Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 19 Dec 2025

13 festive shrubs with bright flowers that bring color to your Winter Garden when everything else is dormant

13 festive shrubs for Winter Garden

13 festive shrubs for Winter Garden

💐 13 festive shrubs with bright flowers that bring color to your Winter Garden when everything else is dormant



Southern Living points to colorful berries as winter garden standbys. Tropical plants take it a step further, filling the cool season with real flowers, not just fruit. From vivid reds to electric blues, these plants prove winter does not have to be dull.
  • 🌈 1. Gloxinia sylvatica - Bolivian Sunset


    This plant waits for cool weather, then suddenly lights up the shade with fire-red blooms. Flowers appear almost overnight and continue through fall and winter. It rests in summer, returns in fall, spreads gently, and makes an easy, festive ground cover that is perfect for sharing.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 2. Pereskia aculeata - Barbados gooseberry


    An unusual vine that surprises in cool weather with delicate, star-shaped blooms followed by tasty fruit. It flowers steadily from fall through winter, adding light, airy color to fences and trellises when most vines are quiet.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 3. Mansoa alliacea - garlic vine


    Best known for its garlicky scent, this vine really shines in winter. Cooler temperatures bring clusters of lavender-purple flowers that brighten fences and trellises with very little effort.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 4. Dombeya wallichii - tropical hydrangea


    Large pink pompom blooms hang from bare branches in winter, creating a true holiday look. Lightly fragrant and impossible to miss, it brings hydrangea-style drama to the cool season.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 5. Brunfelsia pauciflora Compacta - dwarf yesterday-today-tomorrow


    Compact and cheerful, this shrub opens purple flowers that fade to lavender and white. The color shift makes it look like several plants blooming at once, perfect for pots or small garden spaces.

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  • 🌈 6. Clerodendrums


    Long, cascading sprays of white flowers of Clerodendrum minahassae - fountain clerodendrum - spill from the plant during the cooler months. It brightens shaded areas and adds movement when the garden slows down. Most clerodendrums bloom through Winter!

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 7. Tibouchina multiflora - glory bush


    Soft, fuzzy purple blooms cover this shrub in winter, backed by velvety leaves that look good year-round. It adds strong color and texture during the cool season.

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  • 🌈 8. Holmskioldia sanguinea - Chinese hat


    Bright red, orange or yellow, hat-shaped bracts surround small flowers and hold their color through the cool months. The shape alone makes this shrub a standout in winter.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 9. Barleria cristata - Philippine violet


    This tough shrub blooms heavily in winter with rich purple flowers. It delivers dependable color when many plants take a break. There is a golden variety too!

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 10. Eranthemum pulchellum - blue sage, lead flower


    Few plants offer true blue in winter. Electric-blue flower spikes appear in cool weather, adding rare color with minimal care.

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  • 🌈 11. Petrea volubilis - queen's wreath


    In winter, this woody vine erupts into cascading sprays of lavender star-shaped flowers. It creates a wisteria-like effect right when the garden needs it most.

👉 Learn more
  • 🌈 12. Tabebuia varieties - dwarf golden and dwarf pink


    These trees save their show for winter, blooming on bare branches. Golden forms glow yellow, while pink varieties cover themselves in soft trumpet-shaped flowers.

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🌈 13. Bauhinia trees - pink butterfly and Hong Kong orchid trees


Butterfly-shaped blooms open on leafless branches, giving bauhinias their signature winter elegance. The Hong Kong orchid tree stands out with especially large, vivid flowers.

🛒 Explore Winter bloomers

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Date: 6 Oct 2021

Top Tropicals Top House Plants

Photo above: Clerodendrum indoor garden of Ludmila Ezhova, St Petersburg, Russia.

Enjoy the Tropics Year round!
Bring them inside...

Q: I just discovered your amazing website and spent hours browsing your beautiful tropical plants! I wish I could have them all! But it's getting cold here (I live in Chicago area), too late? Can you recommend something of a small size, colorful, that I can easily overwinter indoors? Thanks for bringing this beauty into our lives!

A: Don't get discouraged even in colder climates. Yes, you can grow tropical plants indoors! Remember that all traditional houseplants are in fact tropical plants that grow in tropics in a wild habitat. Humans didn't invent them as indoor plants, they originally collected them from the rain forests and jungles! Most of tropical plants, including trees and fruit trees, can be grown in containers and even indoors. It's just a matter of space limitations and amount of time you are willing to spend caring of your exotic babies. Many gardeners up North are very successful with their tropical plant collections.
Below are a few suggestions of compact growing, easy species for your indoor collection. Enjoy the Tropics Year round!

See more plants well-suitable for indoor culture and our specials at the end of this newsletter.

Photo above: small tropical indoor garden of Julia Nikolayeva, St Petersburg, Russia.

Date: 26 May 2024

Why this Bleeding Heart is bleeding pink?

Clerodendrum speciosum - Red Bleeding Heart

❤️ Why this Bleeding Heart is bleeding pink?



Clerodendrum speciosum
, also known as the Red Bleeding Heart, is a captivating twist on the classic Bleeding Heart, C. thomsoniae that we mentioned earlier.
  • ❣️ Features stunning pink bracts and vibrant red heart-shaped flowers, enhancing the charm of the original variety.
  • ❣️ Vigorous and fast-growing vine, perfect for creating a privacy hedge (as on the video) or a cascading floral display over a fence.
  • ❣️ Butterflies and bees adore its bright pink-and-red flowers, making it a pollinator-friendly choice 🐝
  • ❣️ Ideal for quickly covering fences or structures with its lush, showy blooms in just one season.


🛒 Order Red Bleeding Heart

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🏵 TopTropicals

Date: 15 Aug 2024

How to grow fragrant Cashmere Bouquet

Clerodendrum philippinum - Cashmere Bouquet, Scent Malli

💮 How to grow fragrant Cashmere Bouquet

  • 💐 Clerodendrum philippinum - Cashmere Bouquet, Scent Malli - is one of the most popular Indian fragrant flowers.
  • 💐 Fast growing bush with lush tropical foliage and very fragrant white flowers, carnation-like, coming in big clusters.
  • 💐 Shade tolerant, great for shade gardens and as an indoor plant to enjoy tropical fragrance year around.
  • 💐 This plant is fast growing in right conditions and can spread runners. Plant it in isolated corner or in keep in a pot unless you want to have a large size hedge in no time just from one plant within couple seasons...


📚 Learn more about Clerodendrums

🛒 Order Cashmere Bouquet

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Date: 3 May 2025

How to add Music to your garden

Clerodendrum incisum - Musical Note, Morning Kiss

🎶 How to add Music to your garden
  • Clerodendrum incisum, also known as Musical Note or Morning Kiss, is a compact, low-maintenance plant with unusual, showy flowers that resemble musical notes, giving it its name.
  • ♪ It thrives in both full sun and shade, tolerates some drought, and attracts butterflies and hummingbirds, making it perfect for wildlife-friendly gardens. With blooms bursting everywhere, this plant creates a beautiful carpet of musical-note-shaped flowers around its base, offering a true symphony for your garden.


ℹ️ The unopened flowers resemble musical notes, giving the plant its name.

🛒 Get Musical Notes for your garden

📚 Learn more about Music Notes:


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