Lantana

The magnificent weather we’ve enjoyed the past few weeks has brought me outdoors much more than usual.  Especially Sundays.  Reading, falling asleep, sipping lemonade and smelling the roses. 

Our backyard has a lot of horticulture going on, but it is the annual flowers that put on more of a show than anything else.  Most are planted in containers large enough to hold a collection of 5 or 6 plants. 

If there were a contest in our backyard to decide which of our annual plants were our favorite, the Lantanas would win, hands down.  Cheryl and I will never tire of Lantanas, evidenced by the quantity we have both in the back and front yards. 

Lantanas are tough performers in the garden and will bloom continuously from planting time to the first serious frost.  Dominant colours are yellow, orange, and red, most often in multi-coloured patterns. 

Lantanas are upright growing, forming a compact bush-shape, about 18 inches high with nearly equal width. Also available, but hard to find, are standard Lantanas that have been grown and pruned to become mini-trees. 

Plant Lantanas where they will receive as much sun and heat as possible. They will not perform well if receiving less than half a day of sun.  If planting in the garden, give Lantanas rich, well drained soil.  Once established, Lantanas do not need much water.

Lantanas are ideally suited for container gardening.  Use a soilless growing medium and make sure the container has drainage holes so excess water can drain away. 

We are in the habit of watering our containers at the end of every day, but we probably could do so every other day.  Lantanas would rather be underwatered than overwatered.

Lantanas are not fussy on fertilizer.  We give a spoonful of slow-release balanced plant food to each Lantana at planting time and will repeat another application at the end of July.  In addition, we give all our annual flowers liquid fertilizer every two weeks until September. 

To improve performance, Lantanas can be dead-headed by removing flower heads as soon as they are spent.  We never bother dead-heading because new flowers appear quickly after old flowers diminish. 

Lantanas can be brought indoors through winter, an exercise Cheryl and I do in order to keep our valuable standard mini-trees content until they can be planted outdoors again in springtime.  We put them in a minimally heated garden shed, watering about once a month.