pampered: filtered light, steady warmth, and spa-level humidity. It’s a smart exotic for a greenhouse or even a bright bathroom with a skylight.
🖤 It grows from a rhizome, and while Tacca chantrieri is prized for its gothic looks, its green cousin Tacca leontopetaloides is actually used in the tropics to make arrowroot starch.
🖤 Patience is part of the package - sometimes it takes months to bloom. But when it does, it becomes the crown jewel of the collection. People will ask if it's real. You'll just smile and say, "Yes - and it lives here."
Adenium care
