Luscious greenery is the hallmark of Emaar’s latest developments in Dubai Hills Estate and Arabian Ranches III. This feature is put more into context in the recently launched townhouses and villas featuring front yard private gardens. As we welcome the summer season, we narrow down the most suitable and enduring plants for an exquisitely landscaped home garden in the UAE.
Flame tree (Delonix regia)
Also called the Royal Poinciana, this is a fast-growing evergreen tree that features an abundance of scarlet blossoms. Native to tropical forests, it does well in warm, humid environments. This tree is renowned worldwide for its clusters of exquisite red flowers that blanket the tree and show up in the summer months during warm weather. Each of the five petals is reddish-orange or scarlet colour. One petal is bigger than the others and has yellow and white markings. The fruit is a seed pod that can be over a foot long. Plant it in a location where it has enough space to grow. Not only can this variety of tree reach up to 40 feet, but it can also spread to between 40 and 60 feet wide.
Yellow trumpet flower (Tacoma stans)
Native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Mexico to Argentina, Yellow trumpetbush is known for the stunning bright yellow trumpet-shaped flowers it produces. The clusters of flowers are pleasingly fragrant; it blossoms throughout the year but most heavily from September to November.
This tree prefers total sun exposure and has a high drought tolerance, making it perfect for the hot climate. The flowers are bright yellow trumpet-shaped up to three inches long. Each is produced in clusters at the ends of the branches. It also has long thin green pods that reach up to a foot in length.
Yellow trumpetbush does well in rock gardens. It makes an attractive shrub border or can be kept in pots on a patio.
White Frangipani tree (plumeria alba)
The white frangipani is a deciduous plumeria tree that is native to tropical areas and grows to about 15 to 25 feet. Like other plumerias, its flowers are famously fragrant and beautiful, and it blooms from early summer into fall. White frangipani’s flowers have a yellow centre and five white petals arranged in a spiral. As a tropical plant, this tree grows only in warm climates or in greenhouses. It undergoes a dormant period in the dry winter season when it loses its leaves and blooms before bursting back to full colour in spring.
White frangipani is commonly grown as a landscape plant and remains relatively small and self-contained. Plumeria is drought-tolerant and can grow in the sea air.
Bougainvillaea (bougainvillea glabra)
These tropical vine-like shrubs grow effortlessly nearly year-round in the UAE warm climate. They are drought-tolerant, love the sun, and pack a huge punch of colour. However, they are vigorous growers that can become overgrown if not kept in check. The actual flowers on bougainvillaea are pretty small, usually white, and are surrounded by colourful bracts. The bracts are the real showstoppers and come in shades of red, purple, magenta, hot pink, light pink, orange, apricot and white. The bracts, often called “false flowers,” attract pollinators to the actual flowers hidden within their brightly coloured backdrop.
Elephant bush (portulacaria afra)
Also known as the Elephant Bush, Elephant’s Food, Spekboom (in South Africa), or Miniature Jade, this succulent is an adorable exotic plant. It can be ideal for your outdoor garden for many reasons: It is edible, fits almost all types of environment, and absorbs carbon dioxide, thus cleaning the air much more efficiently than other plants. in Southern African cuisine, this plant is considered a delicacy being high in Vitamin-C, Elephant Bush it is often added to soups and salads. Portulacaria Afra can tolerate the desert sun, extreme heat and high humidity. In optimal conditions, it can reach 6 to 8 feet tall and can spread indefinitely.
Golden barrel cactus (echinocactus grusonii)
As the name implies, the Golden barrel cacti are almost perfectly round when juvenile, making excellent display plants. They are beautiful, with evenly spaced rows of spines on their deeply ribbed lobes. As they grow, they tend to stretch out, so they are more oval than circular. This can be quite a large plant when fully mature (as much as 6 feet), but it grows very slowly. Golden barrel cactus is now quite rare in its native habit, but it is frequently grown in cultivation as a houseplant. Less often, it is used in the outdoor garden in dry climates. However, the cactus is less likely to flower indoors than when grown in a garden or yard.
Desert or foxtail grass (alopecuroides)
Foxtail grass, also known as Pennisetum alopecuroides or “fountain grass,” is an ornamental grass that is simultaneously beautiful and durable. In the fall, it can bloom with a beautiful dusty feather. Foxtail grass can grow to reach anywhere from 18 inches to three feet tall, making it the perfect height to shade shorter flowers in your garden that don’t require direct sunlight. Use it as a decorative filler plant for open patches of soil in your garden or yard and be sure to prune the perennial versions to the ground before the new growth appears in spring.