HANGING BASKET PLANTS, BOUGAINVILLEA IN HANGING BASKETS

We love Bougainvillea in hanging baskets – its bright colors really create a show. The article below has some great pointers and useful tips on growing Bougainvillea  as well as pointer on growing Bougainvillea in hanging baskets or in a hanging planter. 

MyHangingBaskets.com shares helpful information and articles like this to encourage gardening success.  If you pass this along please acknowledge the author Gary Gragg. 

Nothing provides more intense masses of color in our landscape than the billowing, sometimes house-covering festive blossoms of bougainvillea. But I know what you're thinking.

"Gary Gragg is an idiot. I've suckered myself into planting bougainvillea countless times only for it to shrivel up come first frost."

OK, you have a good point, but I'll teach you how to make this plant thrive.

There are more than 300 cultivars of bougainvillea, but five do best in Northern California.
Usually nothing's better than the original, and that's true with bougainvillea.

Bougainvillea

The original discovery of Bougainvillea spectabilis, often known as B. brasilensis, remains the most vigorous, easy to grow and most cold-hardy of all varieties available. It is not damaged when temperatures dip into the 20s and can recover vigorously when they drop a few degrees more.

In addition to its floriferous purple flower bracts, it boasts the most verdantly green and dense foliage of all the bougainvilleas.

Many other varieties are sparse when out of bloom, but spectabilis remains cloaked in lustrously thick foliage year round unless, of course, we are visited by a nasty freeze.
The second most cold-hardy is San Diego Red, which offers deep red blooms set against dark green foliage. This variety looks exceptional draping white stucco walls and edging the traditional red tiles of Spanish architecture. The performance of this plant, however, is much less consistent than B. spectabilis.

You'll often see a row of them lined up along a wall or fence growing under the same conditions, only to see that while one might be blooming nicely with handsome foliage, the next will have only leaves, the third will have nothing but blooms and the fourth will barely be alive.

The dark rose-colored Barbara Karst cultivar seems to consistently outperform San Diego Red and is equally cold-hardy. Barbara Karst is also a tamer grower than B. spectabilis, seeming less determined to swallow your home.

A large-blossomed, straight pink variety sometimes sold as Miami Pink has been showing itself off locally to great effect. I found one in Oakland in full bloom on a rainy day, forming a gorgeous arch over an entry to a television repair shop.

Bougainvilleas in Hanging Baskets and Hanging Planters

Although aggressively growing bougainvilleas can, with considerable effort, be trained into small trees, shrubs or ground covers, if it's a hanging basket or hanging planter you want, go with Raspberry Ice.

Raspberry Ice sports variegated foliage and magenta flowers and has a weeping habit ideal for ground covers and hanging baskets.

Many other varieties may grow well locally, but these five are the go-to stalwarts that will have the highest chance of success. Although all will withstand varying degrees of frost without damage, all will survive substantially colder temperatures once they are mature.
So the trick to making these plants permanent features in your garden is either to plant them in frost-free locations adjacent to our moderate San Francisco Bay or to grow them in protected microclimates within colder inland gardens. In either case, young, freshly installed plants should be protected from freezing conditions. Once established, a freeze will desiccate foliage and kill young stems back to thicker wood, but should not kill the plant.

A frost every few years can be a blessing because it forces you to trim the dead foliage back, preventing the plant from getting too out-of-control. And because bougainvillea blooms only on new growth, the pruning will encourage fresh new blooms. Before you hack it back in spring, however, wait until all possibility of frost is past. The new bud growth will reveal how far back the plant froze and consequently, how far back it must be trimmed.

PLANTING YOUR BOUGAINVILLEA HANGING BASKET

The other trick to bougainvillea is to leave the roots alone.

Bougainvillea's root system is extremely fragile and doesn't form a tight root ball. Don't expect established plants to survive transplanting.

Young nursery plants should be pot-planted rather than pulled from their container. This is done by cutting the bottom off the container, then making cuts in the pot from just below the rim down to its base. Carefully place the plant in the ground and pull the pot up and out of the way. Then cautiously backfill and water in.

CARING FOR YOUR BOUGAINVILLEA HANGING BASKET / HANGING PLANTER

Your hanging basket or planter of Bougainvillea should receive at least six hours a day of direct or brightly diffused sunlight. Although the plant will grow in semi-shade, the bloom's intensity is in direct correlation to how much sun it receives -- more sun equals more bloom

Bougainvilleas roots should be kept moist but not saturated – so hanging baskets and hanging planters are ideal for them.

The literature also says to fertilize regularly, but my experience as an abusive parent to many more plants than any one person should be legally allowed to have is that it will thrive without a drop of fertilizer even in poor soil.

Adding fertilizer during establishment may be beneficial, though, as it likely would accelerate growth getting the plant to a mature stage faster and thus making it more resistant to frost and drought. However once it is established, give your plant tough love and refuse it both water and fertilizer until it protests loudly, if ever.

Bougainvillea obviously works well as a vine that can be trained up any vertical surface, but it will need support when young.

It can climb on and embellish tall wall faces, arbors, otherwise naked palm tree trunks, fences, or even on utility poles. It can drape over walls and down steep slopes and hang from baskets. My favorite, however, is to train it into an entry arch using good old-fashioned rebar as its support.

Take two pieces of half-inch rebar and tie or wire them together. Carefully bend into an arch and stick both ends securely in the ground. Plant a couple of 5-gallon bougainvillea on either side, and for less than a hundred bucks, you've got yourself a design feature worthy of a national magazine.

And as we're talking money, let's talk simple color economics. When mature, an average bougainvillea can cover a very large area. In a 400-square-foot area arbor, every square inch will be covered in intense color during the season and will return year after year.
That's cheap color.

Article by Gary Gragg - host of HGTV's "Superscapes" and owner of Golden Gate Palms and Exotics in Point Richmond

More on Bougainvillea in Hanging Baskets

Garden Squirrel’s Notes - great article by Gregg and some useful tips.

For Bougainvillea Baskets giving you that Extreme Patio Drama you may be looking for in addition to the Raspberry Ice variety as recommended by Gregg, we also recommend considering Pink Pearl, Miami pink, Barbara Karst, Elisabeth Angus, James Walker or Violet.

For more on growing Bougainvillea in a Hanging Basket or hanging planter click here
 

MORE HANGING BASKET PLANTS
 

More on Pansies and Violas in Hanging Baskets      Lobelia in Hanging Baskets      Tuberous Begonia    Wax Begonia

Brachycome "Swan River" Daisy      Coleus    More on Coleus     Dusty Miller     Evolvulus    Fuchsia    More on Fuchsia

Geranium    Ivy Geranium      Heliotrope     Impatiens    New Guinea Impatiens     Lantana     Lobelia

Pansies      Petunias     Portulaca     Scaevola     Straw Flowers

Flowers for Hanging Baskets      Plants for Hanging Baskets

Email Us, Mark@GardenSquirrel.com