Willy World: birds of paradise

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Garden: birds of paradise

write2rellie
Dream Gardener
Member # 1783

posted

ok, here goes, first question, probably of many... when I bought the house in Oct, the birds of paradise were in full bloom. Now the blooms have died, do I need to cut them off? do I need to do any pruning or anything? [dunno]

The bed is right along the front of my house which faces directly East, so it gets full sun all morning. So far I have pruned the roses down near the base, and weeded out dandelions. that's it. There are two other plant varieties that share the bed, one is like a shrub or bush with long stems that have small pink flowers on the ends, and the other is like a grassy plant with shoots up to (if I remember correctly) purple flowers. [nutz]

I'm very new to gardening, so i couldn't tell you any more than that now, maybe i"ll look at some pics then get back.

Any pointers?
[dunno]

* * * *

rellie

Plants: 147 | From: bellflower, ca | Registered: Jan 2004 | Seeded: 24.130.136.119

catlover
The Cheetah!
Member # 654

posted

Rellie
I am a newbie gardener as well. My parents used to have several bird of paradise and this is from the experience I had then....may want to wait for more people to come through with answers.

Not sure what type of bird you have? [dunno]

The type my parents had were with the orange flowers. I always trimmed out the old dead flower stalks as far down into the bush I could get! I trim up any leaves that look ragged, yellow and that were split really bad. Again I cut down as far as I could go. The remainder that is left will be brown but don't worry about it....in several years they will dry up enough where you can just pull them out and make the plant look cleaner.

There is a white bird of paradise (bop) and the birds are lower in the bush and the leaves are split more than the colored variety. So don't go cutting all the ragged leaves because this is how they are supposed to grow!

Don't know if that helped any! [dunno]

Catlover