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What To Do This Week:Take frangipani cuttings

October / November is the perfect time to propagate frangipani cuttings. It coincides with the ideal time to prune frangipani.

We pruned our huge 20-year-old pink frangipani early October to allow access for people to walk under it. All pruning wood was made into cuttings.

 


Frangipani. Photo - shutterstock.com/jesadaphorn

 

This lovely old tree at the Garden Clinic clubhouse produced 20 cuttings, each one 2m long. All of them went to good homes at our recent Cake & Cutting Garden Clinic Club event.

The trick with frangipani cuttings is to allow them time in the sun to dry out, for a month (or two is preferred).

Once they dry, the sap stops bleeding. Place them into pots (one per pot) of free draining potting mix with sand or grit added. Don’t over water as rotting can occur. Leaves will appear by Christmas but roots can take 12 months to form. So don’t be fooled into thinking that your cuttings have struck; it’s a very slow process.

 


Once the cuttings dry, and the sap stops bleeding, place them into pots.

 

Plant a collection of fragrant climbers

A selection that will follow each other on show, ensuring that you are never without colour and perfume. In full flower now at the Garden Clinic clubhouse is Firecracker Honeysuckle (Lonicera x heckrottii) growing through the lovely apricot Crepescule rose on a long stretch of paling fence. It will stay in flower for months, a lively mixture of pink, red and gold tonings; perfect with Crepescule.

 

Firecracker Honeysuckle (Lonicera x heckrottii)

 

Also fabulously fragrant at present is the Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) a handy climber to cover an unsightly fence in sun or shade.

Click here for our story on Fragrant Climbers.