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14.8.12

Coleus hedge

I prefer hedges to walls - they breathe, they are prettier, and it's easier to cut a hedge than to re-plaster and paint a cement block wall.

Out here are hedges are different from those in England - I have seen pine hedges, cactus hedges, and even poinsettia hedges, though the red bracts are too seasonal for those to be stunning for long.

Between our terrace and the communal paths we have a bouganvilla hedge that gives us a modicum of privacy - or at least the illusion of it, which is as much as one can expect when one lives on the ground floor of a four-storey block!



But the hedge around our complex is a coleus hedge. Many of the hedges in our village are the same.

I conducted a survey this morning. and found three variations on the large floppy leaves theme - plus one that looks like an exploding firework.


Four all told.
I was certain I had seen a greater variety in garden centres in England, albeit on a smaller scale, but then everything grows fast and huge out here.
So I looked up images of coleus on the internet.

There are hundreds!
Some of them have zig-zag-edged leaves, the colours range over green, red, yellow, brown, purple, white.

So why can't we have some of those?

5 comments:

  1. It's always been a joy to me to see the glorious flowering shrubs & trees surrounding cared for apartment complexes and the side roads and traffic islands. The growth in such colour brought about by excellent planting over the last 10 years has been remarkable.
    Thanks Liz for reminding us of what sometimes we take for granted.

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  2. I love hedges. Especially the old established hedgerows stretching through the English countryside. They become rich environments all of their own and great havens for wildlife. And I love to try and recreate a little of that in a garden.

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  3. A lot of coleus plants are only available in England as house plants because of the climate. I tried growing a variety from seed one year but it was a disaster. They all became leggy.

    Mr A much prefers walls to hedges but then he's referring to those old brick walls with sedum poking out from crumbling edges and hollyhocks sprouting from the base.

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  4. Ros - we had a 200 year-old flint wall round our last home in England, full of self-seeded growing things. Here a wall is made of cement blocks these days, though the Guanches used to build theirs from loose rocks.

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  5. These look like Fijian Fire plants to me ;-)

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