Great Design Plant: Cannas

Though not true lilies, canna lilies make a superb addition to a huge variety of garden styles and styles. They’re easy to grow, easy to propagate and reasonably priced, and they produce a large impact even in small numbers. Large leaves in a variety of colour variants are topped with relatively small flowers in a variety of colours as well. Regardless of what colour scheme you are going for, there’s a canna to coincide.

Whilst typically utilized in tropical-style gardens, cannas also can be used in more traditional gardens in colder zones down to at least 5a. We all northern gardeners can plant them summer bulbs, whilst zone 8-10 anglers may use them year round! Let us take a peek at a number of cannas and their effect in the garden.

Pot Incorporated

At a Glance: Canna Lilies
Botanical name: Cannaceae
Common title: Canna lily
USDA zones: 8-10 (find your zone)
Water requirement: Well-drained, well-watered dirt
moderate requirement: Full sun, slight shade
Mature size: two to 9 feet tall, depending upon variety
Gains: Easy to grow, tall and statuesque, pest resistant, interesting foliage, wide range of colours

Best time to plant: two weeks after the last frost in your area for colder zones and anytime in zones 8-10
Seasonal curiosity: Foliage looks the best in late spring-mid summer, while the flowers put on a show in summer time.

Small Miracles Designs

Cannas were the first plant I mastered. These beginner-proof beauties will provide you confidence to move on into other, less forgiving, plants.

Adam Woodruff + Associates, Garden Artisans

How to Use Cannas in Your Garden

Cannas work flawlessly as a background foil for smaller plants. You generally have to wait for three to four years for an evergreen plant to grow large enough to work as a foil for other crops, but a canna can grow to four or five feet in a couple of months.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Cannas have verdant foliage, but can be top heavy. Try underplanting cannas with low-growing baskets to pay up those bare legs.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Cannas can be worked into a formal garden by keeping them neat. Notice how the total type of the canna planting is circular instead of”drifting” in a free-form design.

Even though cannas typically are tropical crops, they could partner with numerous styles of gardens. Here they are paired with grasses, the disparate leaf sizes making an interesting combination.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Cannas can look very formal when planted in baskets and interspersed with other mannerly plants. Employing deep maroon foliage provides this entryway thickness and distinction.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Consider using cannas as”bursting” plants supporting a low-clipped hedge of boxwood or yew. The plant is very well behaved, but provides a tailored look a little more excitement.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Are you fortunate enough to have a space to bask in sunlight, splash in a pool or even breathe in the ocean breezes? Cannas are really at home in this environment, waving in the wind and also bringing the feel of the tropics to your backyard for just a couple of bucks.

Beware, however: If you are growing cannas in tropical areas, they will just keep growing and might take over. In U.S.D.A. zones 7 and lower, cannas are grow just enough each summer to flaunt and propagate a few more rhizomes underground, then die.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Selecting a Canna Color

You’ll find a vast array of leaf and flower colors and variegation when picking a canna plant. The traditional canna has basic green leaves with bright red flowers, but there are many others to choose from. Try out different blossom colors, from flaming red and orange to milder yellows and apricots.

Red-leaf cannas are spectacular from the garden and easily can bridge crops which clash with one another.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

Red cannas look particularly beautiful when tamed by whites and pinks. Notice the way the veins of this canna leaves are intensified from the lighter colours that surround them.

Another way to boost the routines in the canna leaves would be to put the plant so it’s backlit either in the morning or evening. A sunset filtering through the leaves of a canna is a stunning sight.

Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture

Try bronze cannas with orange blooms to accent blues in a contemporary garden.

Nunley Custom Homes

The oranges also complement purple blooms or hardscaping.

Glenna Partridge Garden Design

How to Care to Cannas

Cannas are easy. They require a bit more effort than evergreen bushes, but not much. The only real work is pulling them up in the autumn and placing them in the spring. It takes a total of perhaps two hours per year for 20 to 25 cannas.

Once the first frost hits, simply lift the cannas from the floor by the stalks and let them dry out in sunlight for a day. Cut off the dried stalks, keep the rhizomes in a dry, cool area and they will be prepared to go next spring.

Mary-Liz Campbell Landscape Design

Cannas are not particularly vulnerable to diseases or bugs, but they aren’t immune either. Symptoms to watch out for include:
Holes in leaves. Pinch off the affected leaves and blast with a hose to keep critters . Yellowing foliage. Try adding compost into the soil round the cannas. They might be underfed. Shriveled or moldy rhizomes. When in storage, a couple bulbs will necessarily go bad. Only throw them in the garbage or woodpile.For the most part, I plant my cannas and forget about them. They’re tough, beautiful statement plants that you will either love or love to hate. I’m completely in the love camp — are you? Leave a comment and tell us!

More: Great Layout Plants

See related