The Codiaeum variegatum, also known as the garden croton, is a gorgeous plant, native to tropical parts of Asia, with a reputation for being hard to grow.
As you can see, our specimen is quite a small plant which was bought at IKEA in October. I repotted it and put it in the conservatory where it did pretty much nothing for a while. That’s actually not bad — some people report that their Codiaeum drops lots of leaves after repotting, but that didn’t happen here.
However, I still got the feeling that the plant didn’t like the temperature in the conservatory and took mercy on it by moving it inside. That’s not our normal thing to do; we don’t have room for lots of plants inside and prefer to keep them in the conservatory. But the plant has rewarded me by producing what I think will turn into two new leaves!
This is a cropped version of the previous photograph and as you can see, there are two tiny green shoots at the centre. I’m very excited about this! After everything I’ve read about how hard these plants are to grow, it would be fantastic if I could get it to make new leaves as late as November.
conservatoryplants 