News from Smithfield Gardens

      Stunning photograph I took, isn't it? These brugmansias are our stock plants and we overwinter them in one of our greenhouses every year. I wanted you to see what a brugmansia with some age on it looks like so that you know that they are worth tracking down and pampering. All too often when gardeners hear the word tropical, they quickly walk away and pick up a colorful geranium. Trust me, you don't get the same excitement from an old Pelargonium x hortorum.

    It's part of my job to take photographs of plants so I am proud of this picture; however I'm also proud of the fact that I have successfully overwintered my own pink brugmansia in the basement for two winters now. So I know that it could be done fairly easily by the average homeowner if they have the patience to do it. My basement is quite dark so the leaves fell off, and I was careful not to over water the plant while it was "resting". My efforts paid off and the brugmansia is now fully leafed out and planted outside in a container for the summer. Smithfield Gardens has customers every year that tell us they leave their brugmansias outside over the winter (planted in the ground, of course) and the plants return every year. One of my duties here is to work in our display beds, and I have planted several good-sized brugmansias in the spring in our display beds since 1994. Not one has come back for us the following spring, so it's your decision about how to care for your plant during the winter months. Normally any brugmansia that has been frozen to the ground will be quite slow to flower the following year, according to chat rooms about these plants.

   Before you shop for these hard-to-find tropicals that hail from South America you need to know that angel's trumpets (a common name for brugmansias) can cause problems for both humans and pets when ingested. In our area these tropicals can be placed outside in a full sun to light shade location once the weather warms up in May. Catalogues will expound on their delightful fragrance, but scent is a very subjective thing! The plants do emit a powerful distinctive fragrance at night because they are pollinated by the sphinx moths that resemble night-flying hummingbirds.

     Brugmansias love to be fed a lot so we recommend a timed- release fertilizer or a very regular schedule of feeding with liquid fertilizer. You can use the liquid "blue stuff" or something like fish emulsion, and Osmocote would be a good timed-release product. The plant's bottom leaves can start dropping off if you let it get too dry. Brugmansias are equally at home in the ground or a container, but the plant will be able to fend for itself in the ground and you will not need to check it constantly for water. Many customers also prefer to keep their brugmansias in containers because it avoids the stress of chopping plant roots when the time comes to bring them indoors again.

    Brugmansias can be prone to tiny but pesky spider mites, which can cause the plant's leaves to yellow and eventually fall off. One website I visited suggested spraying with a fifty-fifty solution of alcohol and water (it could take 3-4 weeks of spraying) or using a systemic insecticide. The important point here is to break the pest's life cycle.

     The ABADS (American Brugmansia and Datura Society) site is highly recommended for beautiful pictures that will make you want to collect more brugmansias, and information about how to train them into a tree shape, how to hybridize new varieties and how to propagate them. Visit www.abads.net to find out more about these conversation starters.

Ann Weber