Earlier this month, my stepdaughter Ferial and her husband Bassem, took my husband and I to Saudi Arabia to hit the garden centres.
We visited many and then looked around the Sultan Nursery. There, a gentleman approached me, remembering me from last year's Bahrain International Garden Show and said that he had - very kindly - bought my two books.
He instructed us to follow him to their largest nursery, 15 minutes drive away.
There we entered a beautiful tropical arena and were carried away in ordering plants. These were delivered to our door three days later. What costs BD6 here was the equivalent of BD1.500 there - and they supply Bahrain's nurseries!
What a find. They are all planted in the garden and are looking superb.
As we strolled, I espied some topiary animals - not my favourite method of plant design - and I couldn't resist two miniature Duranta repens geese.
These will have blue feathers, followed by golden freckles of berries. They stand mischievously by our formal pond, as if dying to fish.
Our garden is looking breathtakingly beautiful, with all the tropicals coming into their own.
The plate-size flowers of the Hawaiian Hibiscus are truly amazing and they perform throughout the garden. The Crotons add highlights intermittently in the borders with oranges, reds, greens and golds artistically painted on their leaves.
We enjoy a number of species of Barleria from sprawling groundcovers in hot-red, blue, with white hearts and purple. Barleria Lupulina is a thorny sort and has yolk-yellow open-mouthed blooms, flippantly washed-over in apricot and it self sows, which is just as well, for the plant is short-lived.
The stately form of Euphorbia milii hybrid adds a structural effect in the borders with white, yellow, pink, spicy-orange and ox-blood-red bracts.
An important medicinal shrub is Vitex agnus-cactus, with plumes of blue or white small fragrant flowers.
Duranta repens is an enchanting shrub, which carries sprays of white, sky-blue or purple flowers with white pencilled flecks, which are succeeded by golden berries and is known as pigeon berry.
There is also a delightful variegated form with leaves in emerald green spattered over in vanilla cream.
Acalypha hispida, known as "cats' tails" or "chenille plant|", for its blood-red tails resemble such a caterpillar, is a marvellous shrub enjoying full sun.
Climbing gaily up a date palm is Podranea ricasoliana, with soft pink trumpets streaked vertically in a darker cerise tint inside their throats.
Crossandra offers sizzling-orange blooms with richly green leaves. We enjoy a variegated form, whose leaves have been are squirted with cream.
Plumbago is a charmer with a lackadaisical habit stippled-over in sky-blue, azure or snow-white blooms. This can be left to climb or trimmed into a shrub-like form. Plant the three colours together to achieve and appealing-look.
We take pleasure in several species of Clerodendrums. The climbing Clerodendrum indicum drips frothy-white teardrops, which when open are flattered by elongated brick-red eyelash-like stamens.
These are followed by blackcurrant-designed berries. Also, a climber is Clerodendrum x speciosum with clear red flowers cradled in pinkish-mauve bracts.
Witches tongue (Clerodendrum quadriloculare) is an impressive shrub, which can be trained as a small tree.
It presents reddish purple foot-long-leaves and the colour is mirrored in the stems. The foliage is among the most beautiful in the plant world.
The exciting flowers are born in clusters at the terminal stems with exaggerated pink tubes and protruding white stamens.
Red hearts dangle from pristine white, Sunday-bonnet-like bracts of Clerodendrum tomsoniae, which appear in bunches. It has such a charming look and is at its best when trained up a tree.
We have ours embracing the trunk of a frangipani (Plumeria obtuse).
True to its botanical name is Saratea magnifica, for it is truly magnificent.
We have ours climbing up an enormous post at the corner of our main gate. It is a cascade of bright pink and the envy of everyone whom visits.
Spathodia campanulata is just starting to roll back its ruby-red skirt. Gargantuan up-turned clusters of tulip-like flowers are embarrassingly gaudy, but we can happily cope with that, for they are utterly outstanding - as is the tree. The hummingbird tree or parrot flower (Sesbania grandiflora) has crystal-white or cherry-red flowers that represent these and the flowers are edible.
So shy to fully open are the carroty-coloured flowers of Hamelia patens.
Its long, narrow flower tubes have tiny lobes at the ends of the blossoms.
This is a shrub that can easily be trained as a standard. Although it will reach 20 feet tall, it is better looking kept shrub-like.
The flowers of Justica ovata are very similar to Hamelia patens, both in colour and design.
Jatropha integerrima is a fine shrub and looks simply dazzling when trained as a standard. Its inch-wide-flowers are a luminous-scarlet to rosy-red to baby-pink.
Designed especially for children is the water apple (Eugenia aquea). Its crisp, mouth-watering, pear-shaped fruits are also ideal for making jellies.
The cream-coloured flowers posses a crowd of fluffy stamens. It is a lovely, shapely tree ideal for a border but ours grows in the orchard.
Now, I couldn't talk of the garden's concert without mentioning the Delonix regia, or otherwise known as the "flame of the forest".
This picture of loveliness never fails to burst forth with bloom on the first day of May. That's how it earned its other common name "May Tree".
It is an absolute fire-ball with flame-red or flame-orange flowers that have one petal coloured in white-hot, with imaginative tinted streaks. We have a golden yellow form that represents a river of gold.
Many of the plants mentioned here are available from Bahrain's nurseries. Many also feature in my book "Tropical Trees and Shrubs of Bahrain".
