Hi Richard...welcome to the forum

Welcome, Richard, and looking forward to your photos.

Yes, the bromeliad habit is hard to shake!

-Tom

Here goes - lets see if this works.
A photo of my shadehouse.

Cheers Richard

{{gwi:509282}}

Hi Richard

Welcome! Great pic to start!

Cheeers

Dennis

Richard,

Welcome, if your first photo is anything to go by I'm looking forward to the follow ups.

Rick

Hi Richard,

Welcome to the bromeliad forum. You maybe New to this forum put you can tell from your photos you have been growing bromeliads for awhile.

All I can say is your collection of Bromeliads is the most beautiful one I've seen lately! John has a beautiful place too, but I haven't seen any of his photos lately.

I have recently fallen in love with Bromes myself and as anyone knows that gardens it's hard to pick just one of anything. We have got to have some of EVERYTHING. LOL

My love for gardening has taken some very big changes in the past couple of years. One of my all time loves has been irises. I have over 500 different named tall bearded irises.

Then I bought two daylilies on a clearence table and planted them. The following year after they bloomed I started buying beautiful named daylilies. Now I have a great many daylilies added to my gardens and paths.

About the same time I started growing daylilies I decided I needed some more tropical looking plants mixed in.So I got several different elephant ear plants and several kinds of banana trees. Of course the more you look at everyone else's gardens and pictures they share with you, you find you need to add a few more plants for different effects.

So now I'm trying to get a few different BROMELIADS. So far the one's I have I don't even know the names of. But I put them in these huge wire baskets that are coconut lined or moss lined and hang them all over the place in my huge oak trees. It's beautiful when walking through the garden and along the paths.

I just took them down and moved them into my small greenhouse yesterday because we had a hard freeze last night. That's the only thing I don't like is moving plants in and out of the greenhouse. I'm an old lady so it is a chore and I always forget something I should have moved in.

Do any of you know if you can by seeds and start broms from seeds? Since I have seen the word seedling several times I assume some of these go to seed. Most of the ones I have seen are the ones that have pups growing out the bottom of them.

I am new to bromeliads and I have so much to learn. But I'm in love with them and just have to have a bunch to spread all over my gardens this coming spring. I was thinking if I could start some from seeds I would have a jump start on my collection. ???

Please by all means keep posting your photos. It's because of all these pictures that I keep drooling and wanting a couple more bromes. LOL

Happy Gardening, Marian
If any of you know where I might purchase or get a few seeds to try please by all means share that information with me. I would appreciate any help any of you want to share with me about growing some of these beauties.

Marian If you might not want to grow from seed as a jump start,,thats a slow and tricky process

Hi Richard, welcome to the forum. It looks like you have plenty of plants to keep you occupied for a while. You say you are dabbling with seed sowing, this can appear a quite an innocent pursuit, but beware; it will get out of control!!!
You say you live in NSW Australia but your member's page says you live in USA??????

Splinter he probally did that to get past the zip code mouse trap and used a USA zip code

Welcome Richard, you're off to a nice start!

Nev, I've noticed that number of members from Oz say USA on their member page. That confused me at first too, but maybe it's part of trying to comply with the GW's 5-digit postal code requirement? Some US-based sites are set up that way for reasons I don't quite understand, but since you've all apparently figured out how to get around that I doubt that anybody checks where you really live, so you might as well post it to avoid confusion.

Welcome to the forum Richard! 'Tis about time you stopped lurking and joined us :)

Great pic of one of your many shade houses!

Cheers,
Kerry

Welcome Richard, look forward to seeing more of your plants especially the foliage Vriesea,

Cheers
J & A

WELCOME to the forum , Richard

@(^_^)@
Chanin
in Thailand

Welcome!

In the last photo with the Vrieseas, what is the nice dark plant with wide leaves in the background upper left?

You mentioned it gets cool in the winters for you. Do you protect the plants at all?

Hi Mike - most of our plants are under shadecloth and we take what comes, the plants in the gardens get knocked around abit.
Most damage occurs below -3 ( and black frosts)

The plant upper left is Alcantarea imperialis purpurea.

Cheers Richard

Welcome Richard, some very nice plants there, & very well grown! I see you're putting those poly boxes to good use.

Is the glowing purple neo to the right side of the pic a 'Purple Star' ?

Cheers, -Andrew.

I thought it might be an A. imperialis but I've never seen one so dark. Got any other shots of it?

Hey Andrew - well picked yes it is Neoregelia purple star.

I find the poly boxes great as benches for insulation.

Cheers Richard

Hi Mike will take a couple for you.

Hi Richard,

It looks like you have been doing a bit more than 'dabbling'! Your broms look spectacular! I also grow mine under 'natural' conditions (some under shade cloth) - a little bit of damage from heat, hail, frost and wind but such is life!

I look forward to seeing some more pics :-)