Golden Acre Home & Garden Centre's Plant Library

Other Names:  Garland Lily, Butterfly Ginger

Description:

This fine selection produces lance-shaped, sea green leaves with dramatic white variegation; fragrant peach blooms resembling butterflies in summer to early fall; great in containers, or massed along borders; benefits from some shelter and rich soil

Ornamental Features

Tahitian Flame Ginger Lily features showy racemes of fragrant peach orchid-like flowers with orange overtones rising above the foliage from mid summer to early fall. Its attractive recurved sword-like leaves remain bluish-green in colour with showy white variegation throughout the season.

Landscape Attributes

Tahitian Flame Ginger Lily is an herbaceous annual with a rigidly upright and towering form. Its medium texture blends into the garden, but can always be balanced by a couple of finer or coarser plants for an effective composition.

This is a relatively low maintenance plant, and is best cleaned up in early spring before it resumes active growth for the season. It is a good choice for attracting bees and butterflies to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Tahitian Flame Ginger Lily is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Accent
• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

Tahitian Flame Ginger Lily will grow to be about 5 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 24 inches. It has a low canopy with a typical clearance of 1 foot from the ground. Although it's not a true annual, this fast-growing plant can be expected to behave as an annual in our climate if left outdoors over the winter, usually needing replacement the following year. As such, gardeners should take into consideration that it will perform differently than it would in its native habitat.

This plant does best in full sun to partial shade. It is quite adaptable, prefering to grow in average to wet conditions, and will even tolerate some standing water. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution, and will benefit from being planted in a relatively sheltered location. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder microclimates. This particular variety is an interspecific hybrid.

Tahitian Flame Ginger Lily is a fine choice for the garden, but it is also a good selection for planting in outdoor pots and containers. With its upright habit of growth, it is best suited for use as a 'thriller' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination; plant it near the center of the pot, surrounded by smaller plants and those that spill over the edges. It is even sizeable enough that it can be grown alone in a suitable container. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.