Made it through the night!

Incredibly, the frost never arrived in our garden, and we still have Cannas flowering away! What an incredible genus. The earliest ones start flowering in June, and here, mid-November they are still flowering!

Flowering in mid-November

It is good to see that tropical gardening is gaining in popularity again. In England it gained a great deal of interest in the 1990's, but has seemed to fade a little in the early years of the new century. Now it is noticeably gaining more interest each year, although this is not reflected in many gardening magazines, who only seem to give it a passing mention.

Perhaps the publicity surrounding Canna virus scared some away from the genus? But we should be aware that many other genus have many more problems with virus that Cannas, and the horticultural industry and gardeners have simply learned to live with it and manage it. Unless some philanthropist subscribes a vast amount of money into research of Canna virus, we have to learn to do the same thing. We have found that careful selection, removing the most troubled cultivars altogether and ruthless rouging of badly infected specimens is proving a success.