💥 What blooms for you in December: Calliandra tweedii "With Love"

💥 December just started and so did Calliandra tweedii "With Love" - right by TopTropicals Bfarm office. This plant always knows how to kick off winter around here. First week of December… boom, the red tassels pop open, and then it keeps going all the way through winter and into spring.

💥 Calliandras are famous for being spectacular winter bloomers, but in our garden they seem to ignore the calendar and flower pretty much year-round. "With Love" grows as a many-stemmed dense shrub, kind of like a small fountain. Branches rise right from the ground, covered in tiny leaflets that gently fold at night or when you touch them.

💥 And the flowers - that’s the whole show! Fine, feathery, glowing-red tassels that look almost electric in the morning sun. The bush by the office is covered in them right now - bright scarlet puffs against fresh green foliage. Most calliandras lean more pink, but this one stays true red. It makes a fantastic hedge, a bold specimen shrub, and honestly a great bonsai because of the branching structure.

💥 If you want something cheerful, easy, and blooming exactly when most gardens look quiet, With Love delivers every single year.

🛒 Plant Calliandra tweedii "With Love" - Red Tassel Flower
Shop Calliandras - Powderpuffs

📚 Learn more:

✦ Calliandra tweedii in Plant Encyclopedia
✦ Red Tassel Flower blooms through March

#Hedges_with_benefits #Butterfly_Plants

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🌸 The secret New Deal Franklin Roosevelt never told you about

🌸 Schlumbergera x New Deal is not your regular Christmas cactus. Big blooms, long history. This heirloom flowers from Thanksgiving to Easter and descends from a plant first sold on the very day Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected.
This variety actually vanished from the trade for decades. Its first known appearance was at a rare plant sale at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on November 8, 1932 - the exact day Franklin Roosevelt won the presidency and launched the famous New Deal. The name stuck, and so did the legend!

🌸 What makes New Deal so special? The blooms are huge - about an inch larger than standard holiday cactus flowers - and come in brilliant violet-pink and white. And the timing is even better. It sends up a full flush around Thanksgiving and Christmas, then wakes up again with a second wave closer to Easter. That’s why some people call it a Thanksgiving cactus, others call it a Christmas cactus, and many insist it’s an Easter cactus. The truth? It’s all three.

🌸 Despite its pedigree, New Deal is surprisingly easy to grow. It thrives in normal houseplant conditions, stays compact, and rewards even casual care with heavy, reliable blooming.

🌸 The plants available today come from true descendant cuttings of an original 1932 specimen that is still alive. This makes New Deal one of the rarest, most authentic holiday cactus cultivars you can own - a living slice of history and one of the most generous bloomers of the entire holiday season.

🛒 Get the New Deal: the Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer

📚 Learn more:

✦ More about Schlumbergera from Plant Encyclopedia
✦ What is the most popular Christmas plant?
✦ An heirloom holiday cactus lost for decades: Thanksgiving-to-Easter bloomer

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Nature_Wonders

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🗿 Center of the world tree that stops traffic in Florida - now fits in a pot

🎥 Ceiba Dwarf Pink Princess

🌸 If you’ve ever visited Florida in winter, you’ve probably seen those unbelievable pink trees in full bloom - that’s a Ceiba (Chorisia) speciosa, also known as the Kapok or Pink Silk Floss tree, famous for its hibiscus-like flowers and fluffy silk pods.

🌸 The problem? The classic Ceiba can grow 40 feet tall.
This one doesn’t! Ceiba hybrid Dwarf Pink Princess stays compact - about 8-12 feet in the ground and even smaller in a pot.
And unlike seed-grown trees, this one blooms right away because it’s grafted! No long wait.

🌸 In winter, it drops most of its leaves and explodes into thousands of soft pink flowers. Same wow factor. Just a fraction of the size.
Perfect for small yards, patios, balconies, or anyone who wants a show-stopping winter tree without committing to a giant.

🌸 #Fun_facts: the ancient Maya believed the Ceiba was the sacred tree at the center of the world, connecting earth to the sky.

🌸 So yes… You can officially say you’re growing the center of the world in your backyard.

🛒 Plant it now - it fits any garden

📚 Learn more:

Ceiba (chorisia) speciosa in Plant Encyclopedia
How this breath-taking flowering tree stays so compact

#Trees #Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden

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🏆 Nobel Prize goes to this pregnant male!

👀 Some Papaya trees really break the rules, and this one deserves its own headline. We have a true oddball in the garden - a male papaya tree that actually set a lot of fruit! Not just one fruit, but a whole cluster hanging from those long flower stalks.

👀 We all know that male papayas only make flowers but never set fruit. They only give us sweet fragrance from these flowers! By the way, thanks for the flowers, guys!

👀 The fruit comes from the female flowers that sit tight on the trunk. But every now and then, nature throws a curveball. It looks like a male tree forms perfect female flowers on its long stems and decides to become a parent after all!

👀 The result? Ripe, sweet papayas growing where they absolutely should not be. And yes, they even had seeds inside.

👀 Gardeners wait years for good surprises like this. A male papaya giving birth… that’s rare enough to give a Nobel prize!

🛒 Explore the unpredictable world of Papayas

📚 Learn more:

✦ More about Carica papaya from Plant Encyclopedia
✦ The secret facts of Papaya's private life: it can go transgender!
✦ Posts about #Papaya

#Food_Forest #Papaya

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🌚 All borders eventually end...

🎥 Niki (a.k.a "IDF Security") is explaining to Bob where the borders of his authority end. In plain language.

🔠 PeopleCats.Garden 
#PeopleCats

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