🌳 5 small tropical trees that bloom all summer or year around
🌳 1. Bauhinia madagascariensis - Red Butterfly Orchid Tree. A rare small tree with scarlet blooms patterned like butterflies, highlighted with golden stripes at the petal bases. It grows fast, adapts to containers, and brings vivid color all summer.
🌳 2. Brugmansia - Angel Trumpet - Large, pendulous trumpet flowers make Brugmansia unforgettable, especially when they release their sweet fragrance at night. It flowers in cycles all summer, perfect for moon gardens and patios.
🌳 3. Caesalpinia - Pride of Barbados, Dwarf Poinciana, Bird of Paradise. This small tree explodes with bright red, orange, or yellow blooms all summer, like fireworks in the garden. It's drought-tolerant, fast-growing, and makes a bold focal point.
🌳 4. Hamelia - Fire Bush - is a pollinator favorite, covered in clusters of fiery orange-red blooms from spring through fall. Compact and easy to trim, it thrives in poor soil while attracting hummingbirds and butterflies.
🌳 5. Plumeria pudica - Bridal Bouquet
Unlike most plumerias, Bridal Bouquet keeps blooming all summer without resting. Its pure white flowers, neat form, and adaptability to pots make it an excellent patio or garden tree.
Q: I
purchased a Plumeria from your company.
It has done quite nicely and now has produced a seed pod.
Please forward me information on how to care for it and
use the seeds that may be inside to propagate another
plant.
A: Wait
until seeds are ripe (seed pod turns brownish). Soak seeds
overnight. Use only well drained soil, or cactus
mix. Insert heavy end of seed 1/4"into soil, leaving
feathered end exposed. Place the pot in direct sunlight.
Don't allow soil to completely dry out, but don't let it
be soggy. Germination occurs usually within 3 weeks. Do
not overwater. For more information on growing Plumerias,
see our slideshow guide:
Date: 23 Nov 2025
🏡 To Use Your Garden Or Be Used By It
Smokey and Sunshine November Planting.
Smokey: Winter roots make spring easy. Keep that plant straight.
Sunshine: I am keeping it straight by not touching it at all.
Smokey: That is exactly what I was afraid of.
November is the month when the garden finally stops yelling at you.
The heat backs off, the bugs calm down, and the weeds take a breath.
This is when we get to take control again.
And as gardeners, we know the truth:
Either you use your garden, or your garden will use you in
spring.
Let me walk you through this, gardener to gardener.
"November is when the garden finally listens.
Give it a little direction now, shape it, guide it, and prepare it for
spring.
It will reward you all year." - Tatiana Anderson, Top Tropicals Plant
Expert
🌴
When The Garden Uses
You
We have all lived this scene:
March weeds appear, and two days later it looks like a jungle.
One missed watering turns into five wilted plants and a full week of
recovery.
A skipped feeding shows up as yellow leaves and panic searching
online.
Bugs return fast, and suddenly you are washing leaves every other
day.
Random plant purchases fill your yard with chaos and mismatched care
needs.
When the garden takes control, spring feels like hard work, not
joy.
Overgrown Tropical Garden Showing How a Garden Can Use You
📊
When You Use Your Garden
November flips the script.
Plants slow down. Soil stays warm.
This is the safest month to experiment, move plants, fix mistakes, and
redesign.
What you do now pays off huge in March.
You map out sun zones and shade zones.
You mulch now so weeds do not explode later.
You move plants to better positions without heat stress.
You remove the high-drama plants before they start another season of
complaints.
You pick what you want for next year instead of letting impulse buys
rule you.
Spring becomes smooth instead of overwhelming.
And honestly? It feels good to walk outside in March and see order instead
of chaos.
In the photo: Every garden starts in small steps. Biquinho Pepper
(front) in the garden.
What Benefit
Do You Get Personally?
Less watering.
Fewer bugs.
Bigger fruit.
Better flowering.
Less money wasted.
Less time fixing problems you could have prevented now.
This is why experienced tropical gardeners adore November.
In the photo: Organized Tropical Garden. Firebush (lemon gold
variety) and Cordylines (Ti Leaf) make colorful spots in the garden.
🐭
Start With Something Small Today (5 Minutes)
Pick one:
Add mulch to the driest spot in your yard.
Cut one dead branch from any tree.
Move one pot to a better sun angle.
Pull three weeds from the worst area.
Water deeply once this week.
Small steps now save hours later.
⭐
One Short Story
Last year we planted a
Star Fruit in November.
By March, it was already covered in flowers, and have been harvesting fruit
non-stop since then!
That is what winter planning does: it gives plants a head start you can
actually see.
🐍
Plants That Will Use You If You Let Them
These are great plants, but only if you plan before planting them:
Papaya
- fits any yard, delicious fruit and natural digestive remedy
Pick even one of these and your garden starts giving back.
In the photo: Cattley Guava brings not only tasty fruit but also a
wonderful character with its amazing multi-color twisted trunk.
🌡️ November Advantage
You cannot ruin anything in November.
This is the safest, calmest month to shape your garden the way you want.
If you act now, spring becomes a victory lap.
If you wait, spring becomes a rescue mission.
In the photo: Adenium is a colorful accent in the
garden.
💐
Thanksgiving Tie-In
This is the season to reset, breathe, and be thankful for your outdoor
space.
A garden that works for you is one of the best gifts you can give yourself
going into the new year.
Start your November plan today.
Use your garden.
Do not let it use you.
In the photo: Megaskepasma, Iris, Colocasia, Crotons, Dracaena and Ti
Leaf bring instant tropical look to your garden.
Sunshine: John said it smelled like a thousand
jasmines. Smokey: And somehow that's all the information he brought
back from Thailand. Sunshine: He brought a photo, too. Smokey: Excellent. We can begin our international manhunt.
Well, Smokey and Sunshine have closed the case and found the mystery
plant. The cork board is coming down, the magnifying glass is back in the
drawer, and the "Enchanted
Incense" mug is finally empty.
Now let's talk about the plant itself.
🌸 Some plants arrive with a label. Some arrive with a
story.
Cerbera x manghas - Enchanted Incense - produces some of the most
unusual
fragrant flowers in the tropical garden. Its velvety reddish blooms,
outlined in white and carried on vivid pink tubes, create an exotic display
that looks hand-painted.
When our good friend John Mood returned from a plant conference in
Thailand, he did not bring us a plant. He brought us a mystery.
John had spent decades growing and collecting rare tropical plants. When he
said he had found something special, we paid attention.
On a visit to Chatuchak
Market, one of the most famous plant markets in Asia,
something stopped him. Not the flowers. The fragrance.
"I found a plant that smells stronger than a thousand jasmines," John
told us.
That one sentence stayed with us for years.
He had photographs. He had his memory of that scent. What he did not have
was a name. No tag. No seller information. Just the photos and the certainty
that he had smelled something genuinely unusual.
So we started looking.
We showed the photographs around. We asked collectors. We compared flowers.
Every lead turned into another question. But eventually, after years of
searching on and off, we found it.
The mystery plant turned out to be an unusual Cerbera
unlike anything we had grown before.
Today we call it Enchanted Incense. Fragrance lovers recognized
immediately what John had recognized in that Bangkok market. This was not
just another pretty tropical flower.
🌸 The Plant
Even when
not in full bloom, Cerbera
x manghas Enchanted Incense is a standout plant. Its glossy, deep
burgundy foliage and bronze new growth create a bold tropical presence,
while the unusual flowers add an extra layer of intrigue.
Visitors at our nursery still walk past it and stop. Not because they
noticed the plant. Because they noticed something in the air and could not
figure
out where it was coming from.
The flowers start soft pink and white, then deepen to rich red and auve as
they mature. They come in clusters, four to five inches across, and the
fragrance they produce does not stay close to the flower. It moves. It fills
the space around the plant. On a warm morning it can perfume an entire
patio.
The foliage is worth mentioning too. Deep green leaves with burgundy and
mauve tones that make it attractive even when it is not blooming. The growth
habit is slow and slightly weeping, similar to plumeria,
which is no coincidence since they are close
relatives. Unlike plumeria, Enchanted Incense stays evergreen in warm
climates.
It is a compact, slow-growing small tree that is happy in a container. That
makes it practical for gardeners in colder climates who need to bring it in
for winter, and for anyone who wants a fragrant plant near a seating area
rather than somewhere across the yard.
🌸 Why We Grow It
The
flowers of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense - look otherworldly. Deep reddish petals,
bright pink
tubes, and contrasting white edges combine to create one of the most
distinctive fragrant blooms.
We grow thousands of plants, and most can be described in a sentence or
two.
This one cannot.
A large Enchanted Incense grows right outside our office. Every year it
reminds us why we
spent so much time searching for it.
Visitors stop beside it and ask the same question: "What is that
smell?"
They usually notice the fragrance before they notice the plant.
Some follow the scent across the nursery. Others stop in the middle of a
conversation and start looking around. Nearly
everyone ends up standing next to the tree trying to figure out where that
incredible fragrance is coming from.
In a world full of beautiful tropical plants, Enchanted Incense remains
one of the few that announces itself before you even see it.
Cerbera
x manghas -
Enchanted Incense can display remarkable variation in flower color. This
form
combines soft rose-pink blooms with white-edged petals and rich burgundy
foliage, creating a striking contrast throughout the plant.
Light: Full sun is best (at least
six hours
daily). It will tolerate partial shade but blooms much more generously in
good
light.
Watering: Water regularly during
warm weather. In cool weather and winter, keep the soil on the drier side.
Overwatering when
temperatures are low is the most common mistake.
Soil: Use a well-draining mix. This
plant absolutely does not want wet feet.
Fertilizer: Feed with a
Green Magic
controlled-release fertilizer for flowering plants in spring, supplemented
with occasional liquid fertilizer through the summer. For non-stop blooms
without the risk of
salt build-up in containers, we highly recommend
Sunshine
Boosters™.
Read
our Guide to Sunshine Boosters™ and Green Magic fertilizer
Winter Care: Bring it indoors
when temperatures approach the mid-30s°F. The rootstock is fairly
tough,
but the foliage is not. Cold and wet conditions combined are the real risk.
One Last Thing
A closer
look reveals the remarkable details of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense.
The velvety petals, crisp white edging, and fuzzy pink center give the
flower an appearance
unlike anything else in the garden. And then comes the scent...
John came back from Bangkok with a few photographs and a fragrance he
could not forget. It took us years to track down the plant behind that
memory. We have never regretted a single minute of the search.
Sunshine: So after all those years, what's the answer? Smokey: Stand next to the plant. Sunshine: That's it? Smokey: The fragrance explains the rest.
A closer
look reveals the remarkable details of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense develops into an attractive small tree
with lush evergreen foliage and colorful new growth. In the
landscape, it combines year-round structure with clusters of bright
redding-pink fragrant flowers that stand out beautifully against the glossy
leaves.
Growing Tips
