Florida Gardening: Growing Plants that Exceed the Zone Tolerance (up or down)?, 1 by JaxFlaGardener

JaxFlaGardener wrote:
This is a thread to continue discussion from the Lilacs in Florida thread.

What plants are you growing that are rated for a higher or lower USDA Zone tolerance?

I usually try to push the Zone from plants that are rated for more tropical climes to my Zone 8b/9a garden and get them through the few weeks of potentially freezing weather with some winter protection. I have a Petrea volubilis (so called Tropical Wisteria though it is not at all related to wisteria) native to Costa Rica that survives the winters apparently because I planted it against my Podocarpus hedges and they provide protection from the winter's winds. On a really frigid night, I can drape some plastic over it. It bloomed for me the first time last Spring. (see photo below)

Going in the opposite direction for colder clime plants in our sub-tropics, I've tried to naturalize some Spring bulbs - mostly paperwhite narcissus which do bloom here annually when well established. My paperwhites grow splendid, healthy foliage each year (now is their current peak for growth), but out of the 400 bulbs I planted, I currently only get about 4 flower spikes! Hopefully, they will someday give me the December field of fragrant paperwhites I hold in my imagination. I've also found that the miniature yellow daffodill, Tete-Et-Tete, will return from year to year and bloom even more dependably than the paperwhite narcissus. I've not found any tulips that can survive our hot, wet summers. They will bloom the first Spring after Fall planting, but then seem to rot in the ground.

I experimented this past season with some native plants from my home state of West Virginia: Bloodroot, Black Cohosh, and a few others (purchased on eBay from a supplier who promised they are cultivated from root stock and not taken from the wild). It will be interesting to see if they will come up this Spring. I also planted a Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis) shipped to me by a catalog company instead of the plant I ordered which was out of stock. It flowered beautifully soon after arrival, then died back to the ground. I don't know if it will return, but hope springs eternal in my garden!

Jeremy

This message was edited Dec 14, 2005 11:24 PM