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BougainvilleaBring a touch of the tropics to your landscape. |
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Transcript: Bougainvillea
Few plants can match bougainvilleas when it comes to gaudy summer color. We have a wide range of colors available from hot pink and red, to purples and lavenders, to even some gold and white types.You know, it's not the pedals or the flowers that we appreciate on these; the flower itself is kind of inconspicuous. It's the colorful bracts that are so attractive.
One of the pluses of bougainvilleas is that they're very drought tolerant. You can allow them to die back quite a bit in a drought, and the plant will survive and come on. Now for best blooming, you want to keep them adequately watered and fertilized to keep the leaves green and healthy. But don't overdue it; a complete fertilizer works well.
You can train them to a standard and make a small tree that weeps out over the side, or they also do well in a hanging container where they can kind of spill over the side.
Bougainvillea blooms its best in the spring in our climate. If you want to protect them over winter in a container, you probably need to bring them in to a protected spot or they'll freeze to death. In the ground, with a little mulch, the base of your plant may survive over winter here in central Texas as long as we don't have a very cold winter; otherwise, it could be killed outright.
They're tropical, but they're well worth the investment for gaudy summer beauty. I nicked named this guy Pancho; call him Pancho Villa. With your common sense tip on gaudy warm season color with bougainvillea, I'm Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006