Blue Fox Garden: Hedychium coccineum 'Tara' is my favorite plant in the garden (this week)…

And with those big orange blooms why wouldn’t it be? I bought this ginger at Rare Plant Research in 2010. That year, and the following two, there was only a pair of stems….but this year three! (and three blooms to top them) While the foliage is nice the flowers are what it’s all about with this plant...

Hedychium coccineum 'Tara' is one of the early blooming gingers, and in my experience it blooms every year without fail. I've grown a couple of others (long gone and almost forgotten) but this is the only one I've had success with. According to San Marcos Growers the fragrance of the flowers can be compared to that of a gardenia, but I sadly don’t get a fragrance from them.

That mysterious black thing on the right? It's just the hose...

SMG also notes that: “It was originally identified as a selection of Hedychium coccineum by Brian Mathew, but more recently as a form or hybrid of Hedychium gardnerianum by Hedychium specialist Tom Wood.” For purposes of this post I’m going with the name I bought it under.

The stats:

perennial from Nepal, in the Zingiberaceae (Gingers) family
grows 6-8 ft tall, 3-4 wide clumps
blooms in late summer
likes plenty of water and sun to part sun conditions
reportedly winter hardy down to 10F, of course dying to the ground and regrowing in the spring.

While taking these photos I noticed the interesting contrast between the upright orange flowers on ‘Tara’ and the pendulant orange flowers on the Grevillea victoriae on the right (above).