Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 4 May 2025

Top Eight irresistible vines for a hummingbird haven

vines for a hummingbird haven

vines for a hummingbird haven

🕊 Top Eight irresistible vines for a hummingbird haven. Part 1.



Below is the Hummingbird Haven Plan designed for continuous blooms, vertical interest, and year-round hummingbird attraction.

Centerpiece (Tall Structure / Arbor)
  • Thunbergia, especially Thunbergia mysorensis (Clock Vine). Provide strong overhead support for its hanging blooms. Let this showstopper trail over a sturdy pergola or arbor. Its long, red-and-yellow flowers will be your garden’s main hummingbird magnet.

  • Side Support (Trellis or Fence)
  • Bignonia capreolata (Crossvine) - A hardy, fast-growing native that clings to supports. Train it on a trellis for early-spring blooms that attract the season’s first hummingbirds.
  • Tecomaria (Cape Honeysuckle) - A vigorous, evergreen bloomer that loves full sun. Its bright red-orange tubular flowers draw hummingbirds throughout the year and are perfect for training along fences or trellises.

  • Mid-layer (Fence, Arch, or Large Pot Trellis)
  • Passiflora (especially vitifolia or coccinea). Needs full sun, rich soil, and regular water; prune to manage size and boost flowering. Let it twine near seating areas for bold red blooms and close-up hummingbird visits.

  • Ground-Level Accents
  • Ipomoea (including Prince Kuhio Vine) - Thrives in warm, frost-free zones with sun and moisture. Plant at the base of structures or in containers to sprawl or climb with vivid purple-pink blooms.
  • Lonicera (including L. sempervirens - Coral Honeysuckle) - Plant at the base of a trellis or fence, near the arbor. This cold-hardy native has red-orange or yellow tubular blooms from spring to fall and adds a delicate contrast to tropical textures.

  • Wild Touch / Quick Filler
  • Antigonon leptopus - Mexican Coral Vine - Loves sun and drains well; drought-tolerant but frost-sensitive. Great for fences and open trellises as a fast-growing, summer-to-fall bloomer buzzing with activity.
  • Pyrostegia venusta (Flame Vine) - Bursting in fiery orange, perfect for fences or pergolas. Plant along a back fence or side trellis where it can sprawl wide and fill empty space. Thrives in full sun, blooms in winter-spring, and complements vertical stars like Thunbergia and Passionflower.


📝 These vines feature tubular, nectar-rich blooms that hummingbirds adore.
Add a shallow birdbath or feeder nearby, and you'll have a full-service nectar station!

See full list of Hummingbird favorite vines in next post ⤵️

🛒
Turn Your Garden Into a Hummingbird Paradise!

#Hedges_with_benefits #Butterfly_Plants #How_to

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Date: 21 May 2025

How to produce my own vanilla?

💡 How to produce my own vanilla?



Secrets of Vanilla pollination finally revealed!
Vanilla is the World's most popular flavor and one of the most expensive spices and flavorings.
Every tropical gardener wants to have a vanilla plant and of course the most common question they ask - how to make my vanilla produce vanilla for me? In this video we will show you how:
📱

🛒 Shop Vanilla Bean Orchids

📚 Learn more:
#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Food_Forest #How_to

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Date: 15 May 2025

Which epiphytic cactus puts out the biggest bloom show

Disocactus ackermanni - Red Orchid Cactus

❤️ Which epiphytic cactus puts out the biggest bloom show

  • 🌺 Disocactus ackermanni, also called the Red Orchid Cactus, puts on a jaw-dropping show with huge, blazing red flowers that can reach 6 inches wide! It's a cactus that acts nothing like one - and then bursts out in flowers the size of your hand!
  • 🌺 It blooms from Spring through Summer and steals the spotlight every time. The plant grows like a lush, green fern with flat stems that drape and cascade like a living chandelier.
  • 🌺 It may be a cactus, but it loves water and shade - more diva than desert. Native to the tropical forests of Mexico, this epiphyte thrives in a hanging basket and turns heads wherever it grows.
  • 🌺 Why collectors search for it? Because it's rare, eye-catching, and just plain fun to grow. No spines, no drama - just bold flowers and easy charm. This is one of those plants that visitors always ask about. If you're a collector, it's not a want – it's a need.


🛒 Get the Red Orchid Cactus everyone talks about

📚 More about exotic epiphytic cacti:


Epiphyllum oxypetalum - Queen of the Night
Pseudorhipsalis (Wittia) amazonica - Blue Flame
Epiphyllum guatemalense Monstrosa - Orchid Cactus, Curly Locks

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Nature_Wonders

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Date: 22 Sep 2024

Why the Purple Tango of Jacaranda is so hypnotizing

Jacaranda Tree flowers

Jacaranda Tree flowers

Jacaranda Tree flowers

Jacaranda Tree flowers

Jacaranda Tree

Jacaranda Tree

💃 Why the Purple Tango of Jacaranda is so hypnotizing

  • 💜 The Jacaranda Tree enchants with its stunning purple-blue trumpet-shaped blooms that create a mesmerizing, lilac carpet when they fall.
  • 💜 A true spectacle of spring, its fern-like leaves and fast-growing nature make it perfect for landscaping. It’s often compared to dancing in the streets of Buenos Aires or Pretoria, where Jacarandas paint the cities in a dazzling purple.
  • 💜 This tree is not just eye candy but a symbol of wisdom, rebirth, and good fortune, rooted in legend and tradition.


📚 Learn more:



🛒 Plant your own Purple Jacaranda tree

#Trees

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Date: 23 May 2025

Redder than red: when orange wasnt enough, nature made this hottest flower

Senecio confusus variety Sao Paulo, Pseudogynoxis chenopodiode, Bright red Mexican flame vine

💥 Redder than red: when orange wasn't enough, nature made this hottest flower

  • 🔻This vine didn't get the memo about "'just orange"! Senecio confusus variety Sao Paulo (Pseudogynoxis chenopodiodes), or Bright red Mexican flame vine - is our favorite variety of the classic Mexican flame vine here at Top Tropicals. Sao Paulo isn't just orange, it's fire-engine red!
  • 🔻Spectacular bright red blooms year-round and thick evergreen leaves that are larger and darker than regular Orange variety; they provide a lush, tropical look. Red variety is also more vigorous than regular Orange Senecio.
  • 🔻Fast-growing and easy to train over fences, arbors, or trellises.
  • 🔻Drought-tolerant once established and thrives on neglect.
  • 🔻Attracts bees, butterflies, and birds
  • 🔻A must-have for beginners and collectors alike, this vine delivers a nonstop show of blazing color all winter and beyond.


🛒Bring home the brightest flame vine on the market!

📚 Learn more:


#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits

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