The Plumbago flower is making a comeback I am glad to say.
Once the darling shrub of the nation back in the sixties, the Plumbago flower became rather 'non you' for a number of years .... it was after all that rascal Cecil John Rhodes who adopted it as his favourite flower.
The junior school I went to, Coghlan School in Bulawayo, celebrated 'Plumbago day' heaven forbid...
fiendish colonialists that they were in those days, and our school uniform was even patterned with pretty little plumbago flowers.
If my memory serves me right we were given sprigs of the enchanting little pale blue flower on Plumbago day. Maybe someone with a better memory than mine can supply a few more details.
But the Plumbago bush then became rather 'passe" a bit like that ubiquitous rubber bush that always grew around government buildings in the olden days, and so that pretty little flower was seldom seen for a number of years.
But I have noticed a very serious re-emergence of the Plumbago in recent times. Everywhere one looks in Southern Africa, there is a profusion of the beautiful little bush, flowering happily at all intersections, in all gardens, and what a welcome addition to gardening world it is once again.
I am not sure if it has perhaps been hybridised though, as the Plumbagos I remember were usually in rather stiff formal hedges, and the more modern Plumbago shrub is smaller and softer looking, but I will certainly find a spot for one in my garden as soon as I can.