Colourful and Crazy Ginger Plants

The Ginger Plant with its wonderful flowers makes for an interesting colourful addition to any garden.

Grown in sub tropical conditions, not in full sun, this plant will give you a great variety of very unusual colourful clusters of flowers, ranging from deep red, bright orange, pale yellow to even a white.

The Ginger Plant is a hardy perennial which is easy to propagate as it sends shoots underground in the form of rhizomes. These new ginger shoots sprout up from the ground to form new ginger plants.

This is where ginger, a spice used in cooking and in Chinese and natural medicine is formed.

The Ginger Plant has a long history having originated in Asia and grown throughout India, South Eastern Asia, West Africa and The Caribbean.

Grown in the right position this plant will give your garden an easy tropical feel with a wide range of weird and wonderful colourful flowers..

The Ginger root or tuber as it is known has been used in cooking and medicine for centuries especially in the eastern countries such as India, China and Japan.

Finely chopped or ground ginger is added to many dishes for its flavour, health benefits and in the past for its preservative effects.

Ginger powder is often used and added to cake mixtures, breads and biscuits.

Ginger ale and beer are also made from the finely ground powder.

Well know for its therapeutic powers ginger has been used for thousands of years in Chinese medicine and is still used today for treating and aiding many health conditions.

Ginger has many uses, treating and relieving arthritic pain, nausea, menstrual problems and is well known for its soothing effect on people suffering motion sickness, morning sickness or who are suffering from the symptoms of treatments such as chemotherapy.

Ginger tea is often used to relieve the symptoms of these ailments.

The oil from the ginger root is used in aromatherapy making a lovely mix with lemon grass or lime.

There are many ways you can start growing ginger in your garden.

You can start from scratch and use rhizomes with roots taken from a well established ginger plant or you can pot up some ginger bought from the market or shops and wait for them to become strong plants before potting them out into your garden or into bigger pots of your liking.

An easier way is the buy two or three plants that are already flowering that way you will know the colour of the flower of your plant so to suit the colour scheme of your garden. Later from these initial plants you can take roots to propagate another ginger plant.

Ginger plants like a cool, sheltered position protected from strong winds and ideally a humid climate but they do grow well in cool climates as well.

Soil needs to be rich and well drained as they do not like to get their feet wet in soggy soil.

Once established they can make a wonderful addition to your garden giving it a soft tropical feel with some weird and wonderfully shaped colourful flower.