I’m not opposed to a great Summer Romance. Temperate gardeners who have acted upon one of the many blatant hints I have dropped this season and picked up a copy of my new book Tropical Plants and How to Love Them, know that I downright encourage them.
After all, if a $5.99 one-quart dipladenia purchased in early May (yes, I paid that paltry sum this year) turns into a pot-of-gorgeous for June, July, August, September, and at least part of October, even the most frugal among us can admit we got our money’s worth. Especially if profligates are apparently dropping $549.99 on a 4-inch ‘Albo Variegata’ monstera, and celebrating that incredible bargain with a $5.99 organic nitro cold brew with sweet cream cold foam for the ride home.
I don’t even understand what I’m seeing here. Somebody call Dave Ramsey.
Saying a fond goodbye to the dipladenia in October may be tough, but hey, five months is five months baby.
Which is why I get so annoyed when I see frost-tender crotons show up en masse at garden centers in September for the autumn season. Particularly at the BigBox garden centers.
A Summer Romance is one thing. A one-night stand is altogether different.
Okay, maybe not one night. But they ain’t got many ahead of them. Lambs to the slaughter.
Croton 101
Here are a couple things to know about crotons besides – “Hey, they’re orange. What a great decorating opportunity.”
Crotons are extremely frost sensitive. They’re not excited about drafts, and cold nights mean dropped leaves. Frost means blackened leaves. And then dropped leaves. Naked stems. Ugly plants. Disgust and despair. Contempt from your gardening friends. Compost piles.
Autumn 101
Here are a couple things to know about autumn besides – “Hey, it’s time to decorate. What a great croton opportunity.”
Nights are getting colder. Days may be warm but bonfires officially light up cool evenings. Fleeces are being dug out from under cargo shorts. If you’re in cooler climates like Wisconsin or Nova Scotia (Erin Schanen, Niki Jabbour I feel your pain), you could be 24 short hours away from “Holy hell I forgot to bring the houseplants in.”
Autumnal Decorating with Plants 101
Buying a seasonal mum or a flat of pansies or an ornamental kale is one thing. Boring – particularly displayed on their own – but perfectly valid. They’re frost tolerant and will give you a decent display for weeks – months even. Years, if you’re a mum martyr.
Sheffield mums don’t count. Totally not boring.
But a CROTON? You’ll literally get two weeks if you’re lucky. It’s like buying a bouquet of lilies for the front porch.
Aaaaaaaaand, having spent a decent sum late in the game on a plant that is actually worth that money due to the growing time it takes to put on those tough stems and surprisingly fragile, waxy, multicolored leaves, once the inevitable inevitably occurs, you are more than likely to want to take the blackened, frost-injured sticks with four pathetic leaves into the house to overwinter.
Call me a cynic, but this will 100% end badly for all involved and possibly put you off of tropical plants forever. Which would just. Be. Wrong.
Give a Crotons a Chance
What a missed opportunity for garden centers! Instead, why not celebrate the incredible versatility of this incredible genera (Codiaeum) from the moment the growing season begins? There are well over 150 landscape varieties (mostly hybrids of C. variegatum), and choices go WAY beyond the ubiquitous ‘Petra.’
Crotons in the summer landscape are simply stunning. (Photo: The Garden of Bill and Linda Pinkham)
I keep a shoestring-leafed ‘Zanzibar’ alive, along with a ‘Mammy’ and a ‘Sunny Star,’ just got a cutting of an oak leaf hybrid, and am always on the lookout for ‘Dreadlocks’ whose long corkscrew leaves are so freaking cool I hardly have words to describe them.
‘Dreadlocks’ (Photo from Tropical Plants and How to Love Them)
In late spring, they all emerge from the torture chamber that is my dry house looking like they need a stiff drink and a ticket to Florida, but within a month they are perked up and adding incredible color and texture to plants like autumn fern and bog-standard begonias (which can go meh if you’re not careful). Crotons appreciate dappled shade, lots of moisture in well-draining soil, and a sheltered position from wind if you’ve got it.
Crotons can burn in strong sun, or simply bleach out. The look is not displeasing.
At the end of a long, lovely and lusciously colorful season, you can bid this Summer Romance goodbye, knowing that you got your money’s worth; or cave to base desires, and share your winter life with a High Maintenance Partner that demands humidity, bright light, and moisture.
Damn I do it every year.
This Fall, Don’t Fall For Cheap Tricks
There’s only one gardener who has any business matching containers of crotons with mini-pumpkins, #Harvest signs, and sprays of faux berries – a gardener who moved to the tropics and can’t reconcile himself to the fact that he doesn’t live in New York anymore.
A ‘Mammy’ and ‘Sunny Star’ croton wait on the kitchen countertop for winter placement.
For the rest of us – resist the autumn temptation. If you succumbed during a trip to [ostensibly] replace your thermostat, I get it. But for Heaven’s sake bring the poor thing inside at once and treat it like it’s a celebrity on an extended spa vacation.
A celebrity you like. There are so few these days. – MW
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One last blatant hint: There’s still time to let Tropical Plants and How To Love Them help you navigate the panic and/or process of the fall plant migration season. Or to simply offer absolution if you’ve had one too many wicked Summer Romances. Available at your favorite booksellers, and the other one.
Thank you! What the heck? I cringe whenever I see all those poor dying crotons outside the grocery and big box stores in the fall!
Crying laughing, thanks!
Marianne, once again your subtle humor has tickled my funny bone. “Your favorite booksellers and the other one” – yes indeed.
I saw many crotons for sale only moments ago at a nursery. My thoughts were the same as yours, Marianne—except I didn’t think of one night stands! Thanks for the laughs.
They are not meant to be houseplants? I bring mine in if it gets below 40F over night here, which it rarely does. They do fine in the house.
They are not the easiest of houseplants, which attests to your skill in caring for them if they do well for you! They enjoy higher levels of humidity and bright light, as well as even moisture to stay looking their best. – MW
I don’t understand that price tag either. I look and look and wonder… And the crotons. No temptation for me, but that one called ‘Dreadlocks’… maybe!
Oh yes – it’s pretty cool. That photo was taken at Vizcaya in Florida. – MW
I haven’t bought the ubiquitous mums in years now. They cannot hold a candle to the daisy type, such as Sheffield Pink (in your pic), or Clara Curtis, etc. For the life of me, I don’t know why they seem to have vanished from the nurseries. I suppose I could order online, but I would probably get small plants and I want a nice show the first year. I had no idea that plant was called a croton. I first read “crouton,” so I am having salad for dinner, I guess.
Summer romance and one night stands… Thank you so much for the laughter. Last Christmas, I saw shelves and shelves of tabletop-sized arbor vitae which, by the time I had gotten to the said big box store, had dropped in price to $5.99 each. The waste of it all saddened me enormously. Then I bucked up and bought 2 for the front door, thinking I pay more for cut flowers and if these last that long, I’d be ahead. Plunked them large pots, expected them to die over the winter in their northern, shady exposure. They are doing fine so far, having lived and thrived for 9 months. Not exactly tropical plants but about the same in terms of their marketing and incongruity of actual cultural needs versus intended use.
I was at one of those so-called “big box” stores last week. Lots of signs telling people that Fall is a great time for gardening, which is true. But the signs were surrounded by grasses, flowers and plants that won’t survive the winter, even here in south-east Virginia. Sometimes I just want to stand up on the rows of plants and yell, “Don’t fall for this people!”. Uh, pun intended.
I can’t even seem to keep coleus alive in our non centrally heating home…..
I was going to try houseplants beyond the nonkillable ancient snake plant and Christmas cactus I inherited from my grandmother (and I’m now grandma aged.) And then I got two kittens. Nothing is safe.