Gardening with Cannas and their other Use's
Not just garden plants

Colorful Cannas are most widely grown as exotic tropical plants for their big beautiful and bright flowers.

Apart from their garden flowers their foliage and seeds also have many uses and have been used in other ways.

How do you use canna plants in your garden?

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The beautiful flowers pictured above are cannas John Lochner in the front, Verdi is in the center and Marie Nagal at the back. This picture was taken at a friend's property and his name is Glen, he has bred many new and unusual plants that are known as the Cannagle cannas with some of them now being grown Internationally.

In the mid 1800's when they were first starting to be hybridized, they became very popular garden plants and grown widely for their flowers. Hundreds of new hybrid plants were raised and introduced.

The hard seeds from them is also widely used in jewelry such as earrings and necklaces, some musical instrument such as shakers use the seeds too.

There is also an edible plant called Arrowroot that is suitable for cooking and is grown world wide as a food source for domestic farm animals.

Often heard are stories of their hard round seeds being used in musket guns as their seeds are like a lead pellet hence the name Indian shot that’s referring to the seeds from species canna indica

These plants are not to be confused with cannabis the drug; they don’t even belong together in the same family.

And in the art world there is the famous painting Red Canna by Georgia O'Keeffe produced in 1923.

There are also beautiful artificial canna plants that you can buy with the flowers and foliage made from silk.

For the collector there are some beautiful home ornaments by Francis Chen with such detail to the canna on them, they are made with clay.

Recently I purchased a ceramic canna tile with a distinctive yellow flower on it, the canna on the tile is the heirloom cultivator Trinacria Variegata.

Canna flowers printed on fabric can also be found along with their flowers printed and made into coasters.