A beautiful, cottage-style shrub covered in soft, pink-tinged white flowers that continue to grow and open throughout Spring, Summer, and Autumn.
Cleome ‘Senorita Carolina’ is beautiful shrub growing up to one metre tall that blooms from top to bottom with flowers of white suffused with pink. Deep green foliage holds to the ground. Flowers continue to grow and open from the end of branch stems throughout Spring, Summer, and Autumn. In warmer regions, Cleomes are known to flower right through Winter. Birds and butterflies are attracted to the flowers.
Cleome Senorita have many uses in the garden and other outdoor areas. In gardens, individual plants give medium flowering height to landscape plantings. Planted in groups or as a hedge achieves good results with little effort. In courtyards or other outdoor areas, positioning Senorita at the centre or back of a large feature pot of combination planting creates a tiered effect which adds interest and draws the eye.
Cleome Senorita are easy to grow once established. As for most shrubs when first planted they will need nurturing for a few months but are self-sufficient unless in drought. Mulch to five centimetres and fertilise with your preferred slow release or organic plant food every two or three months once the weather warms up. Tip pruning early in Spring will give encourage more shoots which in turn means more flowers as each shooting branch will develop into a flower spike. Pruning can be done as needed once a flower spike has stopped producing to promote more shoots, stems, and flowers once again.
Cleomes are widespread throughout Central America, extending down through Brazil and Paraguay. One parent of Cleome Senorita, Cleome spinosa, is native to this region. However, we once came across a large, pink-flowering Cleome, standing tall and wild in the expansive grasslands of the African Serengeti, which we theorise was carried as a seed upon the trans-Atlantic jet stream. The lesson here we took was that Cleomes thrive just as well in tropical, equatorial humidity as they do in in dry hot summers and very cold winters.
Wear gloves & wash hands after gardening.
