Garden Inventory is a series where I begin an inventory of all the plants and trees in my garden. Along with some of my own pictures, I will link to various sources of information about each plant and tree so we can learn a little more together.
I would also like to highlight your special plants and tress. Pass along your favorite plants in the comments and I will use them for future Garden Inventory posts. — Douglas
Garden Inventory: Ficus repens
A rather unassuming plant that often hides the background, almost unnoticed in most gardens. In my case, it once used to cover our back wall until the car dealership behind us decided to rebuild both the wall and their parking lot. I tried to maintain as many of the plants as possible, but the new wall foundations ended up removing most of the plants. Still, I have a few plants and I am trying to recover the new wall, but it is slow going. The vine covers well, but slowly and I need many more individual plants to reestablish it fully. This is one of the plants I am planning on propagating in my (hopefully, soon to happen) Propagation Project. I want to propagate more of nearly everything I have in the garden at the moment.
I like this ficus because, while it covers well, it doesn’t try to take over your entire garden. It only grows a few inches off the surface of the wall and doesn’t seem to like growing across the ground. I can start to climb on adjacent plants, but along this large back wall there are nothing but mature trees, so it is easy to remove any runners that might appear.
Photos of Ficus repens with closeups of flowers, leaves, growing habit, and stems.
More information on Lantana:
- Ficus discussion at Dave’s Garden
- Ficus propagation at GardenWeb
- Ficus repens (creeping fig) at MyGardenLife.com
Previously on Garden Inventory: