Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 5 May 2025

How to get a large, lush and fragrant bush in no time

Clerodendrum bungei - Glory Bower, Cashmere bouquet

💐 How to get a large, lush and fragrant bush in no time
  • 💐 Looking for a fragrant, fast-growing shrub that adds beauty and privacy to your garden? Clerodendrum bungei - Glory Bower, Cashmere bouquet - is an excellent choice.​

  • Key Benefits:
  • 💐 Fragrant Blooms: Enjoy clusters of sweetly scented, pink flowers that attract butterflies and other pollinators. They open in terminal panicles up to six inches across.
  • 💐 Versatile Growth: Dark green leaves often tinged purple are up to 8 inches long. This plant can be grown as a compact shrub or allowed to spread. This plant is incredibly vigorous and fast-growing, spreading quickly through root suckers. If you don’t want it to take over your yard in just one season, make sure to plant it in a contained corner or a container.
  • 💐 Hardy and Resilient: Cashmere Bouquet is hardy to USDA Zones 8-10 and can tolerate light freezes, rejuvenating each spring. ​
  • 💐 Low Maintenance: It thrives in full sun to part shade and is drought-tolerant once established. ​Keep the soil moist during the growing season. ​Regular pruning helps maintain its shape and encourages more blooms. ​


🛒 Buy Clerodendrum bungei – Cashmere Bouquet

📚 More about Clerodendrums in previous posts:
#Hedges_with_benefits #Perfume_Plants #Container_Garden #Butterfly_Plants

🔴 Join 👉 TopTropicals

Date: 1 Jun 2025

Which Champaka tree is better - White or Golden?

✍️ Which Champaka tree is better - White or Golden?



🏆 Golden or White Champaka - Which Tree Should You Choose?
Both the White and Golden Champaka trees are prized for their intoxicating, fruity fragrance - often described as smelling like sweet bubble gum. Their blooms are famously used in the creation of Joy, one of the world's most expensive perfumes. While they share many similarities in scent and beauty, there are key differences between the two.

  • ⚪️ White Champaka - Magnolia (Michelia) x alba (in the video) is a sterile hybrid between Magnolia champaca and Magnolia montana. Because it does not produce seeds, this variety is always propagated through grafting or air layering. One major benefit of this is that grafted White Champaka trees begin blooming right away, even when they are still small. This makes Magnolia alba a more reliable and consistent bloomer from a young age.

  • ⚪️ White Champaka is also more compact and slower-growing than the Golden variety, making it especially suitable for container growing and smaller garden spaces.

  • 🟡 Golden Champaka - Magnolia (Michelia) champaca is the original species and grows from seed, which means it typically takes a few years to start blooming. However, it has an edge in cold hardiness and is more tolerant of cooler temperatures compared to the White Champaka.

  • 🟡 Golden Champaka tends to be more vigorous and taller, making it a better fit for larger landscape plantings where space and height are not limiting factors.


✍️ In Summary:


  • ✔️ Fragrance: Both smell similar - like fruity bubble gum - and are used for perfume.
  • ✔️ White Champaka: Grafted, blooms sooner, compact growth, ideal for pots.
  • ✔️ Golden Champaka: Grown from seed, blooms later, more cold tolerant, vigorous growth.
  • ✔️ Both trees are exceptional choices for Southern gardens. Whether you choose the early-blooming, compact White Champaka or the hardy, golden-flowered original, you'll be adding one of the most enchanting perfume trees to your landscape. Plant both!

See side-by-side comparison of the 2 varieties of Champaka trees in the next post👇

🛒 Plant Champaka trees and always have your own Joy Perfume

🎥 Magnolia (Michelia) x alba, White Champaka
Golden Champaka: video 1 and video 2

📚 Learn more about White and Golden Champakas:


#Perfume_Plants #Container_Garden #Trees

🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals

Date: 15 Jun 2025

Is it real or porcelain? Discover the flower that fools the eye!

Clusia lanceolata - Porcelain Flower

Is it real... or porcelain? Discover the tree that fools the eye!

🔮 Clusia lanceolata - Porcelain Flower has pink blooms so perfect they look fake! This easygoing tree thrives in both sun or shade and even feeds birds with its apple-like fruit. Great undemanding yet unusual flowering plant for container in a shady spot.

🛒Add a touch of porcelain magic to your garden

📚 Learn more:


A flower that looks plastic ceramic

#Container_Garden #Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts
🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals

Date: 23 Jun 2025

What is the best tasting and most beautiful tropical cherry? Grumichama

Grumichama - Eugenia brasiliensis

🍒 What is the best tasting and most beautiful tropical cherry? Grumichama!
  • 🍒 If you are hunting for a fruit tree that does it all - gorgeous looks, unbelievable flavor, and nonstop productivity - meet Grumichama (Eugenia brasiliensis), the tropical cherry you'll fall in love with!
  • 🍒 Grumichamais a compact cherry tree that steals the show. In spring, the tree transforms into a cloud of delicate white starburst flowers, like fireworks frozen in bloom. The blossoms are pure white with long, golden-tipped stamens, giving them a soft, lacy glow. The entire tree hums with life - bees and butterflies swarm to sip the nectar, turning your garden into a pollinator paradise.
  • 🍒 And then comes the fruit! The cherries are dark purple-black, glossy, and almost too juicy to believe. One bite and you're hooked- sweet, smooth, with hints of cherry, grape, and plum. It's our favorite tropical cherry at Top Tropicals, hands down. So good, you'll eat one - then a handful - and then realize you've picked half the tree. They're that good!
  • 🍒 Grumichama tree is a dream come true for beginners. It tolerates heat, partial shade, even salt spray. It's drought-tough, yet grateful for a little water with a crazy fruit yield - up to 500 fruits per tree. And it's perfect container fruit, so even small-space gardeners in colder zones can grow it. Cold hardy to the upper 20s!
  • 🍒 Even when not fruiting, Grumichama is a stunning ornamental. Shiny evergreen leaves, showy blooms, and a neat, upright form make it a standout in your landscape.
  • 🍒 And the fruit? Packed with vitamin C, fiber, and even a bit of plant protein, it's a sweet treat that’s also healthy. Perfect fresh off the tree, or turned into jam or jelly - if you can stop eating them long enough.
  • 🍒 Start your food forest with Grumichama. It's easy. It's beautiful. And it's the most addictive fruit!


🛒 Start your food forest with Grumichama

📚 Learn more:


Why grow Grumichama? Benefits of Brazilian Eugenia Tree - Cherry of the Tropics

#Food_Forest #Discover

🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals

Date: 29 Jun 2025

Plumeria pudica: the evergreen plumeria that never stops blooming

Plumeria pudica

💐 Plumeria pudica: the evergreen plumeria that never stops blooming

  • 🌸 Also known as Bridal Bouquet, Plumeria pudica stands out from the rest with its lush, fiddle-shaped leaves that stay green year-round. Unlike typical plumerias that go bare in winter, this variety keeps its tropical charm in every season.
  • 🌸 It produces constant clusters of crisp white flowers with yellow centers - each about 3 inches across - giving the look of a fresh bouquet right on the plant. Whether in bloom or not, it's always ornamental.
  • 🌸 Its growth habit is just as versatile. Plumeria pudica can be shaped into a small tree or kept as a dense, clumping bush - ideal for patios, tight spaces, or tropical accents in the landscape.
  • 🌸 And the best part? It's low-maintenance. Fast-growing, drought-tolerant, and naturally resistant to pests and disease, this plumeria asks for very little and gives back a lot.
  • 🌸 We have in our collection very interesting variety of Plumeria pudica from Thailand. It has variegated leaves! Plumeria pudica variegata - Snow Bridal Bouquet, or White Arrow Leaf - has variegated leaf margins. Like regular Plumeria pudica, it is evergreen, never drops leaves, and grows into a beautiful, dense multi-stem bush. Great for container culture.


🛒 Add nonstop blooms and evergreen beauty to your garden

📚
Learn more:
Have you ever seen a Bridal Bouquet Plumeria this size?

#Container_Garden #Trees

🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals