Bird of Paradise Care Through the Year: A Season by Season Schedule

The shape of the year

This plant does best on a strongly seasonal routine rather than steady conditions all year. Hard growth in warmth and full sun, then a genuine rest that is cool, bright and nearly dry. Plants kept at an even room temperature with even watering grow steadily and flower rarely.

The table below is the whole year at a glance. Each row is expanded further down the page. Work from what your plant and your weather are doing rather than from dates, because the same season means different things in different climates.

Spring: wake it up and set it up

Growth restarts when temperatures rise and the days lengthen. This is the only sensible window for anything that disturbs the roots, and it is when the feeding year begins.

1. Increase water before you increase feed As new growth appears, go back to thorough soakings when the top two or three inches (5 to 8 cm) dry. Feeding a plant that is still barely drinking burns the roots.
2. Top dress the pot Scrape off the top two inches (5 cm) of old mix, replace with fresh, and mix in slow release fertilizer. Do this every spring you are not repotting, which should be most of them.
3. Repot only if it is forced Roots lifting the plant out of the pot, a cracked pot, or mix that stays wet for a week. Otherwise leave it crowded, because that crowding is what drives flowering.
4. Clean the leaves Wipe both surfaces with a damp cloth. It removes winter dust and, more usefully, it is when you find scale that built up over the heating season.

Late spring and summer: the growing season

This is where the plant earns its flowers. The reserves built through a summer in full sun are what fund flower stems now and next year, and there is no substitute for it indoors.

Move it outside once nights hold reliably above 50F (10C), and then leave it in place. The one thing not to do in summer is keep rearranging where it stands.

1. Acclimate over two weeks Start in shade and add about an hour of direct sun every two or three days. A plant taken straight from indoors to full sun bleaches within a day.
2. Water deeply and often In full sun a twelve inch (30 cm) pot may need water every two to four days. Soak until it runs from the bottom rather than sprinkling daily.
3. Feed for flowers Switch to a high potassium feed, the kind sold for tomatoes, every two weeks. High nitrogen from here on gives you leaves at the expense of flowers.
4. Leave a budding plant alone If a flattened boat shaped bud appears at the base of a leaf stalk, stop moving and turning the pot. Buds abort easily from a change of position or a dry spell.
5. Shelter before storms Move a tall pot against a wall when a gale is forecast. Split leaves are normal and harmless, but a snapped stalk is gone for good.

Autumn: bring it in properly

The autumn move indoors is where most pest problems and most winter losses begin. Done carelessly it imports scale into the house and puts a wet plant into a cold room. Done properly it takes half an hour.

1. Go in before the first frost warning The leaves burn at the first hard frost even though the rhizome would survive far colder. Do not gamble on one more warm week.
2. Inspect and wash it first Hose both leaf surfaces, check every leaf joint and the underside of every midrib for scale, and wipe the outside and base of the pot. Treat before it goes in, not after.
3. Stretch the watering out As temperatures fall, extend the intervals rather than reducing the amount. Half a watering wets only the top of the pot, which is the pattern that rots roots.
4. Taper the feeding off Drop to half strength once a month in early autumn, then stop entirely. Feeding into the cool months pushes soft growth that will not survive.

Isolate it from your other houseplants for a few weeks after it comes in, even if it looked clean. Scale crawlers are invisible and this is the season they spread.

Winter: the rest that makes the difference

Eight to ten weeks bright, cool and nearly dry does more for next year's flowers than anything you can buy. A conservatory, an unheated porch or a bright spare room at 50 to 59F (10 to 15C) is ideal. A heated living room is not, and a plant kept there will simply take longer to reach flowering size.

The one rule of the cool rest is that cool and wet together rot the rhizome. The cooler the plant, the drier it must be kept.

Keep the leaves off cold window glass overnight. A blade touching the glass blackens where it touches, and pulling the plant back a hand's width prevents it entirely.

What to record, and why it pays

This is a plant on a multi year timescale, and memory is not equal to it. Four dates a year are enough: when you moved it outdoors, when you brought it in, when it started needing water twice as often, and when any bud appeared.

Add the number of fans each spring and the date of every repot. After three seasons that short record tells you whether the cool rest is working in your house, how long after the move outdoors buds appear, and how many years since the last repot the flowers arrived. That is the only way to tune this plant, because published advice cannot know your winter.