Garden Diary of Cannas

Cannas Australia Garden Diary is for me to keep track and for you to see how my garden grows through each season whilst highlighting any special events that happen throughout the year from the spring of 2010 onwards in Central Victoria.

1st October 2024, Garden Diary

First flower of the season is from Hot Embergle, this pic was taken early January, tall grower reaching 2.3 meters for me with rich rosy deep salmon blooms of up-to 7 flowering heads per stem above coloured foliage, others about to show their flowers are Henri Cohn and Prizzigle.

12th May 2015 Garden Diary

Well it’s been a few months since I’ve last written as life has been quite busy however I have seen many splendid displays of cannas around Melbourne over this past gone summer, from a mass planting in Maribyrnong of a medium height yellow that closely resembled the cultivar Goldbird pre 1927 which grew up to 1.3 meters tall for me.

On a trip to the country I found the pink flowering Rosea Superba an Australian heirloom canna that grew up to 1.1 meters tall. Rosea Superba was found growing very strongly at Traralgon along with the old red flowering Furst Weid, up to 1.5 meters tall.

In the little township of Bunyip I found the old heirloom varieties of Wyoming and an old Annei hybrid that were growing at exceptional heights.

The ever popular grown as a landscaping plant and seen almost everywhere in Victoria is the variegated Phasion, seen once again looking its best in Melton, Victoria, Australia.

26th Febuary 2015 Garden Diary

Well it’s been a while since my last entry however I am constantly seeing beautiful flowering cannas everywhere, on the weekend I visited the Bendigo Botanical Gardens, which have a grand and colourful display of cannas, some varities on show were canna Marjorie Cole, Ace of Spades, Camille Bernardin, the white flowering Alsace, Wyoming, and the Variegated white canna Stuttgart, Ambrosia, Madame Butterfly, P. J. Berkman, Professor Wendt and the pink flowering canna Una.

To see one of the best public collections of cannas (many old heirloom cannas and a few I donated) I highly recommend a visit to Bendigo Gardens to see their large and very colourful collection of well grown cannas.

7th November 2014 Garden Diary

Endings and New beginnings, to my gardening friends and those who personally know me, I have detached and walked away from my beloved cannas and marriage as I’ve learnt in life everything has a starting point and an end, there are no regrets, I have what I believe is the one thing I could not live without and that is my breath.

My Canna collection consisted of 270 different cultivars at its peak and from them I left with three plants they were a pot of Durgarae, the French bred canna Musafolia from the 1860s and a seedling I raised back in 2011 yet to be named. I also have a small amount of canna seeds remaining and thankfully I have given many of my plants to my gardening friends.

So where too from here for Cannas Australia?

My site will remain as an Information and Research site for you to help with any plant identification of cannas and will showcase what is and was available in Australia. I will be regularly updating my site with pictures and descriptions of cultivators grown and sold in Australia, heirloom old world plants and general canna news, with time permitting I will still try some hybridising on a very small scale.

I also found a pleasant surprise, I ranked

for my cannas.

With the weather warming up and the cannas around town (currently reside in Bacchus Marsh) are well n truly flowering, I was traveling through Anglesea along the coast and saw a distinctive flowering yellow canna, the temptation to turn the car around and have a second look for confirmation of which plant it was is still there. Yes the cannas were a big part of my life however I am grateful to be alive and have moved on to new adventures in my life.

Name your Canna, If you are unsure of the cannas you grow feel free to post your pictures here with a leaf and close up flower photo and height of the pant and I will help you to correctly identify it.

Ask Questions and Get Answers about Cannas

11th September 2012 Diary

I hope you enjoy browsing my site and find some useful information to take away with you. Please note all plants sale's have ceased due to family concerns.

11th November 2011 Garden Diary

Since my last write winter has come and gone and there has been good winter rains and spring growth with the cannas to date and fresh flowers, however I had a few varieties flowering through winter as they got a bit of protection from the frosts as they backed up near the back of the house but naturally their flowers weren’t fully opened due to the cold but gee I have to give it to them for trying, they were Joseph Buchan, Camille Bernardin and Rosemund Coles, Camille Bernardin just sat through winter with a stem about 5 foot high with a single head of buds with only 2 or 3 flowers half open and a few buds trying to open, for weeks upon weeks it looked like it was paused in time. Now today almost every bud is open on that same stem and a second head of buds has appeared.

So good to see some colour in the garden but along with last summer being so wet and the good winter rains the weeds and grasses have become rampant too.

I am currently not taking any plant orders at the moment as I injured my arm ulnar nerve many weeks ago and until it has healed my store will remained closed.

Winter June 2011 Garden Diary

Well garden diary readers winter is here all right and it’s right on time, as today being the 1st of June in Australia and it’s also the first day of winter and sure enough we got hit with the first massive frost.

Upon arriving home after spending a day out in Melbourne I really saw the damage that old Jack Frost had left from his night time visit, around 70 percent of my garden has gone from green to a depressing shade of brown. I’m not looking forwards to winter this year as the now past flowering season gave exceptional results, I will miss my colorful garden over the next few months and I simply already cannot wait for spring to arrive.

6th February 2011 Garden Diary.
Heat, Heavy Rains, Kitchen View. Since last post there have been a few hot days where the temperature has reached the 40 deg mark. We had three very hot days in a row, the cannas coped fine but I was contemplating that I would have to drag out the hose and give them a quick watering, thankfully the following days were overcast and much cooler with odd sprinklings of light summer rains, here's the view from my kitchen window that I currently admire, the plants are a mixture of seedlings and odds n ends that I've picked up along the way.

There have been some constant heavy rains throughout most of Victoria and flooding over the last couple of days and these plants copped it all, the flowers on cannas generally don’t show any damage from rain but with the recent heavy down pours some damage was present. Early yesterday morning after the worst of the rains had past I noticed the flowers on some cultivars appeared normal while other canna varieties were soggy and battered and clearly water damaged from simply too much moisture even their half opened flowers were a soggy mush. It was interesting to see and learn that for certain varieties their flowers simply could not cope with all the rain.

Mid January 2011 Garden Diary.
Summer Flowers. My cannas have shot away to exceptional tall heights this season due to all the rain we’ve been getting over the past couple of weeks, so much that many have already reached the heights that they usually get too much later in the season. The garden is simply a blaze of beautiful fresh colours.

I still haven’t watered the cannas as there has been so much rain in Victoria but thankfully not as much as there has been in certain areas in Queensland, the cities of Brisbane, Ipswich, Rockhampton and surrounding areas have been severely flooded and unfortunately many lives, lifestyles and homes have been lost.

End December 2010 Garden Diary.
Summer Rains. Well over the last month it has been surprisingly very wet, with the most rain I’ve seen in this location for years. Inches upon inches of rain has fallen, the dams and tanks have been overflowing and the cannas are already very tall compared to December growth from previous years, there’s nothing like the magical nitrogen filled rain that falls from the sky to boost any plants growth including those darn weeds.

Cannas haven’t needed to be hand watered yet with the steady amount of rain we’ve had and they are once again looking like magic.

Santa also visited yesterday and parked his sled up the paddock and found his way down through some paddocks of baled hay and then through the cannas and up to the house’s roof and down the fire flue -(what I tell my children) and left appropriate gifts for my family. With Christmas over and three noisy kids I’ll be pottering and wandering the garden more often till school goes back in February 2011.

End November 2010 Garden Diary.
Unwanted Surprise. Stumbled upon an unwanted surprise in the garden the other day as I was digging some plants for orders, I found a small set of leaves popping through the mulch and instantly knew it was developed leaf growth and not that from a shooting rhizome, upon digging it out the truth behind this find was revealed! It was a self sown seedling and it was happily on the way to finding its feet amongst the row of the cultivar Gem.

Well what a dismay, a self seedling here in my garden, have never had this happen before, sure I know seeds can sprout on their own without pre scarifying treatment in Queensland and probably in other warm hot climates of Australia, as a few years back I found a self grown seedling at a Victorian nursery at the edge of their sunny canna bed, I just put that fluke down to their areas different climate and the extreme hot summer Victoria was experiencing back then.

The seedling in question pictured above measured 6.5 centimetres long from seed to leaf tip.

Perhaps things are changing with environmental global warming and my location is warming up too, will be keeping an vigilant eye out for any more unwanted self sown seedlings.

November 2010 Garden Diary.
Saving Cannas. Mid November I did a rush trip to the Western District of Victoria to salvage some plants and seedling for my friend Glen. His home was destroyed by fire and the demolisher's wanted to get in to start their work. Some of his seedlings that grew alongside the house were scorched by the heat while others had been trampled and knocked about by the local fire fighters. With labels, pencils and bags in hand we went through and dug what he wanted saved. After a day of labelling and wandering his plentiful tropical garden of cannas and an array of exotic perennials and bulbs I realised the day was almost over. Between Glen and I packing the car we comfortably filled the boot, back seat, floor and front floor filled with bags of cannas, while on the front passenger seat I had some irises and blue Ixias to admire whilst driving the almost two hour drive back home.

October 2010 Garden Diary.
First Flowers of the season. Well finally the first canna for this season is here, On Sunday morning the 24th of October whilst gazing out the en suite window while drying my hair I saw it, the first flower for the season. It is a dark red small species type with dark colored leaves, the flower is so tiny measuring about only three centimetres in height.

Others following up closely behind are Yellow King Humbert with buds to open over the next few days, Aida is starting to show buds while Wyoming is just starting to show its flowering stem.

The weather here in country Victoria is overcast with a few warm sunny days here and there and the night are still very cold and chilly as well as the odd light frost. There has been so much rain this past gone winter and over the past month so I haven’t needed to water the cannas since March/April, soon I'll have to turn on the taps and pump.

Last year (2009) my cannas showed their first flower on the 10th of October.

In 2008 the first flower for the season was on the 16th of Oct and back in 2007 surprising the first for the season was on the same date the 16th of Oct.

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